Starbucks : Mayor's proposal to reduce medical pot buffer zones doesn't please all

Nov. 23—Alex Cooley was a pioneer in legitimizing the pot industry in Seattle. But after seeing Mayor Ed Murray’s plan for licensing more pot merchants, Cooley wonders why he bothered.

The mayor’s proposal would not allow Cooley, the first medical-marijuana grower to come out of the shadows and gain all appropriate city building permits, to continue farming at his Sodo location because it is too close to a child-care center.

“Why did I work voluntarily with the city to go through the front door,” Cooley said at a City Hall meeting last…