Pubdate: Sat, 05 Jan 2013
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2013 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: Kate Linthicum
Page: AA3

SECOND MEDICAL POT INITIATIVE ON BALLOT

Measure would allow any dispensary that meets certain guidelines to remain.

Los Angeles voters will get a chance to choose whether to keep pot 
shops open in the city when they go to the polls in May, thanks to a 
second medical marijuana initiative that qualified for the L.A. ballot Friday.

The measure would allow any medical marijuana dispensary that meets 
certain requirements to remain. Dispensaries would have to keep 
limited hours, conduct background checks for staff and stay a 
specified distance from schools and parks.

The measure would also raise taxes on medical marijuana sales by 20% 
to help pay for city regulation of the industry. In 2011, voters 
approved a $50 business tax on every $1,000 of gross receipts for 
medical marijuana sales. Because the new measure would increase that 
tax, it must be put to voters, according to Holly Wolcott in the city 
clerk's office.

The initiative's backers, who were notified Friday that they had 
collected the required 41,138 valid signatures to get their measure 
on the ballot, represent a group of dispensaries that opened after a 
citywide moratorium on pot shops was enacted in 2007.

A rival medical cannabis measure, which would allow only those 
dispensaries that opened before the moratorium, qualified for the 
ballot earlier this week. The City Council will have to decide before 
the end of the month whether to enact the proposed ordinance, call a 
special election or place it before voters in the May 21 election.

David Welch, an attorney for the group that qualified its measure for 
the ballot on Friday, said supporters of the initiative had already 
raised $400,000 for the campaign and were working to raise $500,000 more.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom