| Photo: SGV Tribune |
Over the strong objections of medical marijuana advocates, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to ban marijuana dispensaries in unincorporated areas of the county.
The vote was 4-1, with Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky opposing, reports Kevin Douglas Grant at Neon Tommy. During deliberations, Yaroslavsky encouraged the board to focus on unlicensed dispensaries instead of trying to shut down licensed ones.
“It’s the illegal ones that are creating almost all the problems,” Yaroslavsky said. “It’s the ones who come in for permits that we have considerable leverage over.”
“I’m not prepared to vote for a ban today,” said Yaroslavsky, who said he had personal friends with terminal illnesses who had benefited from the medical use of marijuana.
But Chairwoman Gloria Molina was having none of that. Molina said she supports the ban because anti-pot zealot District Attorney Steve Cooley’s office had supposedly “done a poor job” cracking down on out-of-compliance pot shops.
Supervisor Michael Antonovich first proposed the ban in July, claiming to be concerned that as Los Angeles and other cities crack down on dispensaries, more of the pot shops would open in unincorporated areas of the county, reports the Pasadena Star-News.
Antonovich, clearly a lover of the spotlight much more than a stickler for the facts, claimed that more dispensaries would bring “more crime” to the area, despite studies showing no such effect.
Cannabis advocates argued for safe access to medically necessary marijuana for patients throughout the county.
L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca, who along with hot-dogging D.A. Cooley is one of the loudest and most obnoxious voices against safe access in the county, is undoubtedly happy with this turn of events.
“The medicinal marijuana program that voters authorized years ago has been hijacked by underground drug-dealing criminals who are resorting to violence in order to control their piece of the action,” Baca said, seemingly describing his own Sheriff’s Department in a Freudian slip.