Redding dispensaries face Dec. 1 closure deadline

 Dispensaries
Nov 172011
 

Staring straight down a Dec. 1 deadline to close his business, Jess Brewer was in full “scramble mode” Wednesday. Along with the other cannabis collective operators in Redding, Brewer was wondering what was going to happen to his business, Trusted Friends, and the patients who rely on it. “I’m freaked out. I’m going to lose my house,” Brewer said. “They put us out of business before Christmas, oh ho-ho!” The Redding City Council voted Tuesday night to pass an urgency ordinance that requires marijuana collectives serving more than 10 patients to close by Dec. 1. [...]

Record-Searchlight: Don’t shut down Redding dispensaries

 Opinion
Nov 162011
 

Even if the city of Redding orders its many medical-marijuana “co-ops” to close their doors by the end of the month, and they comply, does anyone think fewer users will be buying marijuana under the protections of Proposition 215? That’s the question asked in this insightful Redding Record Searchlight editorial. Whether you sympathize with patients suffering severe health problems who find cannabis eases their pain or think that pot smokers are just scamming the system to avoid criminal prosecution, it’s hard to see the business going away. Not so long as state law grants near-total [...]

Redding City Council votes to ban medical marijuana clubs

 Dispensaries
Nov 162011
 

Staring down a room full of angry medical marijuana advocates and shrugging lawsuit threats, the Redding City Council voted unanimously Tuesday evening to ban cannabis collectives by Dec. 1. Redding is perhaps the first city in California to impose such a ban following a state appellate court decision in October striking down a medical marijuana permitting system in Long Beach. Sacramento has temporarily frozen new medical marijuana permits but not moved against existing collectives, Scott Mobley reports in the Record Searchlight. The discussion was often heated between medical marijuana supporters saying collectives give patients safe [...]

Cannabis contributions to Redding’s economy unknown

 Marijuana News
Oct 162011
 

To hear medical marijuana advocates and insiders tell it, businesses associated with the north state’s medical marijuana trade have gotten a boost — or are outright booming — in the middle of the Great Recession. They worry the crackdown that federal authorities started this month on medical marijuana growers and sellers might bring further economic woes to an area already suffering from double-digit unemployment rates, flat sales taxes and a rash of vacant retail buildings. The problem is no one — from city and state officials to economists and business experts — really knows just [...]

Editorial: Gun ban for medical cannabis patients absurd

 Opinion
Oct 032011
 

We don’t know when the clash between federal laws barring any marijuana use or sale and the increasingly permissive state and local polices allowing “medicinal” use of the drug will reach its absurd climax. But it’s getting closer with the recent open letter to gun dealers from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives clarifying that, Proposition 215 protections notwithstanding, marijuana users are not allowed to buy or even possess a firearm under federal law. It’s not that ATF is wrong, the Redding Record Searchlight opines in this editorial. Marijuana remains a “Schedule [...]

ATF letter: Medical cannabis patients can’t buy guns, ammo

 Marijuana Law
Sep 292011
 

Federal firearms regulators are telling gun shops it’s illegal for someone who uses marijuana to possess or buy guns or ammunition, regardless of whether states have passed laws allowing patients to use the drug for medicinal purposes. In an open letter to all federal firearms licensees posted last week, Arthur Herbert, the assistant director of enforcement programs and services for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said his office has received “a number of inquiries” about whether medical marijuana patients can own or buy guns and ammunition in medical marijuana states, Ryan Sabalow [...]

City issues citations against Redding medical cannabis grower

 Cultivation
Sep 092011
 

James Benno has a healthy crop of marijuana plants growing in his south Redding backyard. He has 36 plants, ranging from 9 to 14 feet tall and covering 960 square feet of his yard. They are enclosed within a 6-foot-tall chain-link fence that is topped with three strands of barbed wire. Benno said he plans to begin harvesting the plants sometime next month. But the city of Redding has given him until next Friday to reduce the size of the plants and his garden, Damon Arthur reports in the Record Searchlight. City of Redding officials [...]

Man shot in dispute at Shasta County marijuana garden

 Crime
Aug 312011
 

A 46-year-old man accused of shooting another man Sunday night in the Montgomery Creek area during an apparent dispute over a marijuana grow site pleaded not guilty to felony assault with a firearm during his arraignment Tuesday in Shasta County Superior Court. Terence Ross Seed, who is being represented by the Shasta County public defender’s office, is scheduled to have a preliminary hearing on Sept. 13 to determine whether he will be tried on the assault charge, Jim Schultz reports in the Record Searchlight. That felony count includes an enhancement alleging he caused seriously bodily [...]

Pot, cash taken in Redding dispensary robbery

 Dispensaries
Jul 082011
 

Redding police are looking for two men who robbed the Northern Patients Group medical marijuana collective earlier this evening. At about 6:20 p.m., officers arrived at the collective on the 11000 block of Rhyolite Drive and spoke with Hannelore Lewis, 31, and Andrew Lewis, 28, both of Millville, who reported they had just been robbed, Redding police Sgt. Mike Thomas said. Police said two men entered the building, one of them brandished a handgun and ordered the employees to put cash into a backpack and marijuana into a duffel bag, Sean Longoria reports in the [...]

Editorial: Redding dispensaries on shaky legal ground

 Dispensaries
Jul 062011
 

Career lawmen and pot smokers don’t normally pal around, but Redding Police Chief Peter Hansen has a surprisingly positive attitude toward the city’s medical-marijuana collectives. Nearly 20 co-ops operate under a city regulatory scheme that he oversees. And the chief publicly says they’re mainly good businesses whose owners are trying to comply with the law. And yet outlaws they remain, the Record-Searchlight observes in this editorial. A new U.S. Justice Department memo sent out last week was a stark reminder that, despite the industry’s veneer of normality and even respectability — city licenses, full-color advertisements, [...]

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