420 goes legit in Oakland: ‘We are not just a bunch of stoners’

 Advocates, Business, Legalization, Medical marijuana
Apr 202010
 

OAKLAND — Forget Hippie Hill. For thoroughly modern marijuana smokers in the San Francisco Bay area, the hip place to celebrate their movement’s high holiday this year was the inside of a stretch Hummer parked outside a pot gardening superstore where entrepreneurs mingled with investors and a city councilman. Marijuana legalization advocates across the country are expected to light up during Tuesday’s annual observance of 4/20, the celebration-cum-mass civil disobedience derived from “420″ — insider shorthand for cannabis consumption. IGrow, a 3-month-old cultivation equipment emporium, got a 24-hour jump start on the festivities by sponsoring [...]

Commentary: Medical cannabis helps patients, energizes communities

 Advocates, Business, Dispensaries, Law Enforcement, Medical marijuana, Opinion
Apr 202010
 

Tehama County resident Jason Browne offers this guest commentary about medical marijuana laws in the Red Bluff Daily News. =========== It’s time we address our own solutions regarding medical cannabis laws and how to implement them, locally. But we need to be mindful of current state and federal positions as we proceed. Even so, we have a great opportunity this year to create equitable guidelines that will benefit our community in a number of ways. The most recent decision by California’s Supreme Court (People v. Kelley) has helped a little, in that qualified individuals can [...]

No bull: Thousands toke up legally at International Cannabis and Hemp Expo

 Advocates, Business, Legalization, Medical marijuana
Apr 192010
 
No bull: Thousands toke up legally at International Cannabis and Hemp Expo

DALY CITY — People have been toking up in the Cow Palace parking lot for more than 50 years. This was the first time it was legal, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. The International Cannabis and Hemp Expo, the first trade show in the United States to allow on-site pot smoking, attracted an estimated 15,000 enthusiasts to Daly City over the weekend. They talked bud, sold products ranging from a $500 water bong to a $19,500 mobile grow house, and discussed how efforts to legalize marijuana would impact their livelihoods. “We’re exercising our rights as [...]

Drug agents find huge underground growing room in Trinity County

 Cultivation, Law Enforcement
Apr 162010
 

Narcotics agents on Wednesday uncovered a massive and elaborate underground marijuana cultivation operation in Hayfork. Jack Nelson, a special agent supervisor for the state Department of Justice office in Redding, said agents found 2,200 plants growing in 8,000 square feet of secret rooms built underground. A 4,000-square-foot house was being built above ground, over the marijuana operation. The underground rooms were vented by pipes routed through the house and out the roof, Nelson said. Carbon filters scrubbed the air to mask the marijuana smell coming from underground, he said. The operation was a rare find, [...]

Blogger: Marijuana could help sustain agriculture in an increasingly thirsty state

 Cultivation, Legalization, Opinion
Apr 022010
 

I glommed the link to this well-written article by Sam Kornell off a comment from an otherwise forgettable Huffington Post post. Cannabis as an agricultural commodity is a topic that doesn’t get much attention, but the author argues successfully that it should. ====================== The three-hour Northern California drive from San Francisco to Nevada County passes through some of the cream of the state’s agriculture industry: dairy, alfalfa, rice, almonds, grapes. On both sides of the freeway stretch enormous crop rows, interrupted only by the state capital of Sacramento and a number of small towns. Last [...]

Canna-businesses expand their reach beyond grow shops, dispensaries

 Business, Cultivation, Dispensaries, Medical marijuana
Apr 012010
 

Not everybody breaking into the marijuana industry wants to grow plants or run a dispensary. In fact, Ryan Van Lenning writes as part of a six-part Oakland Local series on canna-business, entrepreneurs of all stripes are launching new efforts to cash in on the budding popularity of the cannabis business. Head shops may be the most common endeavor that comes to mind in this arena. Retailers who sell pipes, bongs and other paraphernalia have always been a mainstay of marijuana culture. Yet, as it turns out, that is much too narrow a lens through which [...]

Sacramento pot doc nears trial on drug charges in Mississippi

 Advocates, Courts, Medical marijuana, Video
Mar 192010
 

One of last times Dr. David Allen was seen in Sacramento, he had a packed waiting room of patients. They were paying $150 each to see the former Mississippi heart surgeon for medical marijuana recommendations, Peter Hecht reports in his “Weed Wars” blog. To anyone listening, Allen extolled the virtues of a “miracle drug” he said he started using at 17. He also told a reporter he was currently treating himself with pot for decades of accumulated stress as an cardiothoracic surgeon – and for more recent anxiety over his million dollar Mississippi ranch getting [...]

San Jose ‘not at war’ with dispensaries despite crackdown, officials say

 Business, Dispensaries, Government, Medical marijuana
Mar 182010
 

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 the gutters of San Jose would fill with green beer recycled by St. Patrick’s Day celebrants at the city’s 1,300 purveyors of alcohol. But as he bellied up to the bar at the West Julian Street medical marijuana cooperative, Braun [...]

L.A. dispensary employee robbed of cash, cannabis in Thousand Oaks

 Crime, Dispensaries, Law Enforcement, Medical marijuana
Mar 112010
 

An employee of a Los Angeles cannabis club was robbed of a backpack containing some cash and a jar of marijuana Wednesday night as he returned to his home in Thousand Oaks, according to Ventura County authorities. The robbery was reported about 8:45 p.m. in the area of Sunset Drive and Los Robles Road in Thousand Oaks, the Ventura County Star reports. The cannabis club employee was walking to his home from his car after returning from work when an unknown man approached him, hit him in the shoulder with a baseball bat, took his [...]

Redding police: Most dispensaries in compliance with new medipot rules

 Business, Dispensaries, Government, Law Enforcement, Medical marijuana
Mar 042010
 

Nearly all medical cannabis clubs operating in Redding comply with the city’s new regulations, according to officials. Police Chief Peter Hansen has inspected all but one of the city’s 20 clubs, the Redding Record-Searchlight reports. The inspections are the first step in a permitting process intended to weed out profit-driven marijuana dealers from legitimate nonprofit collectives. “From my perspective, the inspections have been going very well,” Hansen said Wednesday. “The operators have been very open about the process and receptive to suggestions.” Hansen conducted the inspections over the past two weeks with Debra Wright, the [...]

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