Watsonville growing site raided; 3 arrested

 Marijuana News
Mar 312012
 

WATSONVILLE — Sheriff’s deputies seized 1,600 pot plants, high-powered rifles and nearly $40,000 cash from an indoor marijuana grow in Watsonville that one sergeant called the biggest he had ever seen in the county. Officers executed a search warrant at a warehouse at 627 Walker St. early Wednesday, and served search warrants at homes in Salinas, Seaside and Aptos, deputy April Skalland said. At the warehouse, which was being rented, police discovered an illegal commercial marijuana growing and sales operation, Jessica M. Pasko reports for the Monterey County Herald.. In addition to hundreds of plants [...]

L.A. dispensaries get backing from labor union

 Marijuana News
Mar 272012
 

With the fate of the city’s medical marijuana industry in question, workers at more than a dozen Los Angeles pot shops have formed a labor union in part to help ward off a proposed citywide ban on dispensaries. The employees joined the ranks of grocery workers, healthcare providers and pharmacists at the United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 770. At a news conference Thursday, the president of the union vowed to leverage the “full force” of its 35,000 members to keep dispensaries open. The City Council is weighing a ban that would forbid businesses to [...]

Deep Green festival set April 21 in Richmond

 Events, Marijuana News
Mar 162012
 

Title: Deep Green 2012Date: 2012-04-21Location: Craneway Pavilion, RichmondLink out: Click hereDescription: Earthdance presents the 2nd annual Deep Green Festival, a high-energy and intensely fun Earth Day Celebration of Cannabis, Health and Ecology on Saturday, April 21! The festival runs from noon to midnight featuring live music, DJ grooves and visual delights from THE LUMINARIES, INDUBIOUS, JILLIAN ANN, HUMAN, and DOGON LIGHTS, with DJs SEÑOR OZ, Feral, Kush, Chlorophil and more! Plus, an outstanding line-up of industry experts such as DEBBY GOLDSBERRY, ED ROSENTHAL, DALE GIERINGER, STEVE & ANDREW DeANGELO, SWAMI BEYONDANANDA, SHERRY GLASER, NGAIO BEALUM [...]

Cannabis coalition drops 2012 ballot measure

 Marijuana News
Mar 082012
 

Medical marijuana advocates are dropping efforts to qualify a November ballot initiative to regulate California’s dispensary industry and instead plan a media campaign to lobby the Legislature to tackle the issue. Cannabis industry groups including dispensaries, medical marijuana growers and a powerful union drafted the proposed measure in the face of an ongoing federal crackdown on California’s $1.5 billion medicinal pot trade. But a top campaign director said today initiative planners instead have decided to run television and radio ads to urge lawmakers and Gov. Jerry Brown to enact rules governing how medical marijuana outlets [...]

Feds take over murder case against Humboldt grower

 Marijuana News
Mar 022012
 

A 29-year-old Eureka man has been indicted by a federal grand jury on murder and drug charges stemming from a 2010 shooting at a Kneeland marijuana farm and now potentially faces the death penalty in the case. The U.S. Attorney’s Office announced the indictment Thursday, five months after a Humboldt County Superior Court judge ruled there was sufficient evidence to hold Mikal Xylon Wilde to stand trial on charges that he murdered Mario Roberto Juarez-Madrid at the scene of a Kneeland marijuana grow. While Wilde faced a potential sentence of 25 years to life in [...]

Fed prosecutor warns Fresno farmers on pot grows

 Marijuana News
Mar 022012
 

Federal officials warned owners of Valley farmland Thursday that if they lease land to someone growing marijuana, they could lose their property or face jail time. Sacramento-based U.S. Attorney Benjamin Wagner came to the Fresno County Farm Bureau to detail his office’s stepped-up prosecution of large-scale pot farms. He met with about 65 people representing Valley sheriff’s offices, federal drug agents and the agriculture community, Robert Rodriguez reports in the Fresno Bee. “We want to send a message to land owners that they have to know what is going on on their property,” said Wagner, [...]

Wagner defends California dispensary crackdown

 Marijuana News
Mar 012012
 

As the top federal prosecutor in Sacramento was announcing a new focus on huge pot farms in the Central Valley on Tuesday, a U.S. district judge delivered a separate blow to efforts to thwart crackdowns on medical marijuana. U.S. District Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr. dismissed one of five suits that had been filed in federal courts last fall in a bid to win legal support for medical marijuana use in California and other states. Burrell’s order came in a suit filed in federal court in Sacramento last November on behalf of the El Camino [...]

AP report: Fed MMJ offensive produces mixed results

 Marijuana News
Feb 262012
 

Residents of Mendocino County, the redwood and marijuana-rich territory in California’s fabled Emerald Triangle, thought they had reached detente in the decades-old clash between pot growers and local law enforcement two years ago when the sheriff agreed to stop raiding medical cannabis producers who paid to have their crops inspected. For a $1,500 fee and adherence to rules over water usage, odor control and distance from neighbors, marijuana farmers working for groups of patients could grow up to 99 plants on five acres of land. Numbered red zip ties had be affixed to each plant, [...]

Former Stanislaus deputy faces pot-growing charge

 Marijuana News
Feb 252012
 

A judge Friday scheduled a trial to start Sept. 25 for a former Stanislaus County sheriff’s detective accused of four felony charges, including embezzling from the Sheriff’s Department and cultivating marijuana. Defendant Kari Abbey initially was charged with second-degree murder and voluntary manslaughter in connection with the off-duty shooting death of Rita Elias, 31, who brandished a BB gun during a confrontation with Abbey in September 2010. At the end of Abbey’s preliminary hearing in December, Superior Court Judge Ricardo Córdova dismissed the murder and manslaughter charges, Rosalio Ahumada reports in the Modesto Bee. The [...]

Feds charge Fresno men with interstate pot sales

 Marijuana News
Feb 112012
 

A federal grand jury has indicted half a dozen Fresno men in an alleged medical marijuana scheme that saw weed shipped to at least eight other states. The U.S. Attorney General, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and IRS made the announcement Friday, the Fresno Bee reports. The indictment is against Fresno men Joseph Edwin Gable, Elgeron Graves, Vincent Graves, Herman Graves, Damone Kelly and Catatea James. Kevin Eugene Spencer of Roseville also was indicted. The men are charged with money laundering and trafficking. (DEA press release.) Gable allegedly was in charge of a long-term interstate marijuana-trafficking [...]

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