"Driven to the back alleys"

December 02, 2010 | Don Duncan

LA County Supervisor Don Knabe and his colleagues on the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission just overturned a ban on raves at the LA Coliseum. The Commission enacted a ban this summer after a 15-year old girl died of a drug overdose at a dance party with over 185,000 attendees. The LA Times reported Supervisor Knabe’s rationale for lifting the ban:

"There's a way to do it right where we protect the public and allow this opportunity to take place," said Supervisor Don Knabe, who serves on the commission and said he preferred regulating raves at the publicly owned venue rather than see them "driven to the back alleys."

Supervisor Knabe’s logic is sound, but his actions are inconsistent. Just nine days earlier, the Supervisor voted to ban medical cannabis patients’ collectives in the unincorporated communities of the county. He and his colleagues adopted the ban despite overwhelming opposition from community members, who asked instead for tighter regulations (the same kind the Commission will impose on raves). The advocates’ rationale was the same as the Supervisor’s. A ban just pushes medical cannabis back into the shadows, and that is bad for legal patients and their communities. So what is going on? Massive dance parties, where dangerous drug use is commonplace, are better regulated than banned. But legal medical cannabis patients’ collectives are too dangerous to regulate? That does not make sense. Research conducted by ASA and our experience over the last fourteen years tell us that sensible regulations for collectives reduce crime and complaints. In fact, collectives can make a neighborhood safer. Oakland City Administrator Barbara Killey says the neighborhoods around her city’s regulated collectives are “some of the safest areas of Oakland now… since the ordinance passed." So why should legal collectives be “driven to the back alleys,” as Supervisor Knabe says? They should not. If Supervisors are worried about public safety, they can do what the Commission did – improve regulations. If they are worried about the small number of non-permitted collectives now operating in the county’s jurisdiction, they can take appropriate enforcement action. An outright ban, however, does nothing to protect public safety of stop non-permitted facilities. It only prevents legal patients’ collectives from obeying the law. The City of Los Angeles is slowing winnowing the number of collectives inside city limits, and many other cities in the county have bans or protracted moratoria on new collectives. There has never been a better time for the county to issue permits for qualified and well-vetted applicants pursuant to the sensible regulations adopted in 2006. Unfortunately, the decision to ban collectives raises doubt about whether or not legal patients and unincorporated communities will ever realize the proven benefits of regulations. That is a shame. At the end of the day, it will be legal patients who are “driven back to the alleys,” and that is not what LA County voters want. Los Angeles County patients and advocates will protest in front of the Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday, December 7, when the Supervisors will vote on final approval of the ban.