Chronic City: 77 Percent Of L.A. Residents Favor Dispensaries; Majority of West Coasters Want To Legalize Pot
Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley may have believed he was safely playing to the grandstands when he promised to shut down all of L.A.'s estimated 800 to 1,000 medical Marijuana dispensaries, magnanimously declaring that "approximately zero" of the dispensaries were operating legally in exchanging weed for cash. But perhaps Cooley should check his numbers: In a new poll taken this week and released today, the reaction of Los Angelenos sounds more like a chorus of boos and hisses.
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| Photo by Coaster 420, Wikimedia Commons |
| Dear Weed: We love you, and we don't want you to go away. Signed, California |
The Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), a national organization that supports Marijuana legalization, commissioned the poll by independent firm Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, after Cooley threatened every dispensary operator in the county with arrest and prosecution. Cooley, along with newly elected L.A. City Attorney Carmen Trutanich, claim that the dispensaries are selling Marijuana for profit in violation of state law.
The attempts by anti-pot zealots to paint the dispensaries as
unpopular and the medical Marijuana law as out of control simply aren't
based in the facts, according to the new poll. "I think the take-home
message here is voters in L.A. County overwhelmingly support the
state's medical Marijuana law," MPP spokesman Bruce Mirken told the Los Angeles Times. "They think dispensaries, properly regulated, can be a part of that, and Mr. Cooley's really out of step."
The
Los Angeles City Council is on the verge of passing a law which would
ban sales of Marijuana in L.A. Dispensary operators say pot stores
technically do not sell the herb, but collect donations to recoup their
costs, in accordance with California Attorney General Jerry Brown's
published guidelines (PDF).
Dispensary owners fear the new ordinance will be used against them, and
Cooley's heavily publicized anti-pot hot-dogging has certainly done
nothing to quell their concerns.
Gallup Poll Shows West Coast Majority Backs Legalization
A separate poll, released Saturday by respected national polling firm Gallup,
finds a majority, 53 percent, of Americans on the West Coast favor
legalization of Marijuana. Support falls to 44 percent nationally, but is at a
record level and has grown throughout the past decade, according to
Gallup.
The poll numbers could bode well for
Marijuana legalization advocates in California, where the issue could
be on the 2010 ballot.
According to the
polling service, which has been posing the Marijuana legalization
question to likely voters since 1970, national support for legalization is on a roll. Last time Gallup asked the question, in 2005,
only 36 percent of Americans nationwide said they backed legalization.
Gallup's results echo and underline those of separate national polls conducted this year by Zogby, ABC News, CBS News, Rasmussen Reports, and the California Field Poll -- all of which reported record support for Marijuana legalization.
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