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Los Angeles citizens voted for the legalization of marijuana on a commercial level last November to be started in 2018. As the first major municipality and the largest marketplace for commercially legal marijuana, L.A will become the blueprint for municipalities facing the oncoming wave of weed business as prohibition ends. 

It's not like they can grow it all over the Hollywood Hills. All growers will be required to grow indoors and are confined to industrial neighborhoods. Residential areas are off limits to both grower and dispensaries. In addition, dispensaries will have to be 800 feet from any schools and libraries. As if any stoner wouldn't walk 800 feet to smoke a joint.

There is also a system established for handing out (and paying for) thousands of licenses from growing to distribution and sale. 

Other factors are also in play. To prevent the type of unfair (and racist) distribution of dispensaries like what often goes on with the distribution of liquor licenses and the placement of liquor stores, the proposed rules will make sure that there is no concentration of pot shops in only a handful of certain communities. 

"No one neighborhood should bear the brunt of the cannabis business," City Council member Nury Martinez said. 

It was feared that some neighborhoods would see a boom in pot shops over the next year and then experience a rise in crime around these locations. Since the banking industry is largely closed to the marijuana industry, due to the fact that it is still illegal at the federal level, the entire industry deals mostly in cash. This leads to the opportunities for crime to occur near dispensaries. 

Of course, that is the looming question hanging over the entire industry; What will Trump and the Federal government do about intervening with local and state laws? Marijuana is still illegal at the federal level. 

Los Angeles is by far the largest marketplace for commercially legal marijuana. It's rules and regulations will forge the way for many more cities to come. That is, unless the Federal Government crashes the party.