Reggae music rolled like a cloud across a large room filled with blond wood, and behind the bar at the Arc Healing Center, Hector Gonzalez watched as Chris Braun, 23, entered wearing a green velvet top hat, green sunglasses and a clutch of fake emerald necklaces. It was nearly noon Wednesday, a few hours before [...]

“Karen,” who is “a typical stoner,” just made full professor. She uses marijuana for insomnia.
And she is featured in an advertising campaign by the Medi-Cann cannabis physician clinics, Sacramento Bee reporter Peter Hecht writes in his “Weed Wars” blog.
The medical pot network, which includes clinics in Sacramento, Elk Grove and North Highlands, advertises itself with [...]

Seeking to overturn the city’s medical marijuana ordinance even before it takes effect, a loose-knit coalition of Los Angeles collectives is quietly gathering signatures to force a referendum on the law.
The scrappy, largely volunteer effort faces a Monday deadline to turn in 27,425 valid signatures, reports John Hoeffel of the Los Angeles Times.
Update:
Times: Petition [...]

Filling in the last blank in the city’s medical marijuana ordinance, Los Angeles officials Friday recommended a number of fees dispensaries would have to pay to operate. Although the City Council passed the law in January, it cannot take effect until the council approves the fees.
In addition to standard charges for inspections and research, officials [...]

Over the passionate objections of a neighboring church congregation, the Cotati City Council said Wednesday that a medical marijuana dispensary can open on the city’s west side.
(Where the hell is Cotati? Click here for map.)
The Mercy Medical Dispensary Collective will be the first such business in Cotati, where last year a dispensary’s application was rejected [...]

At the Canna Care medical marijuana dispensary in Sacramento, the incoming product must get past Don Davies and his microscope.
Davies, 23, who is closing in on a degree in biochemistry from UC Santa Cruz, inspects the weed Canna Care purchases from its patient growers, Sacramento Bee reporter Peter Hecht writes in his informative “Weed Wars” [...]

No medical marijuana dispensaries will be allowed in Mountain View, at least not until April 18 of next year.
At their meeting Tuesday night, Mountain View City Council members voted to ban pot clubs for now, but they made it clear they intend to eventually allow them after city officials develop some restrictions.
“There is an interest [...]

The Santa Rosa Press-Democrat urges tighter regulation of medipot in this editorial, but its proposed solutions are every bit as vague as the law itself. Strangely absent is any mention of legalization, perhaps the most useful tool available to cure what ails the medipot industry. Guess I’ll have to write my own editorial…
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Anecdotal evidence of [...]

LOS ANGELES – Three decades ago, Bruce Perlowin was smuggling hundreds of thousands of pounds of Colombian marijuana to California in fishing boats passing beneath the Golden Gate Bridge. His childhood friend, David Tobias, was trafficking dope across turquoise Caribbean waters to Florida and Georgia, the Sacramento Bee’s Peter Hecht writes here.
On Saturday, at a [...]

The San Francisco Chronicle offers this in-depth article about the Bay Area debut of “Cannabis Planet” following the TV show’s July launch in Los Angeles. Writer Trey Bundy adds some interesting political background to the story.
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Anyone who doubts the mainstreaming of the cannabis industry might want to skip “Letterman” and check out “Cannabis Planet.” The [...]