Marijuana activists are seeking to block the dispensary ban

by Alex Dobuzinskis, last updated: 30 August 2012

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - activists of the Marijuana in Los Angeles, the hub of the medical cannabis industry of America, said Wednesday that they will submit a petition of 50,000 signatures to block a municipal ban on dispensaries of pot to take effect next week.

The move comes amid a conflict growing over pot shops in the most populous city in California. Residents complain of clinics are a nuisance that attract and scoundrels, but store owners say they are patients with serious diseases such as cancer and AIDS.

"We believe that this ban would not secure access to some of the sick patients in the city," said Rigoberto Valdez, vice President of a local Union and member of the Commission to protect Patients and neighborhoods.

The Committee said that it would turn into 50 000 signatures Thursday, which would immediately ban on hold while officials check if more than 27,000 valid signatures are there to force a referendum of March 2013. Up to that vote, the city would be forbidden to enforce the ban, said officials.

Los Angeles has an estimated 1,000 dispensaries. They multiplied rapidly in recent years, even if the pot remains illegal under federal law and the Government of the United States was active in several stores of cannabis in Southern California.

A 14-0 vote last month by the mainly liberal Los Angeles City Council to close marijuana dispensaries medical represents a blow important industry in a State where voters in 1996 became the first to allow the drug as medicine. But officials had expected the industry to fight.

The Commission challenged the ban is composed of trade unions of the pharmacy, the stores themselves and patients, said Valdez, vice President of United Food and Commercial Workers, local 770. The group supports the reduction in the number of dispensaries in the city at 100.

Seventeen States and the District of Columbia allow medical marijuana. Voters in the State of Washington, Colorado and Oregon will decide in November whether to allow recreational use of pot.

Los Angeles City Councilman José Huízar, the author of the order of prohibition of clinics, said he proposed it because of nuisance complaints residents and dispensaries of selling to recreational users faking a medical condition.

"I have the parents complain to me that they are walking with their children in the street and there is marijuana smoke coming from the pharmacy or persons it smoking in the Street outside,"Said Huízar.""

Trade group care Alliance medical marijuana patients and 11 patients filed a lawsuit in the Superior Court of Los Angeles this month seeking to block enforcement of the ban. A judge has not ruled on the request of the group, which is separated from the activists intend to submit signatures Thursday.

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