September 26, 2011 – Medicinal (and, ahem, recreational) marijuana aims to soothe, ease, and relax users; take away said users’ pot and be prepared to face the consequences.

A report released Tuesday by the RAND Corp., a Santa Monica-based think tank, revealed that after hundreds of medical marijuana dispensaries were forced to close in Los Angeles last year, crime rates rose significantly in nearby neighborhoods.

Law enforcement agencies have long been after these dispensaries, arguing that the large amounts of cash are a magnet for thieves, who often go on to resell marijuana. Yet, after what investigators are calling “the most rigorous independent examination of its kind” of LA dispensaries, it appears that the city might need to rethink their position.

(MORE: U.S. Rules That Marijuana Has No Medical Use. What Does Science Say?)

Researchers gathered information and crime reports from 600 dispensaries in Los Angeles County, of which 430 were ordered to close by City Council. They then looked at the 10 days prior to when the ordinance took effect (June 7, 2010) and the 10 days after the shutdown. They found a 59% increase in crime within three-tenths of a mile of the closed dispensaries and 24% increase within six-tenths of a mile.

“If medical marijuana dispensaries are causing crime, then there should be a drop in crime when they close,” said Mireille Jacobson, the RAND study’s lead author and senior economist. Researchers went on to explain that open dispensaries probably strengthened the security of the immediate area, if anything, due to their security cameras and guards, as well as an increase in foot traffic and trumping illegal street sales of marijuana.

While the Los Angeles Police Department isn’t completely convinced, they also reveal that much of the complaints from neighbors of the dispensaries deal with issues of loitering, double parking and noise, rather than actual crime.

Well, then. It sounds as if these dispensaries are more of an inconvenience than an actual threat to the community. Source.

January 23, 2011 – The Los Angeles City Council, repeatedly warned that the city risked a return to the days when medical marijuana dispensaries were opening at an astonishing clip, voted Friday to amend its ordinance, altering key provisions that a judge declared unconstitutional last month.

The changes were forced on the council by the judge’s decision to issue an injunction that barred the city from enforcing those provisions that he concluded were illegal. He has since stayed his order, but it would take effect if the dispensaries that had asked for the ruling were able to post a bond.

Jane Usher, a special assistant city attorney, told the council that Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Anthony J. Mohr had made clear his injunction would leave the city with little power to shut down new dispensaries. “He’s put our feet to the fire,” she said.

Since the judge issued his decision, dispensaries have already boldly reopened. Usher said that it can take the city six months to two years to shut them down.

The council, with some members voting reluctantly, decided 12-0 to adopt the changes, a threshold that allows the revisions to become effective within about 10 days.

In the most significant change, the ordinance sets up a different process to decide which dispensaries to allow. A lottery will choose 100 dispensaries from those that can prove they were in existence on Sept. 14, 2007, the date the city’s moratorium on new stores became law.

The city’s attorneys and the council settled on that number after debating how many the city’s already short-handed departments could handle. The original ordinance would have allowed existing dispensaries that registered under the moratorium to apply to remain open.

Those dispensary operators objected strenuously, noting that a lottery could randomly eliminate some of the most law-abiding and best-run dispensaries. An estimated 135 dispensaries followed the city’s rules and are still in business. A lottery will eliminate a quarter of them and seems almost certain to draw more legal action from those that lose.

“I understand that this is not fair to many of the operators who are doing the right thing,” said Councilmember Ed Reyes, who led the effort to write the ordinance. But he urged the council to act, rather than return to lawlessness. “This lottery is what we can do now, as much as it hurts.”

By John Hoeffel.