S.F. supervisors pass resolution against fed crackdown

 Government
Oct 262011
 

In light of a recent federal crackdown on medical marijuana, seven San Francisco supervisors urged the feds to reverse course. “I believe it’s important for us … to be very clear that we support the right of patients to have access to medicine,” said Supervisor David Campos, chief sponsor of the nonbinding resolution. His co-sponsors are Supervisors Eric Mar, John Avalos, David Chiu, Ross Mirkarimi, Jane Kim and Scott Wiener. It’s not the first time the supervisors have weighed in, Rachel Gordon reports in the San Francisco Chronicle. In 2001, the Board of Supervisors declared [...]

Cannabis advocates set sights on 2012 ballot measure

 Initiatives
Oct 262011
 

Medical marijuana advocates, decrying a federal government crackdown on dispensaries and a failure of state lawmakers to act, said Tuesday that they are drafting a 2012 ballot initiative to impose statewide oversight of California’s burgeoning medicinal cannabis trade. The ballot push, announced at a San Francisco news conference, is being readied by groups that include the architects of 2010′s unsuccessful Proposition 19, which would have legalized marijuana for recreational use, Peter Hecht reports in the Sacramento Bee. Dale Sky Jones, chancellor of Oakland’s Oaksterdam University, the cannabis trade school that became the nerve center for [...]

S.F. Chronicle: Where is Harris on medical marijuana?

 Opinion
Oct 232011
 

As the Obama administration escalates its threats to crack down on California’s medical marijuana dispensaries, two voices have been conspicuously silent: state Attorney General Kamala Harris and Gov. Jerry Brown, her predecessor. Is she going to vigorously defend the dispensaries if the feds attempt to shut them down?, this San Francisco Chronicle editorial asks. Does she agree with the U.S. attorneys that some of them are not only in violation of federal law but also are criminal enterprises that break even the state’s lax guidelines – and, if so, why hasn’t the state’s top prosecutor [...]

S.F. Chronic-le: Fed memo clouds cannabis enforcement

 Opinion
Jul 092011
 

The local, state and federal laws regulating medical marijuana in California grew even hazier with the Obama administration’s recent memo that threatened to prosecute anyone in the business of growing or supplying pot to patients. The memo represented a significant departure from its sensible October 2009 guidelines that essentially assured dispensaries and patients that the federal government was not interested in going after operations that complied with state law. Now the clinics are put in the untenable position of wondering whether the next knock on the door might be from federal agents, the San Francisco [...]

S.F. police tardy in releasing cannabis crime stats

 Law Enforcement
Jun 122011
 

Running a city is not easy. We get it. It’d be foolish to expect a place as complex and sometimes-provincial as San Francisco to always-smoothly operate, yet occasionally there’s a municipal breakdown that defies easy explanation. And, it’s quite possible, city law. Take the Marijuana Offenses Oversight Committee, Chris Roberts writes in The Snitch blog for S.F. Weekly. A legitimate City Hall-sanctioned body, MOOC was formed by the Board of Supervisors and is under the jurisdiction of the General Services Agency (Mayor Ed Lee’s old stomping-grounds, if you’ll recall). It has a few key tasks, [...]

Appeals court upholds job ban for positive drug test

 Courts
Mar 032011
 

SAN FRANCISCO — An employer can refuse to hire someone who has ever tested positive for marijuana or other drugs, even if the applicant is now clean and sober, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday. In a 2-1 decision, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said the “one-strike” rule of the Pacific Maritime Association, which controls hiring in the West Coast longshore industry, doesn’t discriminate against rehabilitated addicts in violation of disability laws. The rule “imposes a harsh penalty on applicants who test positive,” and may seem unreasonable because many drug [...]

San Francisco men busted at Merced County grow site

 Marijuana News
Jan 062011
 

DELHI — Narcotics agents found 550 marijuana plants and arrested two men hiding in secret compartments underneath a double-wide trailer home that was hollowed out for the sole purpose of growing marijuana indoors, Merced County sheriff’s officials said. Deputies on Tuesday arrested Shao Fan, 28, and Peng Chan, 31, both of San Francisco, said sheriff’s spokesman deputy Tom MacKenzie. He said agents found the indoor marijuana garden at the home in the 14000 block of Second Avenue South, east of Highway 99. Investigators initially responded to a report of possible utility theft at the home, [...]

S.F. Weekly’s Snitch blog recaps the year in pot

 Cultivation, Marijuana News, Media
Dec 132010
 

How was your 2010? For the cannabis community, it was a wild flip of the calendar, with dispensaries opening and closing, police raiding, a medical cannabis luminary thrown in jail for meth charges — and we vaguely remember something about a legalization ballot measure. There’s still time yet before 2011 — who knows what the next few weeks will bring?. In any event, here’s your recap of the Year in Pot (to date), courtesy of Chris Roberts at S.F. Weekly’s Snitch blog. Regulated Edibles Means Hidden Cookies The year opened with ambitious rule changes from [...]

Green Aid gears up for Festivus 2010 benefit

 Advocates, Events, Marijuana Law
Nov 272010
 

Title: Festivus 2010: A Green Aid benefitLocation: SomArts San Francisco, 934 Brannon St., San FranciscoLink out: Click hereDescription: Join San Francisco’s legendary Sister Barbi and Sister Porn Again of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and Ed Rosenthal’s Green Aid: The Medical Marijuana Legal Defense and Education Fund to celebrate Festivus: The Holiday for the Rest of Us. Festivus is different than your average holiday party, dessert is always served first, the guests are colorful and the Sisters won’t be the only men wearing dresses… All proceeds fund Green Aid: The Medical Marijuana Legal Defense and [...]

Cannabis industry awaits Cooley-Harris results

 Advocates, Marijuana Law, Marijuana News, Medical marijuana
Nov 182010
 

As Steve Cooley and Kamala Harris sweat out the ballot counting to determine California’s next attorney general, perhaps no one is more anxious than advocates for medical marijuana shops. Within the state medical marijuana industry, Cooley, the Los Angeles County district attorney, is widely perceived as pot persona non grata. It isn’t just Cooley’s aggressive prosecutions of alleged abuses in Los Angeles dispensaries that stir medical marijuana activists. There are also his persistent declarations that he considers medical pot dispensaries to be illegal retail sales outlets, Peter Hecht reports in the Sacramento Bee. Harris, San [...]

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