The city of Garden Grove, Calif. has had a ban on medical marijuana dispensaries in the town since 2008, though up until last week you wouldn’t have known it by driving through the municipality of about 175,000 southeast of Los Angeles.
But all that changed May 6 when the California Supreme Court ruled that cities do have the power to ban medical marijuana collectives and as of today, the city is actively enforcing it’s ban.
The shutdowns started a day after the ruling last week when the city ordered 63 marijuana businesses to shut their doors for good or face fines of up to $1,000 per day and even criminal charges. The shops had to close by midnight Wednesday.
According to NBC Southern California, Garden Grove had the highest concentration of medical marijuana dispensaries in the county. The city has called the dispensaries a nuisance and police blame them for a 16 percent surge in crime over the last year.
On Tuesday night, medical marijuana patients flooded city hall for the Garden Grove City Council meeting angry about the closures. “I’m coming out if the closet as a medical marijuana patient,” one patient told the council. “You see there are a whole lot of us that are invisible to you.”
Some owners said they plan on continuing business without a storefront and plan on operating as a delivery service. Others are hopeful the city will legalize the dispensaries again. But according to Mayor Bruce Broadwater, the activists and dispensary owners shouldn’t hold their breath.
“When the federal government takes a look at it and decides what they’re going to do with it, then we’ll all get that answer. But right now, it’s against the law for the city of Garden Grove to even consider legalizing it,” Broadwater told KABC.
Apparently the mayor never took a junior-high civics lesson and learned that it’s not against the law to discuss changing the law.
