Bud’s note: This just landed in my inbox from Steph Sherer, executive director of Americans for Safe Access.
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ASA has hired a half-time community liaison to serve the Sacramento area. After an extensive hiring process, Courtney Sheats officially starts her job on May 15. She will be focused on helping to pass a sane city/county ordinance, increasing services to patients, and helping to build a stronger grassroots patient base.
Courtney’s grassroots activism started in 1989, after the Loma Prieta earthquake moved her to transport supplies and [...]
The November ballot initiative to tax and regulate cannabis for personal use received more than $200,000 in campaign contributions between Jan. 1 and March 31, according to newly published electronic campaign finance records.
All groups opposed to the measure — like the Committee Against the Legalization of Marijuana — failed to electronically file their contributions by the April 15 deadline, indicating that they did not raise at least $50,000, the minimum contribution amount that triggers mandatory e-filing. This may be good news for reformers, David Downs writes in “Legalization Nation.”
Tax Cannabis 2010 raised $212,647.88 from [...]
For the Chico City Council, the issue of medical marijuana is definitely one of balance.
With speakers raising issues of public safety and safe access to medicine Tuesday night, the prominent theme throughout the council’s meeting was finding a perfect equilibrium for Chico when it comes to medical marijuana residential grows and dispensing collectives.
And at least on some level, Councilor Jim Walker said the draft ordinance the council voted 6-1 to forward to the Planning Commission achieves that proportion.
“It sounds like both sides are equally unhappy,” Walker said, jovially.
With all humor aside, the ordinance is certainly [...]
RED BLUFF — It will cost medicinal marijuana growers $40 to register their gardens with the county, after the Tehama County Board of Supervisors approved the fee Tuesday.
Registration with the county Health Services Agency is among requirements mandated by a controversial new ordinance that regulates cultivation of medical cannabis in unincorporated areas. That law goes into effect Thursday, the Redding Record-Searchlight reports.
Valerie Lucero, executive director of the health agency, said Tuesday’s vote was 4-1, with Supervisor Charlie Willard dissenting. Willard has opposed the ordinance, arguing that it puts too much acreage off-limits to growers and [...]
An Ontario man arrested in what Riverside County sheriff’s officials described as the largest marijuana seizure in county history has been sentenced to 5 ½ years in federal prison, authorities said.
Angel Guillen Raya, 51, pleaded guilty in January to transporting about 14 tons of marijuana with the intent to distribute it, federal court records show. He was sentenced Monday in federal court in Riverside. His prison term will be followed by five years of supervised release, said Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office.
Guillen Raya was pulled over Aug. 26 on Interstate 15 south [...]
Tulare County sheriff’s deputies last week raided a medical-marijuana stand near Caldwell Avenue and Highway 99, removing 96 mature plants, the stand’s operators said.
The marijuana would have helped at least 25 patients, said Ernie Garcia, 31, a registered medical-marijuana user and caretaker of the marijuana plants.
The stand’s operators do not charge patients for the marijuana, said Mike Simmons, 32, of Exeter, a medical-marijuana user for nine years.
A Tulare County ordinance prohibits the operation of medical-marijuana dispensaries in unincorporated areas, the Visalia Times-Delta reports.
Six dispensaries — in Ivanhoe, Earlimart, Tipton, Exeter and Porterville — were shut [...]
LONG BEACH – At the One Evol – that’s “love” spelled backwards – Beach Club, manager Matthew Abrams said the medical marijuana collective is pretty much ready to comply with Long Beach’s new marijuana law, which went into effect Saturday.
A video security system is in place, much of the marijuana the collective provides is grown on site, and the shop at 2767 E. Broadway is on a business corridor that is among the few locations in Long Beach where collectives are allowed.
“I feel like we’ve met everything I’ve read in the ordinance so far, except [...]
SANTA ANA – A federal judge has rejected a request by four Orange County medical marijuana patients for a temporary injunction preventing Lake Forest and Costa Mesa from shutting down marijuana dispensaries in their cities.
The four patients – Marla James, Wayne Washington, James Armatrout and Charles Daniel – argued through their attorney Matthew Pappas that the Americans with Disabilities Act gave disabled people a federally protected right to use medical marijuana if such use is legal under state law and done with appropriate supervision.
The four were asking the court to temporarily prevent the cities from [...]
Willits resident Ron Orenstein offers his perspective on legalization in a guest column in the Ukiah Daily Journal.
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This November, California voters will vote on a ballot measure that is designed to legalize marijuana. But “legalization” is not being emphasized because of all the baggage and implications that it carries. Instead, the measure is comfortably couched in the politically correct idea of fiscal responsibility for state and local governments; a way for them to balance their budgets. With the out of “control deficits,” and no clear solution to avoid cutting more services or firing even more [...]
One of the most compelling cases pitting California’s medical marijuana law vs. federal authority to prosecute medicinal pot unfolded in the coastal town of Morro Bay.
There, Charles Lynch opened a marijuana dispensary called Central Coast Compassionate Caregivers in early 2006. The mayor, City Council members and officials from the local chamber of commerce came out for the ribbon-cutting.
But in 2007, at the behest of the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Department, federal drug agents raided the dispensary. Lynch was arrested on five felony counts, including conspiracy to distribute marijuana and providing marijuana to a person [...]
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