By Bud Green
CalPotNews.com
A funny thing happened on the way to Tuesday’s vote to ban new medical marijuana dispensaries in Fresno County: Existing dispensaries supported the moratorium and pleaded for new regulations.
They got their initial wish when county supervisors voted to pass a 45-day ordinance banning new pot shops, which likely will be extended in August. Whether new regulations will result is less clear, according to Fresno attorney Brenda Linder.
“I represent four collectives who self-regulate because the city and the county would not get on board as far as initiating regulations,” Linder told supervisors.
“The moratorium [...]
STOCKTON — Police searched a Weston Ranch home Monday morning, seizing hundreds of marijuana plants and arresting a 25-year-old man suspected of cultivating the crop, the Stockton Record reports.
Special Investigations Lt. Eric Ingersoll said the search could have turned fatal. When police knocked on the front door of the home in the 1800 block of Bess Place, Ingersoll said, 25-year-old Michael Gomez tried to sneak out the back door. There was a group of SWAT officers waiting in the backyard.
“He turned to face them, and he had a gun in his hand,” Ingersoll said.
But Officer [...]
The federal Drug Enforcement Administration has flouted Mendocino County’s newly enacted medical marijuana ordinance by raiding the first collective that had applied to the sheriff’s cultivation permit program, the Emerald Triangle News Service reports.
A multi-agency federal task force descended on the property of Joy Greenfield, the first Mendo patient to pay the $1,050 application fee under the ordinance, which allows collectives to grow up to 99 plants provided they comply with certain regulations.
Greenfield had applied in the name of her collective, “Light The Way,” which opened in San Diego earlier this year. Her property had [...]
A proposal to allow medical marijuana cooperatives in the city of Ventura went up in smoke Monday night.
The Ventura City Council rejected the idea and instead extended an existing moratorium on such establishments, pending the outcome of a November ballot initiative to legalize marijuana in California.
The vote was 5-2, with Deputy Mayor Mike Tracy and Councilman Jim Monahan opposing. They wanted a permanent ban on marijuana cooperatives.
The council, along with the city attorney and city manager, said approving medical marijuana cooperatives would open the floodgates for illegal resale of the drug, increase crime and become [...]
A medical marijuana dispensary owner who crossed swords with Mountain View city officials when he opened his clinic despite a moratorium said Monday he plans to run for city council, the San Jose Mercury News reports.
Matt Lucero, co-founder of the recently shuttered Buddy’s Cannabis Patient Collective, said he plans to lease his Campbell home to his daughter and move to Mountain View in time to draw and submit papers for the upcoming election.
Three council seats are up for grabs this year, with the four-year terms of Margaret Abe-Koga, Ronit Bryant and Jac Siegel expiring in [...]
Medical marijuana dispensaries have proliferated in unincorporated areas around Fresno since the city started cracking down on them last year.
Now Fresno County is considering closing dispensaries as well, the Fresno Bee reports, using the same legal tool Fresno and other local governments have employed — zoning laws.
The Board of Supervisors plans to discuss an ordinance today that would force dispensaries to temporarily close while county officials draft regulations for the operations.
If the law is approved, county officials would then have to seek court orders to close the dispensaries.
Sheriff Margaret Mims, who is proposing the ban, [...]
Mendocino and Humboldt counties, California’s two most renowned pot-cultivation regions, are among the top counties in per capita arrests for marijuana.
And despite a softening of social attitudes towards marijuana, California law enforcement officials arrested 78,514 people statewide for pot offenses in 2008, Peter Hecht writes in “Weed Wars.”
Those are some of the conclusions that can be reached from an analysis of 2008 arrest data from the California Department of Justice — and statewide interactive mapping by Philip Reese of The Sacramento Bee.
In 2008, the last full year for which figures are available, neighboring Mendocino and [...]
Ventura’s experiment in possibly allowing medical marijuana cooperatives in the city could be over before it starts.
The City Council, to the delight of medical pot patients, agreed last fall to study the issue, hold public meetings and look at crafting potential land-use language allowing medical marijuana cooperatives and collectives in certain areas, the Ventura County Star reports.
Nonprofit collectives and cooperatives typically are operated by medical marijuana users and focused on patient care, in contrast to for-profit retail dispensaries that are illegal.
The council tonight will revisit the controversial topic along with an option from the city’s [...]
I wouldn’t call it a junket, but one of the most fun assignments you can get as a rookie reporter is to tromp along with police on an outdoor marijuana bust.
Fly in on a helicopter. Check out the full arsenal of a SWAT unit. Call in a front-page story from the field.
In all the action, it’s hard to stop and say, “What good came from this raid, from this expense of your tax dollars?”
There’s no real dent in access to marijuana, and officers almost never catch the drug dealers who set up the grow. It’s [...]
SAN DIEGO — Federal agents on Friday arrested 12 people in San Diego and Los Angeles and charged them with participating in a massive marijuana distribution ring that sold the drug via a medical marijuana storefront. The ring also is accused of growing dozens of plants in a hidden room in a Rancho Santa Fe mansion.
Federal agents served seven search warrants as part of the investigation, including five in San Diego. Two other warrants were served in Los Angeles.
At the center of the probe is Joshua John Hester, which federal court records unsealed Friday [...]
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