A federal grand jury in Sacramento indicted 10 people in four separate cases of marijuana growth operations on public land, according to a Thursday news release by United States Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner’s office. Authorities said the defendants operated large marijuana grows in three different counties. In all, agents found more than 36,000 plants being cultivated by the defendants, Chelsea Phua reports in Sacto 9-1-1. More than 3,000 marijuana plants, each about 5 feet tall, were found on Bureau of Land Management lands south of Cache Creek in Yolo County in early August. Agents raided [...]
Montebello state Senator Ron Calderon is proposing a comprehensive “Cannabis Licensing Act” to regulate and tax multiple sectors of the medical marijuana industry, including pot stores, “growers, wholesalers, retailers, and transporters of cannabis.” California medical marijuana dispensaries currently produce up to $1.3 billion in transactions and up to $105 million in state sales taxes, according to estimates earlier this year by the state Board of Equalization. Calderon’s chief of staff, Rocky Rushing, said the senator introduced Senate Bill 1131 because he believes there are insufficient structures in place to ensure California collects taxes due on [...]
After long tumultuous debate, with virtually no one happy with plans to regulate medical marijuana dispensaries, Sacramento’s 39 registered pot shops seemingly got new life in a remarkable kumbaya moment. The Sacramento City Council voted Tuesday night to pursue the most liberal of three options for permitting and governing dispensaries. It junked a plan to set a citywide cap of 12 cannabis clubs, Peter Hecht writes in “Weed Wars.” And it bypassed an alternative to permit a higher concentration in Midtown — with another nine outlets scattered outside the urban district. In the end, all [...]
Jul 272010
Sacramento police and fire officials are investigating today the discovery of a marijuana-growing operation inside a fire-damaged north Sacramento warehouse, the Sacramento Bee reports. Firefighters were called to the warehouse by a report of the strong odor of something burning in the vicinity of warehouses near Del Paso Boulevard and Railroad Drive at 5:13 a.m. When crews arrived eight minutes later to 1900 Railroad Drive they reported heavy black smoke billowing from metal roll-up doors on the concrete-sided warehouse. A second alarm was sounded as crews cut open doors to get at the fire. Using [...]
Jul 202010
Bud’s note: Is it me, or do the views of a former crack cocaine user ring hollow when discussing marijuana laws? Yet here he is in the New York Times, getting top billing over former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Joycelyn Elders, whose endorsement of marijuana legalization carries more weight. Or should. ======================= SACRAMENTO — Ron Allen says he knows all too well the ravages of drug addiction. “I was a pastor on crack cocaine, sir,” said Mr. Allen, who says he has been sober for 11 years and now identifies himself as the bishop of [...]
The Sacramento City Council voted Tuesday night to place a marijuana tax on the November ballot. Under the measure, the Sacramento Bee reports, medical marijuana dispensaries would pay a 2 percent local business tax, on top of sales taxes they already pay. That new tax — in the form of a new category in the city’s Business Operations Tax (BOT) — would generate between $300,000 and $500,000 a year for the city’s battered general fund, which pays for cops, firefighters and parks. The ballot measure also would tax other marijuana businesses 5 percent, should a [...]
Jul 082010
Nearly three decades ago, Thomas Coy, a teenager diagnosed with AIDS, figured he was looking at a death sentence. Over the ensuing years, he braved homelessness, despair and at least four occasions when severe illness had him thinking he was soon to gasp his last breath. But for the past five years, Coy, 45, has been working as a paid employee and an AIDS/HIV counselor for the Capitol Wellness Center, a marijuana dispensary with two locations in Sacramento, Peter Hecht writes in the Sac Bee’s “Weed Wars” blog. Five years ago, Coy also told the [...]
Sacramento resident Ngaio Bealum says he loves to cut up on stage about “weed and sex.” But this stand-up comic-activist-journalist-entrepreneur says he also aims to change “the stoner paradigm.” “It’s not about sitting around and doing nothing,” says the editor and publisher of West Coast Cannabis, a monthly pot lifestyles publication that bills itself as the Sunset magazine of weed. “My thing is I like to smoke a joint and go do something.” And so Bealum, 42, a San Francisco native born in 1968 to Black Panther Party members, plays a multifaceted role in the [...]
While making some very sweeping and, for the most part, completely unsubstantiated statements about the drug war, Tuesday’s column by former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson (“Legalize pot to cut crime, fill coffers”) completely ignores the actual issue California voters will be facing this November. This marijuana initiative is like many others, financed by people who financially benefit if it passes. Yet it differs in that it’s one of the most poorly drafted measures to ever reach the ballot. With each passing week, yet another presumably unintended consequence of the legal gobbledygook the proponents filed [...]
The co-founder of one of Sacramento’s original medical marijuana dispensaries isn’t high on the notion of legalizing marijuana for recreational use in California. With her husband, Bryan Davies, Lanette Davies founded the Canna Care dispensary, a medical cannabis outlet with a Christian theme. Davies now heads an advocacy group for medical marijuana patients called Crusaders for Patients’ Rights, Peter Hecht writes for the Sacramento Bee. Under the group’s name, she is writing voter pamphlets, urging “no” votes on the November initiative to legalize marijuana beyond medical use and allow local governments to tax and regulate [...]
Recent Comments