Peter Hecht

There was this sort of line that there were more dispensaries than Starbucks, and that was true. But it was way more than that.

There was no place on the planet that matched Los Angeles in the intensity of retail sales of pot.

That was true of medical marijuana collectives in which sick and dying people, AIDS patients, cancer patients, and more were raising their own marijuana and sharing it. It was not to authorize 800 dispensaries in the city of Los Angeles and part-time actress bud tenders and the 420 nurses and sexualization. The market did not wait long. for regulations, it did not wait for rules.

It went crazy at every sign of the door being cracked open further. Never mind that there's no state regulatory framework that authorizes these establishments. or that they're all illegal under federal law.

And they went after very aggressively the operators that were clearly playing both sides of the law, that were purporting to be adhering to some non-existent state law, but were also shipping product out of state into the black market.