Security guards have to patrol a two-block radius to prevent loitering and smoking, and guards must be unarmed. To discourage robberies, dispensaries must deposit each day’s cash. The dispensaries must provide nearby residents with the name and phone number of a contact person. It goes further than the proposed Los Angeles ordinance to ensure that dispensaries are responsible neighbors. The West Hollywood ordinance restricts where dispensaries can open, sets security requirements, limits hours and bans on-site consumption. West Hollywood officials, however, worked closely with residents, dispensary owners and the Sheriff’s Department. Neighborhood activists and dispensary operators have been largely excluded, except to speak at public hearings. In Los Angeles, a controversial draft ordinance has ping-ponged between the council and the city attorney’s office.
“We felt that it was important for the city to know that there are some businesses that are not only respectful, but listened to the needs of the community,” he said. But Rakos asked the City Council to make an exception, and it did. Because it was within 500 feet of the school, the city wanted the Farmacy to move by the end of the year. Rakos is now one of the Farmacy’s most valuable supporters. She also has Farmacy dispensaries in Venice and Westwood that followed the rules to operate under the city’s moratorium. They don’t see us as a risk,” said LaForce, who has watched the situation in Los Angeles with dismay. “We’re just part of the community, a part of the neighborhood.
The Farmacy, like the other dispensaries, belongs to the Chamber of Commerce and its manager serves on a community advisory board. She contacted the school’s parent organization, offered tours of her store, hired security and banned smoking in the parking lot. The Farmacy is run by a pharmacist, JoAnna LaForce, who has treated critically ill patients with marijuana for more than 15 years. There was an immediate influx of a lot of unsavory people.” “Our parent organization came to me and said we’re not happy about this. “All of a sudden they started opening up boom, boom, boom, boom, boom,” said Andrew Rakos, the school’s general manager. Its customers lit up in a parking lot shared with the private school, upsetting parents. Three appeared within a block of Fountain Day School. But it too experienced a neighborhood backlash as the number of dispensaries started to climb in 20.
West Hollywood - with its large population of gays and seniors and its pride in its progressive politics - welcomed medical marijuana as word spread that it can help AIDS patients and glaucoma sufferers. “Today, we have minimal complaints, and they are acting responsibly.” “We’ve kept them on a short leash,” said City Councilman John Duran, who has been involved with medical marijuana issues for years. Cities with no medical marijuana regulations, including Los Angeles, San Diego and Long Beach, have seen an outcry from neighborhoods upset that dispensaries open wherever they want, often in close proximity, and attract nuisances, such as traffic, and real dangers, such as robberies.īut some cities, notably San Francisco and Oakland, have tightly regulated their dispensaries, and officials there say they have had little or no trouble with them.Īlthough at 1.9 square miles and about 36,000 people West Hollywood is a fraction of L.A.’s size, it offers an example of how a city that adopted rules and enforced them has largely eliminated its problems.
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