Venice Beach T Shirts and Legal Marijuana - at least for now

Here's a bit of what we saw coming home Wednesday from the Skate Plaza. I'm just reporting and not necessarily supporting any of the sentiment on the T-shirts for sale at Venice Beach.

No, this isn't a T shirt. It's painted on the wall above the T shirt shops.

The man on the left told us this was one of the dispensaries for medical marijuana and the doctor (on the right) could see if we needed a prescription. For some reason, I was pretty confident he'd find some condition that would qualify me if I asked. That was Wednesday. Friday, the top front page story of the LA Times was headlined, "DA preparing to crack down on pot outlets."

. . . In the city of Los Angeles, some estimates put the number of dispensaries as high as 800. The city allowed 186 to remain open under its 2007 moratorium, but hundreds of others opened in violation of the ban while the city did nothing to shut them down.

In August, Cooley and Sheriff Lee Baca sent a letter to all mayors and police chiefs in the county, saying that they believed over-the-counter sales were illegal and encouraging cities to adopt permanent bans on dispensaries.

Mark Kleiman, a professor of public policy at UCLA and an expert on drug policy, was not surprised that local prosecutors had decided to attack the rapid proliferation of marijuana stores.

"I think it's a natural response to the rather flagrant marketing practices of a bunch of the dispensaries. The medical veneer has been wearing thinner and thinner," he said. "I've always wondered why those things were legal when they didn't look legal to me."

Other front page stories included the Dodgers' victory over St. Louis and the Disney Concert Hall debut of the LA Philharmonic's new superstar conductor Gustavo Dudamel. It's nice to the music story getting such high profile coverage.

I guess this was a conductor wannabe who
ended up at Venice Beach instead.