Critics say LA pot dispensaries too close to schools

Los Angeles city officials have received complaints that dispensaries have opened up within a few feet of public schools. That would be illegal if the L.A. City Council approves new restrictions to regulate the city’s ballooning number of medical marijuana dispensaries.

As a town hall meeting on medical marijuana started in Venice on Thursday in the auditorium of Westminster Elementary, neighborhood council member Marc Saltzberg reiterated the complaints he’s heard that medical marijuana dispensaries are too close to area schools. "We have medical marijuana clinics on all of our business streets, so we have several on Abbot Kinney Boulevard, we have several on Ocean Front Walk, there’s several on Lincoln." Even one, he said, across the street from the elementary school where the meeting took place.

Deputy L.A. city attorney Jane Usher told the audience that her office is proposing significant regulations to the city’s roughly 1,000 dispensaries. "Do we want limited hours? Do we want books and records kept? What sort of operating conditions do we want? Do we want distance restrictions from schools, etc."

Usher’s office is proposing dispensaries operate a thousand feet from schools, places of worship, and other dispensaries. Retired public school teacher Loren Grossman told the crowd that he hasn’t heard enough complaints from his Venice neighbors and friends to warrant such restrictions.

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"We come here because we are free, at least we hope we are free," said Grossman. "It’s just really important that we allow these people to live their lives and what people want to do, we shouldn’t get involved in. The only people making the trouble for everybody is the government. So leave us alone."

School officials are concerned. Three years ago, a San Fernando Valley dispensary reportedly placed fliers on car windshields in a high school student parking lot. L.A. Unified school board member Tamar Galatzan, a deputy L.A. city attorney by profession, told the L.A. Weekly she’s well aware that some students stop by dispensaries after classes. She complained that there’s little communication between the school district and the city attorney’s office.

Some marijuana dispensary advocates say the thousand-foot restriction is too onerous. Scott Imler, a founder of one of the first dispensaries in the Southland, doesn’t have a problem with the proposal. He did suggest that public officials should be more concerned about educating youngsters about the pros and cons of marijuana use.

"Our nephew was busted with four friends one night in a 7-Eleven," said Imler. "One of them had marijuana in the car. The other four kids from his high school, a private high school on the west side, all had medical marijuana cards."

Imler asserted that benign neglect has fostered a Wild West environment among dispensaries. He likened the city attorney's proposed regulations to a sheriff’s attempt to ‘clean up Dodge.’