Civic activists in L.A. have growing appetite to curb medical marijuana clinics

The little clinic rests along a graceful curve of Eagle Rock Boulevard also occupied by a karate studio, a barber and a smattering of modest houses, one with a basketball hoop. The building, marked only by a metal placard that says "Cornerstone," is unremarkable, by design.

In the waiting room, patients sit on stylish lounge chairs, flipping through magazines. There are dark bamboo floors and walls painted in shades of blue, chosen to foster warmth and serenity.

Each patient is escorted to a back room. There, workers wait behind a steel, L-shaped bar. The air is full of Brazilian jazz and the pungent, sugary scent of the only medication dispensed here: marijuana, premium strains of it, dried into meaty buds, stacked up in tall mason jars and sold for $15 to $20 a gram.

Officials and neighborhood activists in this corner of Los Angeles were taken aback recently when they discovered that their community was home to nearly a dozen of these medical marijuana dispensaries, all within a 2-mile radius, mostly in Eagle Rock but also in Highland Park and Glassell Park.

The dispensaries, civic leaders say, appear to be legal operations -- not businesses, technically, but "collectives" of people who take marijuana to treat symptoms and side effects of arthritis, AIDS, anorexia, cancer and other ailments.

Those expressing concern say it is less about the facilities' legitimacy and more about local control -- whether a neighborhood has a voice in determining where dispensaries can open and, in particular, whether so many should be allowed in such a small area. They argue that in some cases, the clinics are subject to fewer restrictions than a new liquor store -- even a new drugstore or a yogurt shop.

But here at the Cornerstone Collective, few understand what the hoopla is about. Operators and clientsbelieve firmly that marijuana is vital to the healthcare needs of people who are in pain or have lost their appetites or cannot sleep. They argue that it is a belief that the California public generally embraces, along with the idea that law enforcement's long fight against marijuana has been misguided and wasteful.

It is still a messy debate, five years after a voter initiative and a state Senate bill legalized the possession and cultivation of marijuana for qualified patients. Local, state and federal laws are in conflict, the courts haven't been much help and Los Angeles' moratorium on new dispensaries will run out in the next few months.

At City Hall, officials are drafting, finally, a set of guidelines for the facilities. That effort is controversial. Some law enforcement officials believe that abuse is frequent at the clinics and that some clients don't require marijuana, while some City Council members are concerned that the proposed rules threaten the existence of legitimate dispensaries. But around here, both sides, anxious for direction and certainty, agree that guidelines -- even imperfect and incomplete -- cannot come fast enough.

In Eagle Rock, the debate over marijuana began at another unremarkable storefront, this one on Colorado Boulevard, a pillbox of a building with peeling cobalt paint. There used to be a comic shop here. Perhaps the contrast between that child-friendly business and what has been proposed for the site -- a dispensary whose owner has distributed hard-stock fliers promising "connoisseur quality" marijuana and a free gram on a client's first visit -- has not aided the would-be proprietor's chances.

Last May, a sign appeared on the building's facade heralding the arrival of a new business: Green Goddess Collective. It didn't take long for Eagle Rock's activists to figure out what kind of business the Goddess would be. That raised a question: Were there any others in the area?

"Someone said, 'I think there are two or three,' " said Bob Arranaga, an Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council member and chairman of its land use and planning committee. "Someone else said, 'Three or four.' " A quick investigation found 11.

"I was flabbergasted," said Brian Heckmann, Neighborhood Council treasurer, an attorney and area resident for 21 years. "I wasn't aware that there were any."

At that point, Arranaga acknowledged with a chuckle, it became an old-fashioned case of not-in-my-backyard. Not all, but many of those upset over the Goddess, including Arranaga, had voted for the 1996 ballot initiative that made the use of medicinal marijuana legal in California .

"That was a state vote," Arranaga said. "But here? In small communities like this? I don't think anybody really got what we were voting for."