After years of barely controlled chaos, Los Angeles voters will have the opportunity on March 7 to finally harness the city’s unruly cannabis industry. Proposition M will give the City Council authority to regulate, tax and create an enforcement scheme for medical and recreational marijuana.
RELATED: LA Times Endorses Southern California Coalition's Proposition M
There are 135 or so well-established medical dispensaries that operate in quasi-legal fashion. They aren’t exactly licensed, but a 2013 ballot measure, Proposition D, gave them “limited legal immunity” against prosecution. That has not stopped hundreds of rogue shops from popping up around the city like mushrooms after a hard rain.
“Prop. D did not allow the City Council to control and govern the business,” said Virgil Grant, who co-founded Southern California Coalition. “And it didn’t give law enforcement a clear pathway to enforce.”
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