After looking at 64 medical marijuana dispensaries, I have decided to not be in favor of the Los Angeles City Council’s decision requiring medical marijuana dispensaries in the City of Los Angeles to be at least 1,000 feet from places where children congregate, such as schools, parks and libraries. As seen through my Geographic Information Systems findings, this policy seems to be very unrealistic. Although there is a lot of space available outside of the 1,000 feet radii where children congregate, currently as it stands there are far too many overlapping dispensaries with schools. Despite much difficulty finding fully updated data for parks and libraries around the county, as we can see from Beverly Hills, Culver City and much of the city of Los Angeles (displayed on the map on the bottom left), there are already many medical marijuana dispensaries that are within the buffer zones of schools and parks. Although not very many conflict with libraries, schools seem to be the biggest factor in implementing this policy. On average, a small storefront is roughly 1900 sq. ft. store and can run $13 per square foot (at the very least), making it cost approximately $2058 per month (but one can only dream in this current economic situation). With that, this may be very costly to push out and relocate all of these dispensaries. Also, it needs to be taken into consideration that in these dispensaries still act within accordance with the law. Store owners are only allowed to sell medical marijuana given a prescription and users are not allowed to use it in public places. Because it is not socially and economically practical to implement such a policy, with already so many dispensaries within the buffer zones of schools and some parks and libraries, the Los Angeles City Council should rethink their decision.
Below is a list of where I found my information:
LA Weekly (to find addresses of marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles County)
http://www.laweekly.com/directory/marijuana-dispensaries/
GIS at UCLA's Mapshare Program (to receive shapefiles for LA county and schools within LA county)
http://gis.ats.ucla.edu//Mapshare/Default.cfm
LA County GIS Data Portal (to receive shapefiles for parks and libraries in LA county)
http://egis3.lacounty.gov/dataportal/
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