City Attorney's Office proposes 'gentle ban' on selling pot

That would effectively shut down all marijuana dispensaries in L.A., though under the City Attorney's plan patients and caregivers could cultivate their own weed. From the City Maven:

The latest effort to regulate pot shops came last year following a court decision that found a Long Beach ordinance was unenforceable because it used a lottery system to determine which dispensaries could remain open. The Los Angeles ordinance was used a model for that law. "It is simply a matter of time ... before we have a ruling against the city of Los Angeles' ordinance on the same grounds as were determined in (that lawsuit)," the City Attorney's Office's Jane Usher told members of the Public Safety Committee. "Your ordinance is not implementable ... you must repeal the current ordinance," Usher said.

From the LAT:

Sarah Armstrong, a medical marijuana advocate who helps run a dispensary in Reseda, said hundreds of "rogue" dispensaries that have opened up in recent years have given a bad rap to older, more responsible operations that want to follow the law and cooperate with the city. At the meeting on Friday, police officers and other city officials gave testimony about crime surrounding some dispensaries. "We're tired of being tarred with the same brush," she said.

An outright ban is obviously not good public policy (large majorities support the use of pot for medical purposes), but the current regulations are so tangled and contradictory that there might not be any other choice.