La Center became the last city in Clark County to definitively ban recreational marijuana businesses this week.
The La Center City Council voted 4-0 Wednesday night to permanently prohibit growing, processing and sales of recreational marijuana in city limits. Councilor Joe Valenzuela was absent from the meeting.
La Center’s new ordinance, which also bans collective gardens for medical marijuana, takes effect at the end of February. The vote brings to a close a lengthy series of moratoriums throughout the county as one city after another has come to a final decision on whether to open or close the door on the new industry.
At the end of the process, Vancouver and Battle Ground have emerged as the only two Clark County cities where marijuana can be sold. So far, three pot shops have opened between the two cities: New Vansterdam and Main Street Marijuana in Vancouver and the Cannabis Country Store in Battle Ground.
Last spring, the county also imposed its own marijuana ban on unincorporated areas.
In August, Washougal outlawed the cultivation and distribution of the drug on both the recreational and medical sides. The ordinance comes with a sunset date of Sept. 1, 2016. If that date comes and goes without another vote, the ban will stay in place.
Camas took a similar route in October, prohibiting recreational pot businesses. The ordinance was written with a sunset clause for the pot shop ban in November of this year. But if thge issue is not revisited by then, pot shops will remain off the table in Camas.
Also in October, Ridgefield outlawed recreational pot businesses and collective gardens. That month, Battle Ground also ended a long-running series of moratoriums on collective gardens with the councilors voting unanimously to allow them indoors in certain commercial zones.
Last month, Woodland took a different approach, voting 5-1 to allow growing and processing businesses in the city’s light and heavy industrial zones west of the railroad tracks. The law left in place the ban on pot shops.
Earlier this month, the Woodland City Council adopted a new ban on collective gardens. The measure serves as a placeholder while the Planning Commission works out the details of what will become a permanent ban later this year, Mayor Grover Laseke said.
