Medical marijuana bill passes first Assembly test

 Marijuana News
Apr 182012
 

An Assembly committee Tuesday passed a bill to create state oversight for pot businesses, as its chairman implored the Legislature to act to stave off federal raids on medical marijuana providers. “The worst public policy choice for California is to sit idly by, doing nothing, and let this failed war on medical cannabis continue unchecked,” said San Francisco Democrat Tom Ammiano as his Public Safety Committee voted 4-2 along party lines to create a state bureau to police the California medical cannabis industry. Despite clearing his committee, Ammiano’s Assembly Bill 2312 faces long odds of [...]

Del Norte sheriff raids Crescent City collective

 Dispensaries
Apr 182012
 

A search?warrant served at a residential house led to a raid on a medical marijuana collective in Crescent City on Thursday. Authorities say other collectives in the county are under investigation, Anthony Skeen reports in the Del Norte Triplicate. The Del Norte Sheriff’s Felony Investigations Unit seized more than 30 pounds of processed marijuana, 140 plants, $12,000 in cash, menu boards, scales, packaging, pre-rolled joints and plastic containers known as “doob tubes” from a house at 1220 Childs Ave. and City Collective, located on U.S. Highway 101 just north of the city limits, said sheriff’s [...]

S.F. dispensaries closing under federal pressure

 Marijuana News
Apr 152012
 

Directly across the street from tiny Sgt. John Macaulay Park, with its swings and wooden climbing train, is a strip club flashing signs for “Live Nude Shows.” People walking three blocks and around the corner will pass a massage parlor, a porn theater, four liquor stores and a tobacco and head shop before reaching the place federal prosecutors shut down as a threat to the children’s playground. The Divinity Tree marijuana dispensary’s operators – Raymond Gamley, 59, and Charlie Pappas, 64 – closed shop in the gritty Tenderloin district Nov. 15 rather than risk the [...]

Chronicle editorial: Stop the federal pot raids

 Opinion
Apr 062012
 

A months-long crackdown on medical marijuana by federal prosecutors has reached new heights with this week’s raids on Oakland dispensaries. It’s time to call off the overboard tactics and deal sensibly with regulating a drug that increasing numbers of Americans feel poses little harm, the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board writes. The latest incident only furthers the tone-deaf image of the U.S. Department of Justice, whose agents stormed well-known medical pot dispensaries in Oakland, the de facto center of efforts to expand marijuana cultivation and use. Since last fall, federal officials have sent warning letters [...]

Times editorial: State must clarify medical marijuana laws

 Opinion
Apr 062012
 

Richard Lee has been one of the state’s most visible activists for liberalized marijuana laws, having spent $1.5 million of his own money supporting an ill-fated ballot initiative in 2010 to decriminalize recreational use. But Lee is also an entrepreneur in the legally cloudy arena of medical marijuana, and on Monday the Internal Revenue Service and the Drug Enforcement Administration raided his home and his hemp-related ventures, including Oaksterdam University, a trade school focused on the marijuana industry. The feds haven’t disclosed what they were looking for, other than to say the raids grew out [...]

Humboldt dispensaries close as DOJ serves warrants

 Marijuana News
Apr 062012
 

A California Department of Justice’s investigation into a Myrtletown medical marijuana dispensary Thursday caused some panic among dispensary patients throughout the area as agents collected evidence and detained at least one person. According to the Humboldt County District Attorney’s Office, DA investigators were assisting the state DOJ in serving search warrants at The Humboldt County Collective, better known as THC, located in the Myrtletown Shopping Center. DA Investigator Billy Honsal said at the scene Thursday afternoon that no arrests had been made, Donna Tam reports in the Eureka Times-Standard. The DA’s office said further information [...]

Prop. 19 backer Lee to exit dispensary business

 Advocates
Apr 062012
 

Richard Lee, whose bid to legalize marijuana in California brought him international attention, plans to give up ownership of his Oakland-based marijuana businesses after a federal raid this week seized many of their assets, including plants, bank accounts, records and computers. “I’ve been doing this for a long time. Over 20 years…. I kind of feel like I’ve done my time,” Lee said Thursday. “It’s time for others to take over.” Lee said he would remain an outspoken marijuana advocate, John Hoeffel reports in the Los Angeles Times. “I believe that cannabis prohibition is unjust [...]

Prop. 19 backer Lee, Oaksterdam hit by federal raids

 Marijuana News
Apr 032012
 

OAKLAND – Multiple federal agencies unleashed raids Monday on the home and businesses of one of California’s most famous marijuana advocates, Richard Lee, founder of the renowned cannabis industry trade school known as Oaksterdam University. Lee, who spent $1.6 million to bankroll Proposition 19, an unsuccessful 2010 measure to legalize marijuana for recreational use, was neither arrested nor charged, Peter Hecht reports in the Sacramento Bee. But federal authorities from the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Marshals Service swooped in early Monday, targeting five locations, including the school on this [...]

Times report: Master growers boosting MMJ quality

 Cultivation
Apr 012012
 

Behind the bolted steel doors of an old brick warehouse, Big Wes meets a nutrient company scientist to see if he can increase his crop yield. Rows of hydroponic marijuana plants soak up solution flowing through plastic troughs and light blazing from high-pressure sodium lamps. Big Wes has spent more than half his life calibrating his system of growing high-grade marijuana to its utmost efficiency, Joe Mozingo reports in the Los Angeles Times. At 50 years old, he harvests a crop of dozens of plants every week from five rented warehouses scattered along the rutted [...]

San Diego dispensary initiative cloned in 5 cities

 Dispensaries
Mar 312012
 

Amid a massive federal crackdown, medical marijuana dispensaries announced plans Friday to expand their efforts beyond the city of San Diego, proposing ballot initiatives in five local municipalities to regulate storefront operators and generate additional revenue through a sales tax. The proposals — filed with Encinitas, Del Mar, Solana Beach, Lemon Grove and La Mesa — would limit storefront dispensaries to commercial and industrial areas and levy a 2.5 percent tax on retail transactions. They also would allow cities to recover their expenses, establish security measures and hours of operation and require licensing by existing [...]

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