California may be a state that is best known for being one of the pioneers in having a medical marijuana industry. News reports, however, reveal that the city of Los Angeles has decided to limit the number of medical marijuana dispensaries to 70.
According to the Associated Press, the city council has already arrived at this decision, although they will still need to take a vote on the ordinance that will regulate these dispensaries.
Medical marijuana cooperatives in California were allowed by law to operate in 2004, but since that time, Los Angeles has yet to come up with guidelines that will govern their operations. In the absence of such rules, a lot of dispensaries surfaced, to the point that it has become one of the “fastest-growing industries” in the city of Los Angeles. To date, it is said that there might be about a thousand medical marijuana dispensaries operating in the area.
It would have been all good if their operations were purely for medical purposes. However, there have reportedly been complaints about some of these dispensaries engaging in businesses outside medical care.
Regulating medical marijuana is indeed important to win over skeptics towards its viability as an alternative therapy. It is a fact, at least among those who believe in medical marijuana, that its use for medical purposes has a lot of advantages and can certainly provide relief for those who need it the most.
Although there are sectors who also defend marijuana’s recreational use, countering that it has produced less harmful consequences to society when compared to alcohol abuse, the use of marijuana ““ medical or otherwise ““ remains to be a hot topic of debates.
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