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Westside Pot Shop Tries To Open Despite Ban, Fails Miserably
(Photo by Jonathan Alcorn via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr)
It's been more than a month since the L.A. City Attorney's office took on its crusade to shut down 38 medical marijuana shops following Proposition D's landslide victory. Now, prosecutors have filed a suit to stop another potential pot retailer in Mar Vista from opening its doors.
It's surprising enough that the operators tried to open the South Centinela Avenue store to begin with. New medical marijuana shops shouldn't even be opening -- voters capped the number dispensaries in L.A. to about 130 back in May. Prop D shut down all dispensaries that opened despite the L.A. City Council's 2007 moratorium banning new pot shops, but it seems Mar Vista didn't get the memo.
So, the City Attorney's office filed a civil enforcement action targeting the medical marijuana dispensary on Thursday, claiming it's illegal because of its location.
More than 200 community members filled the Mar Vista Recreation center to overflow capacity in October to discuss the planned pot shop, according to the Venice-Mar Vista Patch. Many of them supported Prop D and believe in the use of medical marijuana, but objected to the shop's location because it's surrounded by homes on three sides and doesn't meet the proposition's location requirements.
City Attorney Mike Feuer says the dispensary is illegal because of its location. Feuer's complaint lists six people as defendants, three California Limited Liability companies and 15 others, Patch reports.
The move comes on the heels of more than 50 criminal cases the city attorney has filed against dispensary operators and property owners throughout L.A.
“My office is working diligently to uphold the will of the voters in passing Proposition D in May, and we are collaborating with the Los Angeles Police Department and Building and Safety to aggressively enforce the law,” Feuer said in a statement.
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