L.A. REINS IN ITS POT SHOPS

Explosion of Marijuana Dispensaries Leads to Fight Over How to Regulate Them

LOS ANGELES-City officials here are hoping that a new get-tough
policy will finally allow them to gain control of the hundreds of
medical-marijuana dispensaries that have sprung up over the past few years.

But many owners of the 600 or so pot outlets currently operating
openly here don't want to go quietly. They have hired lawyers and
plan to fight the city in court.

What was supposed to be a comprehensive resolution to Los Angeles's
long-running pot controversy is shaping up instead to be a long, strange trip.

"The city is going to be bogged down by years of litigation," said
Dan Halbert, president of Safe Access, a coalition of 130
dispensaries in Los Angeles that the city recently ordered closed.
"Nobody wants that." Mr. Halbert, who operates a dispensary, is a
plaintiff in a lawsuit that a group of dispensaries filed against the
city last month.

A 1996 California law allows people who are sick or in pain to use
marijuana, which they can obtain through legal dispensaries.

San Francisco and other cities passed laws capping the number of
dispensaries within their borders. But Los Angeles never did, and the
shops mushroomed. The city finally issued a moratorium on new outlets
in 2007, but failed to enforce it.

Residents in some parts of the city complained that the medical
marijuana shops were creating a public nuisance, and attracting pot
smokers who weren't really sick.

Meanwhile, dispensaries opened and closed so quickly that city
officials struggled to get an accurate count. At first, they said
there were more than 1,000; that number later was scaled back to about 600.

Now, armed with a new ordinance that restricts the number of
dispensaries to 186 in this city of 4 million people, the city is
launching a new offensive. Last week, the city attorney sent letters
ordering 439 dispensaries to shut down by June 7, when the ordinance
takes effect.

Dispensaries are defiant. "We're preparing for a long fight," said
David Welch, the lawyer representing Mr. Halbert's group. He contends
that the ordinance unfairly discriminates against those dispensaries
that opened after the moratorium, and plans to request a court order
allowing them to remain open while the issue is argued before a judge.

Prosecutors said they plan to fight, too. The new law allows city
attorneys to prosecute offenders with up to six months in jail and
$2,500 a day in fines.

But a drawn out legal battle could put the city in an awkward
position. Los Angeles faces a half-billion dollar budget deficit in
its next fiscal year, and has cut funding to the city attorney's
office and the police department. A costly court fight could drain
resources, but officials don't want to come off as accommodating a
situation that residents complain has become unmanageable.

"We're hoping for voluntary compliance. We're hoping not to prosecute
439 dispensaries," said Asha Greenberg, an assistant city prosecutor
overseeing the effort to close the shops. But, she added "we really
don't know how many people are going to cooperate."

Earl Stein, co-owner of a dispensary fighting closure, said the city
shouldn't hamper his nascent industry in a recession. According to
state tax records, marijuana sales generate between $58 million and
$105 million in annual sales-tax revenue.

Past efforts to reduce the number of dispensaries, including issuing
the moratorium on new stores, only managed to shutter 34. Meanwhile,
dozens more sprouted up.

About 21 shops operate in a single Los Angeles neighborhood, a
2.5-square-mile enclave called Eagle Rock. Michael Larsen,
public-safety director of the neighborhood council, said the
situation was "out of control."

Some dispensaries do plan to vanish voluntarily. Private Organic
Therapy, in a tidy strip mall between a furniture store and an
upscale liquor shop, will close, said its manager, Dave Warden. Its
owners don't want to fight the city, he said.

But, he said, another dispensary that opened before the
moratorium-and therefore can operate even under the new rules-plans
to move into the same location. Mr. Warden said he would manage the new store.

Like most dispensaries, customers-officially, patients-are buzzed in
through a locked door once they present a doctor's note. Pot is kept
behind glass counters in canning jars tagged with names like
Skywalker and Nameless. Because dispensaries are supposed to be
nonprofit collectives, operators post "suggested donations" ranging
from $25 to $90 for an eighth of an ounce of marijuana, depending on
the strain and the store.

On a recent weekday morning, a plumber, an actress and a tattoo
artist all came in. Mr. Warden went through the different strains and
their varying effects.

"He's like the wine sommelier of pot," said Julie Wagner, the actress.

A few miles away, Amy Weiss and her mother, Kathy, said they planned
to fight the city's order to close their shop, Buds on Melrose. They
said they spent $88,000 refurbishing the store with a new bathroom,
soft lighting, red walls and wood floors.

Ms. Weiss and her mother, a breast-cancer survivor, opened Buds after
the moratorium to cater to female cancer patients.

"There was no place for me to go," said Kathy Weiss, the cancer
survivor. "I'd go to one place and there'd be a guy with tattoos on
his head calling me dude."