Pubdate: Thu, 13 Aug 2015
Source: Sacramento News & Review (CA)
Copyright: 2015 Chico Community Publishing, Inc.
Contact:  http://newsreview.com/sacto/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/540
Author: Ngaio Bealum

NEW LAWS PUT UNNECESSARY LEASHES ON CANNABIS

What's up with the California Legislature and comprehensive statewide 
medical-cannabis regulation? Anything happening?

- -Jim Quisitive

Nothing on the Assembly Bill 266 front (I think the Legislature is on 
summer recess, so debate should resume when they get back), but Gov. 
Jerry Brown has just signed two new bills and I am not a fan of 
either. Senate Bill 212, introduced by Senator Tony Mendoza, adds 
"proximity to schools and residences" as an "aggravating factor" 
during sentencing for people found guilty of manufacturing BHO or 
hash oil. You do realize that it is already illegal to make cannabis 
concentrates using chemicals (butane, CO2, propane, whatever) in the 
state of California, yes? It's part of the law against making meth.

Anyway, if you are caught, you get three, five or seven years in jail 
plus a fine of up to $50,000, depending on the aggravating factors. 
So all you folks making butane hash in the backyard of your apartment 
complex need to cut that shit out immediately. In an interesting 
twist, this same law uses 200 feet as the limit for adding an 
aggravating factor to a meth-manufacturing conviction, so as long as 
you are caught making BHO and not meth, some of you may catch a 
break. This part of the bill doesn't bother me at all because I think 
people who make hash using chemical solvents should do so in an 
industrial area using the proper safety equipment.

I do have a quibble with Section E of this bill, however-"Except as 
otherwise provided by law, every person who offers to perform an act 
which is punishable under subdivision (a) shall be punished by 
imprisonment pursuant to subdivision (h) of Section 1170 of the Penal 
Code for three, four, or five years." If I am reading it right (see 
the whole thing for yourself on this photostatic copy: 
http://tinyurl.com/sb212), offering to make hash oil is now 
punishable by three to five years in jail. You can go to jail just 
for offering?

What if you had no intention of making hash oil but said you would 
just to be polite?

This is a bad law.

SB 165, introduced by Senator Bill Monning, imposes a whole new set 
of fines for people growing cannabis on public and private lands.

You can now be fined for growing medical cannabis on private property 
even if you have the landlord's permission. This is ridiculous. I get 
wanting to discourage people from having gigantic 40,000-plant grows, 
but this law won't do anything but cause headaches and backlogs when 
everyone goes to court to fight their gigantic fines.

The same thing is already happening in Fresno 
(www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article23926342.html), and there's no 
need for this sort of overreach to go statewide.

It's a shame that California, once the leader in cannabis-law reform, 
can't get it together enough to have effective and proper cannabis 
regulation. I hope we do better in 2016.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom