A hearing on the controversial application of a businessman to open a medical marijuana dispensary in an unincorporated area of Arcadia will be held at 6:30 p.m. Monday, Sept. 13 in Duarte’s Pamela Park, 2236 Goodall Ave. (at East Pamela Road, a few blocks south of Duarte Road and a few blocks east of S. Myrtle and S. California Avenues).
Applicants for medical marijuana dispensary at Arcadia Car Wash on Live Oak, Leon San Blas (l) and Robert Doolittle; photo courtesy of Pasadena Star-News correspondent James Carbone
The L.A. County’s Regional Planning Commission will hear a staff report/recommendation, consider all public testimony, and decide whether or not to approve the application for a Conditional Use Permit, according to Tony Bell, assistant chief deputy to Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich. The application was filed by two Monrovians, developer Leon San Blas, 52, and his partner Robert Doolittle, 60, to operate a MMD at the self-serve Arcadia Carwash, propane outlet and former diesel gas station owned by San Blas at 4332 E. Live Oak Avenue at Lynd Avenue (east of S. Mayflower Ave). San Blas, is paralyzed from the waist down due to a construction accident and says he wants to open the clinic for others like himself who need marijuana for medicinal purposes.
The matter was controversial enough on its own, coming on the heels of the enforcement of a new Los Angeles city ordinance restricting dispensaries from being near schools and parks, which effectively forced about 400 clinics to shut down. That pushed MMD owners to seek opportunities to relocate outside the city limits of L.A. and other cities that ban MMDs such as Arcadia, but still within the boundaries of L.A. County. Since the San Blas application was filed there have been several acts of extreme violence at MMDS in L.A., including two employees at two different marijuana dispensaries who were gunned down during robberies, which prompted Antonovich to immediately propose an ordinance that would also ban MMDs from unincorporated areas of L.A. County.
The L.A. County Board of Supervisors last month directed county staff to prepare an ordinance banning pot dispensaries. The ordinance would first need to be considered by the Regional Planning Commission and then by the Board of Supervisors, a process that would probably take at least three or four months.
MMDs have become even more of a hot button issue with an initiative on the November ballot proposing to legalize marijuana state-wide.
The combination of the two issues relating to marijuana and the intensifying rhetoric on both sides of each issue is expected to lead to a heated hearing on Sept. 13, with the blood pressure of attendees even higher than it was at a Monrovia-Arcadia-Duarte (MAD) Town Council meeting June 15 where about 100 angry people living and working around the Arcadia Carwash turned out to voice strong vocal concerns and objections to the MMD application, according to the Pasadena Star-News and the Arcadia Weekly.
Ironically, if approved, the San Blas clinic would not be subject to the County ban now in the works since his application was filed last December, months before the ordinance would go into effect, and would therefore be grandfathered in.
— By Scott Hettrick