California’s next cannabis battle may be coming to a city near you

Working regular overnight shifts has distorted Samantha Kadera’s sleep schedule, so the emergency room doctor smokes cannabis a few times a week to relax before bed.

It’s a common habit among the young parents that Kadera knows in Manhattan Beach, the upscale Los Angeles suburb where she moved last year to raise her two elementary school-aged children in a more family-friendly environment.

But there are no dispensaries in the city; officials banned them five years ago after voters legalized recreational cannabis in California, concerned about attracting criminal activity and advertising aimed at minors. So Kadera stops at a store on her way to and from the Westside L.A. hospital where she works.

Changes loom if Manhattan Beach residents approve an initiative this fall to allow as many as two licensed cannabis businesses. It has triggered an increasingly acrimonious battle between a local entrepreneur eager to gain a foothold in a fresh market and city leaders determined to protect what they see as the character of their community.

“They do like to keep us in a bubble,” Kadera, 40, said one evening as she strolled with her dog along the Strand, a beachside path lined with multimillion-dollar homes. “But the reality is, there’s widespread use, so it would be nice to have it around here.”

Rapidly shifting attitudes — and a nascent legal industry still struggling to stabilize itself — have thrust cannabis back onto ballots across the state, six years after voters approved Proposition 64 to authorize Californians who are at least 21 years old to buy, grow and use it for recreational purposes. Read more >>>