Los Angeles Marijuana Clinic Blog

Activists in L.A. have growing appetite to curb medical marijuana clinics

A non famous ,Los Angeles marijuana clinics rests along a graceful curve of Eagle Rock Boulevard also occupied by a karate studio, a barber and a smattering of modest houses, one with a basketball hoop. The building, marked only by a metal placard that says “Cornerstone,” is unremarkable, by design.
In the waiting room, patients sit on stylish lounge chairs, flipping through magazines. There are dark bamboo floors and walls painted in shades of blue, chosen to foster warmth and serenity. Each patients is escorted to a back room. There, workers wait behind a steel, L-shaped bar. The air is full of Brazilian jazz and the pungent, sugary scent of the only medication dispensed here: marijuana, premium strains of it, dried into meaty buds, stacked up in tall mason jars and sold for $15 to $20 a gram.
Officials and neighbourhood activists in this corner of Los Angeles were taken aback recently when they discovered that their community was home to nearly a dozen of these Los Angeles marijuana clinics, all within a 2-mile radius, mostly in Eagle Rock but also in Highland Park and Glassell Park.
The Los Angeles marijuana clinics, civic leaders say, appear to be legal operations — not businesses, technically, but “collectives” of people who take marijuana to treat symptoms and side effects of arthritis, AIDS, anorexia, cancer and other ailments.
Those expressing concern say it is less about the facilities’ legitimacy and more about local control — whether a neighbourhood has a voice in determining where dispensaries can open and, in particular, whether so many should be allowed in such a small area. They argue that in some cases, the Los Angeles marijuana clinics are subject to fewer restrictions than a new liquor store — even a new drugstore or a yogurt shop.
But here at the Cornerstone Collective, few understand what the hoopla is about. Operators and clients believe firmly that marijuana is vital to the healthcare needs of people who are in pain or have lost their appetites or cannot sleep. They argue that it is a belief that the California public generally embraces, along with the idea that law enforcement’s long fight against marijuana has been misguided and wasteful.
Still a messy debate, five years after a voter initiative and a state Senate bill legalized the possession and cultivation of marijuana for qualified Los Angeles marijuana clinics patients. Local, state and federal laws are in conflict, the courts haven’t been much help and Los Angeles’ moratorium on new dispensaries will run out in the next few months. At City Hall, officials are drafting, finally, a set of guidelines for the facilities. That effort is controversial. Some law enforcement officials believe that abuse is frequent at the Los Angeles marijuana clinics and that some clients don’t require marijuana, while some City Council members are concerned that the proposed rules threaten the existence of legitimate dispensaries. But around here, both sides, anxious for direction and certainty, agree that guidelines — even imperfect and incomplete — cannot come fast enough.