Closing Pot Clubs Increases Crime Rate – RAND Study Finds

Last Updated on Wednesday, 19 October 2011 06:58 Written by The Union of Medical Marijuana Patients Sunday, 25 September 2011 02:39

A new study released Tuesday showed that when hundreds of medical marijuana dispensaries were closed last year in Los Angeles crime rates rose in surrounding neighborhoods, challenging claims made by law enforcement agencies that the storefronts are magnets for crime.

The report by the nonprofit RAND Corp. reviewed crime reports for the 10 days prior to and the 10 days after city officials shuttered the clinics last summer after a new ordinance went into effect. The analysis revealed that crime increased about 60 percent within three blocks of a closed dispensary compared to the same parameters for those that remained open.

“If medical marijuana dispensaries are causing crime, then there should be a drop in crime when they close,” said Mireille Jacobson, a RAND senior economist and the study’s lead author. “Individual dispensaries may attract crime or create a neighborhood nuisance, but we found no evidence that medical marijuana dispensaries in general cause crime to rise.”

James Shaw Discusses Union Suit on KABC

Last Updated on Wednesday, 9 November 2011 02:32 Written by The Union of Medical Marijuana Patients Saturday, 10 September 2011 02:21

VIA: KABC

City of L.A. Failed to Do Environmental Impact Report for Its Medical Marijuana Ordinance

Last Updated on Wednesday, 19 October 2011 07:07 Written by The Union of Medical Marijuana Patients Thursday, 8 September 2011 11:20

James Shaw, director of the Union of Medical Marijuana Patients (UMMP), announced that today his organization filed a legal challenge in Superior Court to the City of Los Angeles ordinance regulating medical marijuana patient associations, based on the failure of the City to do an environmental impact report (EIR).

“The City Attorney pushed an ordinance through the City Council in January 2010 that was so full of contradictions and legally questionable rules that a judge placed a hold on its implementation, and it has since then had to be frequently amended in an effort to survive 57 lawsuits, which should be decided by the end of this month,” Shaw noted. “No one, however, has recognized that the ordinance cannot be implemented at all until an EIR is prepared, as required by the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, on the impact of reducing the number of medical cannabis locations from 400 to 100 and then forcing most of the 100 to move.”