Doctors, patients, and industry are bashing the organizers of HempCon, which took place August 6-8 in San Jose, for running a de facto medical marijuana prescription mill out of the trade show. Eyewitnesses noted long lines of young adults without medical records quickly processed by seven or eight doctors for $40 per person. “I would consider one doctor a prescription mill. This was seven or eight. My best way to describe it was a price war,” said attendee Bob Katzman, who runs the International Cannabis & Hemp Expo. HempCon organizers Mega Productions — noted for [...]
Aug 272010
Aug 082010
There was one thing you couldn’t do at the HempCon Medical Marijuana Show in San Jose on Saturday: smoke marijuana. But you could step across the street away from the convention center’s South Hall, nestle back in the shade and light up — as dozens of devotees did. The event was one of those modern-day meetings of the minds where medical marijuana users, cannabis growers, paraphernalia peddlers and even insurance companies that specialize in coverage for the marijuana industry rubbed shoulders to help promote medical marijuana — and it was all legal. Young people mingled [...]
With new medical marijuana regulations on the table in San Jose, I took a few minutes at the Medical Cannabis Cup to speak with Toma Pirslin, the 40-year-old president of Holistic Remedies Co-op Inc. Beyond running one of the more colorful booths on the Prop. 215 patio, HRC is also part of a coalition of San Jose dispensaries attempting to work with city officials. Apologies in advance for the rough sound quality and raw footage … blame it on the high winds and operator error. Or the errant winds and high operator. Same result, either [...]
Medical marijuana advocates in California’s high-tech Silicon Valley are furious over what they interpret as a demand for a “barter” system for transactions at pot dispensaries in San Jose. The city, which is brimming with nearly 70 pot shops, is considering a proposal to cap the number of dispensaries at 10 and ask local voters to approve a 3 percent tax on pot businesses per $1,000 in gross receipts. But an organization representing numerous dispensaries is particularly irked by language in a city staff memorandum suggesting that no cash sales are allowed at pot shops, [...]
A judge has granted the city’s request for a temporary injunction to close Buddy’s Cannabis Patient Collective on Bayshore Parkway, which must now close by 5 p.m. July 7. “It is a very sad day for the sick and ill in Mountain View,” said Matt Lucero, a former corporate attorney who opened the medical marijuana dispensary in April, the Mountain View Voice reports. San Jose Mercury News coverage The injunction is temporary as the city is also seeking a permanent injunction through more lengthy court proceedings. Lucero has said he is willing to take the [...]
Harborside Health Center, one of San Jose’s largest cannabis collectives, will host a blood drive for the American Red Cross on Tuesday. It’s almost certainly the first time that a local medical marijuana dispensary has sponsored such a bloodletting, the San Jose Mercury News reports, but after Harborside officials laid claim to being the first Red Cross pot spot in the agency’s 129-year history, some confusion set in. A Red Cross spokeswoman said there was no way to verify that. Then a Harborside spokeswoman said the Red Cross had approved the news release in which [...]
At San Jose’s first pass at crafting an ordinance regulating medical marijuana dispensaries, ideas were shot down and applauded in an emotionally charged meeting Monday night at City Hall. There were the parents and teachers worried about the proximity of the dispensaries to schools and the patients and operators who dismissed the city’s proposals as too prohibitive, the San Jose Mercury News reports. In the initial draft ordinance city officials proposed limiting the number of collectives in San Jose to 10, selected by lottery — an idea jeered by some. “It’s laughable. A lottery is [...]
Their businesses stand no more than a hundred feet apart, at opposite ends of a small commercial strip. Neatly dressed, with her blond hair just so, Sue Campbell has run the Alphabet Soup Preschool for 29 years. At Purple People Medical, a medical marijuana dispensary two doors down from the school, Andrew Runner welcomes patients wearing baggy jeans and spectacular tats. Recently, as Runner, 28, emerged from the back room of the cannabis co-op, his eyes were slightly bleary and bloodshot. As Campbell talked about the arrival of her new neighbor a month ago, her [...]
In the waiting room of 824 The Alameda, the freshly cut flowers and black leather chairs could pass for a doctor’s office or an upscale spa — if it weren’t for the whiff of marijuana from the back room. There, ounces of marijuana buds are sold from petri dishes carefully labeled with names like Afgooy, White Rhino and Big Purple. A joint is $5 to $8, Stephen Baxter reports in the San Jose Mercury News, and an eighth of an ounce of weed is around $60, compared to $50 on the street. The drug store’s [...]
One speaker introduced his mom. Another thanked his wife and kids. And at the closing ceremony of the Psychedelic Science conference in San Jose, the crowd of 1,000 stood up and applauded in appreciation of each other. The “tune in, turn on” bacchanalian generation has matured into a gentler “take care, take notes” cadre of therapists, nurses, social workers and spiritual explorers, the San Jose Mercury News reports. The sold-out conference, the largest gathering on psychedelic science in four decades, was a forum to exchange news about small, preliminary and still inconclusive studies to treat [...]
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