Marijuana Shops In Your Neighborhood

Well Los Angeles, if you have taken a look around lately you will be sure to find a marijuana shop somewhere nearby. Of course, there are a lot of supporters of these and the overall legalization of marijuana. But I'm not writing this to get into a debate about whether that is good or bad, but rather to bring this issue closer to home. Literally. As in, are these shops in your neighborhood and if so, does that effect your home's value? Well, these shops that are opening up around town in the large numbers happen to be a pretty recent thing so it's hard to say if and how they will effect your neighborhood.  But in my neighborhood, there are already three or more marijuana shops within one block of where I live. This past Sunday my neighborhood had our annual neighborhood watch meeting where the topic of discussion was said to be about some recent car break-ins. Well, that topic was covered then dropped pretty quickly when the topic of marijuana shops came up. There seemed to be an overall concern for the amount of stores that have opened up in on our streets. Most people would agree that if you have the choice between liquor stores or marijuana shops, that the shops would be less troublesome, right? I mean, we don't usually think of the people smoking pot as shifty as someone who has over abused alcohol.  But does that mean that we still are settling for the lesser of two evils?  Some of the things mentioned in our meeting were things like the cars that now come and park in front of our houses to smoke. The littering of the green medical bottles that the marijuana is sold in.  The all-night hours of these places that attract customers to our neighborhood during late hours. And there were also people who mentioned that kids would just sit out on the curb in front of houses and smoke. And while all of this may not be legal, it may also be on the bottom of the priority list for a police officer to respond to with all the other issues they are over loaded with already.  And when people are out looking to buy homes, are these stores a deterrent? Do people view them in the same manor that strip clubs or liquor stores are seen?  And if they are, then how does it look to have 3 of them within one block of each other? I think it may be too early to see the full effect these will have on the desirability of a particular neighborhood.  But this will be an issue that will come up in the near future on our ballets for a vote.