9/20/10 - The much anticipated medical marijuana dispensary lottery was held Monday afternoon in council chambers at city hall. When the machine intented to draw the balls would not function properly a recycle bin and hand drawing system was used. L-R Scott Gardiner with the city auditors office and City Clerk Larry Herrera performed the honors. Photo by Brittany Murray / Press Telegram Perhaps you’re having a tough time getting a grasp on the state of medical marijuana in the City of Long Beach.

Here’s the very latest: the agenda for tonight’s City Council meeting includes a scheduled vote on a proposal that would ban medical marijuana dispensaries within the city.

Yes, that ban would pretty much bring the issue back where it was five years ago, before the City set off—with either good intentions or bad intentions, but clearly a short attention span—in pursuit of a policy that would regulate the collectives.

Of course, the agendas of two previous council meeting have also promised a vote on the proposal to ban medpot outlets. Both have been postponed. In fact, the council’s procrastination on this vote epitomizes the so-called process it has applied to its long, costly, confusing—and possibly corrupt—handling of the medical marijuana issue.

Long Beach government has been revealed to be composed of a city council that acts on individual impulses, a City Attorney with his own agenda, a city staff that botched the lottery that awarded permits to investors by buying the wrong sized ping-pong balls for the pneumatic machine and a hovering cadre of well-connected insiders.

So, to repeat, perhaps you’re having a tough time getting a grasp on the state of medical marijuana in the City of Long Beach.

GreaterLongBeach.com has compiled an hour-long online course that will bring you up to speed on the facts and test a couple of opinions, too. It’s called last week’s episode of Greater Long Beach Radio with Dave Wielenga, a k a “Four Guys Talking About Pot.”

During the hour-long program, which either doesn’t feel that long or feels way longer—depending on what we’ll call your “position” on medical marijuana—three journalists who are experts on the issue explain it all to one journalist who knows next nothing about it … but loves to describe the unpredictable course Long Beach has taken toward a  policy as a “zig-zag.”

The three smart guys are Nick Schou, fresh from his masterful OC Weekly cover story on the issue; Greggory Moore, the GreaterLongBeach.com theatre critic, who has followed the issue as an advocate, a journalist and a debate opponent for former City Prosecutor Tom Reeves; and Theo Douglas, formerly of the Press-Telegram, OC Weekly, The District Weekly and now an occasional contributor to GreaterLongBeach.com.

The fourth guy—the one who still laughs every time he hears the zig-zag pun—is GreaterLongBeach.com publisher Dave Wielenga, the host of Greater Long Beach Radio.

To listen to that episode of Greater Long Beach Radio with Dave Wielenga, click on this link.

Listen as many times as you like, but please—don’t Bogart that show, my friend