Marijuana Shops Told to Close by Sept. 6 Via City Attorney Warning Letter

By Dennis Romero Wed., Aug. 15 2012 at 11:23 AM

Chuck Coker / Flickr

See also:
*Where to Buy Marijuana in Los Angeles After Dispensary Ban Takes Effect.

Letters telling marijuana dispensary operators in Los Angeles that they must shut their doors by Sept. 6 were mailed yesterday and provided to the media today.

Frank Mateljan, spokesman for the L.A. City Attorney's office, told the Weekly that the documents went out to a whopping 1,774 targets, though some of those might involve duplicate locations where both owners and landlords were addressed.

The office counts this many dispensaries in L.A. today:

1,046.

That's nearly double the 550 or so counted by the Weekly a few years back, when the city was under pressure to regulate the shops and ended up trying to shut down most of them, only to see them balloon to a, shall we say, new high.

The letter tells owners and landlords that if they don't ensure the dispensaries closed down they could be on the hook for "$2,500 a day, as well as prosecution for a misdemeanor, punishable by six months in jail and a $1,000.00 fine."

However, Mateljan says:

This letter is intended to provide courtesy notice of the new ordinance recently passed by the City Council and signed by the Mayor. The letter expressly advises business and property owners to consult with their attorneys and it is not part of any enforcement scheme.

Here's the document:

2012-08-14 MM Business Ban Letter

[@dennisjromero / djromero@laweekly.com / @LAWeeklyNews]

Tags:

ban, City Attorney, dispensary, marijuana, medical marijuana, pot shops

We Recommend

ScottZwartz

1 Like

Ban Carmen Trutanich. He's more harmful to the health of Angelenos than Pot.

CarlLinneaus

The truth is that nobody cares about dispensaries. They sell second-rate medicine for top-shelf prices and provide little or no worthwhile guidance to patients. Just ask your local dispensary operator to describe how medical marijuana actually works, then prepare to laugh. At best, dispensary operators are slightly more informed street dealers that pay lip service to "helping the seriously-ill", while slanging $65 Kush eighths.

The city should care about dispensaries. 1046 dispensaries. $2,500 fines per day. LA should not enforce, just run up some fines and help get the city back in the black. That might be optimistic, given that the city can't get any of their biggest debtors to cough up the hundreds of millions owed to the city. Crimefightin' Carmen Trutanich is all bluster and no follow-through. And his former pal, Steve Cooley, isn't going to do diddly to help him.

The only folks that care about keeping the dispensaries open are the pre-ICO operators. Patients don't care at all, just look how few show up for ANY protest. The only cops that really care about dispensaries are the Devonshire detectives, who realized that closing dispensaries is a heck of lot easier than taking on the Valley meth trade. After all, meth dealers don't list their addresses on WeedMaps.