L.A.'s Medical-Weed Wars

“I’ve worked my ass off for safe access in Los Angeles,” Summers explained, “and I’m a little bitter because these other people have taken advantage. This isn’t about pot legalization.”

A few days later, Bruce Margolin, the lawyer and director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), which seeks to legalize pot, held a “letter-writing” party at his West Hollywood office to put pressure on the Los Angeles City Council, demanding that it allow over-the-counter sales.

Gregory Bojorquez

Primo bud at LA JEMM Harvest Festival, a block from City Council President Eric Garcetti's district office

Gregory Bojorquez

Medical-pot advocates Richard Eastman, left, and Dennis Peron

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More About

• Yami Bolanos
• Antonio Villaraigosa
• West Hollywood
• Government and Politics
• Psychoactive Drugs

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“It’s a clusterfuck,” says Bolanos, the collective operator and marijuana patient who refused to give Villaraigosa a hug, and who suffers complications from a liver transplant. She, too, is peeved at pot profiteers and an ill-informed City Council that won’t stare them down. For her, Villaraigosa, Reyes, Garcetti and the others are culprits allowing people to “make money off the suffering of other people.”

Last year, she repeatedly tried to alert council members that something was amiss with the proliferation of pot shops. “We were telling them we’re at 200, then we said 300, then we said 400, and it kept going,” Bolanos says. Nothing happened. “ ‘What are they thinking? What in the hell are they thinking?’ I was saying that every day.”

For Glynn, the Miracle Mile schoolteacher, the final analysis is simple: “They completely screwed the pooch.”

ADDENDUM: Early Tuesday, November 24, Mayor Villaraigosa was alerted to the Weekly’s findings, and, shortly after that, told the Los Angeles Daily News that he will refuse to sign any City Council plan that fails to ensure that pot dispensaries are following California law. Villaraigosa said, “I think the district attorney and what my attorneys tell me are the same thing. That the sale of marijuana is illegal.” He added, “Anything that comes to me [for signature] must be clear that these are legal operations.”

The mayor’s sudden entry into the hard-fought pot wars threw the Los Angeles City Council into turmoil on Tuesday, heightened by a strange turn when the power died in Council Chambers, plunging scores of people, who were waiting to speak on medical marijuana, into near-darkness.

Longtime gadfly Zuma Dogg called Tuesday’s power outage “divine intervention” that potentially stopped the council from adopting a plan hastily cobbled together in the past few days.

Dispensary operator Frank Sheftel said Villaraigosa’s surprise statements Tuesday morning prove that he “licks his finger ... and sees which way the wind is blowing” — taking a stand only because of the Weekly’s findings. Lydia Grant, an opponent of pot proliferation who is on the Sunland-Tujunga Neighborhood Council, said: “The mayor has completely let down the kids by not speaking up on this” until now.

Additional political reporting by Tibby Rothman.