Den Stora tråden med Skvaller och Notiser om cannabis. Läs första inlägget! [/Mod]

LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles City Council approved an ordinance on Tuesday that shutters roughly 80 percent of the nearly 1,000 medical marijuana dispensaries in the city and makes the use of marijuana in the remaining outlets illegal.

The vote amounts to a major setback for backers of medical marijuana and a victory for community groups that have long complained about the proliferation of the dispensaries near residential neighborhoods, schools and parks. Los Angeles has more of the outlets than any other city in the states that allow the use of marijuana for medical purposes.

“These are out of control,” said Councilman Ed Reyes, chairman of the planning and land-use management committee, which oversaw the writing of the ordinance. “Our city has more of these than Starbucks.”

The measure, which passed on a 9-to-3 vote, would impose stringent rules on the location of the dispensaries — essentially moving them to industrial zones — and restrict their hours. The ordinance, which city officials acknowledged would be difficult to enforce, would limit the number of dispensaries at 70 but suggested that even fewer would be permitted if there was not ample space under the new parameters to accommodate them.

The ordinance requires the signature of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa before taking effect, and will require council-approved fees levied on the dispensaries to cover the city’s cost of monitoring.

While medical marijuana use and sale have enjoyed general support throughout the city and among lawmakers, the aggressive proliferation of dispensaries in recent years has tried the patience of even the most liberal of groups.

“I’ve seen enough people come into my committee, and you can see they are hurting,” Mr. Reyes said. “So this is very difficult.”

The meeting was peppered with angry testimony from medical marijuana users, who threatened to run lawmakers out of office, as well as neighborhood association members who worried that enforcement would be lax.

California voters approved the use of marijuana for medical purposes in 1996, and cities across the state have since struggled with how best to regulate the distribution of the drug. Many cities have imposed restrictions on the number and location of dispensaries, and Los Angeles imposed a moratorium about two years ago while the City Council studied the issue. In the meantime, however, hundreds of dispensaries continued to open despite the ban.

Los Angeles kommunpolitiker röstade nyss igenom en lag som tvingar 80% av stadens cannabisapotek att stänga ner, och gör bruk av cannabis olagligt på de cannabisapoteken som får finnas kvar (tidigare har cannabisapoteken fått ha "rökrum") - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/us/27pot.html