In case you haven’t heard, Los Angeles voters will decide the fate of medical marijuana dispensaries on May 21st, 2013 (click here to find your polling place). Voters will also elect a new mayor on the 21st; I am supporting Eric Garcetti, but that’s an entirely separate issue. Today I’m going to focus on the medical marijuana ballot measures, specifically Measure D and Measure F. There’s also Measure E, but it’s been abandoned by its creators in favor of Measure D. I didn’t really want to delve into this mess because of my volunteering at Humboldt Relief. But I can’t sit passively on the sidelines during a massive disinformation campaign. I’ve seen so much nonsense online in the last the few weeks that I feel compelled to lay out the facts without inserting my personal opinions at this time, for the most part anyway. I’ll be writing an impassioned follow up next week where I will reveal my true feelings about this nastiness, so stay tuned.
I’ve taken the liberty of breaking the information up into easily digestible chunks. If you’re too stoned to understand this, well, no worries, you’re not the voting type anyway. Before we dive into the legal babble, do your civic duty and read the damn ballot measures already:
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Great article and very well researched and written.
Here’s what I don’t understand about the voting. We have dispensaries in several portions of Los Angeles County (Hawthorne, Lawndale, Inglewood ‘Del-Aire’, Redondo Beach, Manhattan Beach, Gardena, Carson, Hermosa Beach, Lomita, San Pedro) yet only those living in Los Angeles CITY get to vote on the fate of these dispensaries. How is this fair since it seems the bulk of these dispensaries are in LA COUNTY?
If the cities surrounding Los Angeles have their own city hall, they are considered an independent city. Each independent city has to pull together their own, separate, voter initiated ordinance. The dispensaries in question are operating in the city of Los Angeles.
let’s not argue about the lack of perfection. let’s look at the facts.
d: will cut 70,000 jobs, force 750,000 patients into what will end up being about 45 monopolized pot superstores, will allow minors, will not require testing for molds, pesticides, and toxins in the medicine, and was put on the ballot by 10 signatures by members of the city council whom have received donations from “select” dispensaries.
f: will allow for small shops, has sticter regulation, protects minors, requires testing, requires background checks, requires annual city audits, will save those 70,000 jobs, and will provide increased tax revenue for our city.
ALSO, since the Supreme Court just ruled last week that cities could ban dispensaries, ALL dispensaries will close if D passes because there is a clause in prop d that says it will follow Supreme Court rulings. thus, the ONLY thing that can overturn a Supreme Court decision is a voter-initiated ordinance, like ordinance f, which was put on the ballot by 67,000 Los Angeles residents.
more regulation, safer, better for the community….
its obvious.
vote no on d! vote yes on f!