City Council bans recreational marijuana businesses in Hermosa Beach

Hermosa Beach City Hall. File photo

The Hermosa Beach City Council voted 5-0 to impose the strictest possible regulations on recreational cannabis businesses Tuesday night, prohibiting dispensaries, growing operations, and delivery services from operating within city boundaries.

The decision follows California voters’ approval of Proposition 64 last November, which legalized the adult use of marijuana in the state. The state legislature passed a bill earlier this year empowering cities to regulate local aspects of the marijuana trade.

Possession of less than an ounce of marijuana is already legal, and state officials have said that dispensaries will be able to make sales for recreational use starting Jan. 1. City Attorney Michael Jenkins described the state’s date as “optimistic,” but said that the council needed to act before then if the city wanted to prevent local businesses from receiving state permits.

The council voted last year to ban all medical marijuana businesses, with the exception of delivery services, from operating in the city. That ban remains in place.

And while recreational delivery services will technically be banned in the city, Jenkins said that the bans are difficult to enforce. Marijuana delivery services do not use marked cars, and officers would essentially have to catch a driver in the middle of a transaction.

“It’s very difficult to enforce a ban on delivery service. You could ban it, but as a practical matter, I don’t think you’ll be able to enforce it,” he said.

The council found firm support for banning dispensaries from the Hermosa Police Department. Chief Sharon Papa said she previously dealt with a number of violent crimes related to dispensaries, including armed robberies while serving with the police department in Los Angeles, which has long hosted dispensaries.

Because marijuana remains a controlled substance under federal law, many marijuana businesses do not have access to banking and credit services and are forced to rely largely on cash. This makes them targets for criminals, Papa said.

“I would never recommend, as your police chief, bringing that into your community,” she said.

Cities across California are making decisions like the one Hermosa council’s did Tuesday. State law gave cities wide latitude to regulate cannabis. The only things cities cannot do, Jenkins said, are prevent people from using it in their homes, growing six or fewer plants, or stop delivery services from passing through the town’s boundaries on the way to other cities.

The state plans to apply an excise tax to cannabis, and many individual cities and counties plan to do the same. Some fiscally strapped municipalities in California’s interior are considering allowing large commercial grow operations as a means of bolstering the tax base.

Jenkins, who serves as city attorney in other cities, including Malibu and West Hollywood, said that many cities are taking the “wait and see approach.”

In Hermosa, even if the city had decided to permit cannabis businesses, other state laws would have greatly limited their number. Existing regulations would prevent them from operating within 600 feet of a school, day care or youth center. A staff report estimating the radius of these locations blocked out much of Hermosa’s 1.3 square-mile area.

According to the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder, Hermosans voted overwhelmingly in support of Prop. 64, with 7,495 votes in favor to 3,068 votes against. Mayor Justin Massey said that the council’s unanimous actions were nonetheless consistent with the will of the voters.

“Even if we don’t participate in the commercial trade, I’m confident that our residents won’t have trouble obtaining it from neighboring or nearby cities,” Massey said.

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