The city of Los Angeles has tried valiantly to shut down illegal marijuana dispensaries, and the City Attorney's Office says hundreds of pot shops are no longer with us as a result.

But outside city boundaries, there are parts of L.A. County that can exist under enforcement radar.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors yesterday voted 4-0 to crack down on illicit cannabis collectives in unincorporated parts of the county.

Unincorporated areas, including East L.A. and Marina del Rey, are those that have not achieved cityhood. 

The county banned pot shops in unincorporated areas in 2011, but they still exist in some of those communities.

So Supervisor Michael Antonovich proposed an enforcement team to crack down. It would include sheriff's deputies, district attorney's prosecutors, county lawyers and county planners.

He calls it the Medical Marijuana Dispensary Enforcement Team. It will be ordered to “effectively and
expeditiously close down illegal medical marijuana dispensaries in the county’s unincorporated areas,” according to a summary of the proposal.

Antonovich wants at least one full-time attorney for the team. And he wants county staff members to report back in four months about how the effort is shaping up.

“A streamlined Medical Marijuana Dispensary Enforcement Team will speed up our effort to shut down and prosecute illegal marijuana dispensaries,'' Antonovich said. “These illegal operations have routinely attracted a criminal element that threatens community safety and disrupts neighborhoods.''

-With reporting from City News Service

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