The hunt is on for California's marijuana czar (or czarina), with a whole new branch of state government waiting to be shaped by his or her hands. Medical marijuana legislation recently signed by Gov. Jerry Brown will establish a new Bureau of Medical Marijuana Regulations under the Department of Consumer Affairs. (Depending on how you feel about the long-overdue package of laws, you might refer to it as a BuMMR or the BoMM.) Heading this bureau will be a yet-to-be-named chief bureaucrat; the SF Chronicle's Joe Garofoli reports that the state is narrowing in on job qualifications. A representative of the Department of Consumer Affairs, which will hire for the position, said the job will be relatively straightforward, as state regulatory jobs go. The director will hire 40 to 50 people to staff the new bureau, write state policy and administer the new licensing scheme's rules. The post will pay up to $128,000 a year - which seems a relatively meager wage compared to other state and county salaries. [continues 352 words]
New 'Seed-To-Sale' Regulatory System Seen As a Boon, but Challenges Remain. SACRAMENTO - An unmistakable scent, rotten-sweet and earthy, greets visitors to Basil McMahon's pine- and oak-sheltered Nevada County farm. It wafts from cannabis plants growing in a murky legal terrain between acceptance and prohibition. Over the next few years that will change, as a sweeping new package of laws will reverse years of state silence by regulating and licensing every stage of the medical marijuana industry. [continues 1419 words]
Marijuana Should Not Be Easier for a Minor to Access Than Alcohol Ballot Measure Includes Strictest Child Safeguards Proposed in Pot Legislation Measure Would Help Restore Natural Resources, Prevent Unauthorized Water Diversion As the former division chief for preventive medicine at the California Department of Public Health, I know that, like alcohol, marijuana has potential health consequences for California youths. Unfortunately, our current legal approach to non-medical marijuana use is failing to protect our kids. It is unregulated yet widely available without any child protections. [continues 566 words]
As California prepares to bring in the $1 billion medical marijuana industry from the legal shadows, growers and marketers on the pot-rich North Coast are waiting to see how much the massive regulatory structure will cost them and whether to stick instead with the prosperous but risky outlaw status they have lived with for nearly two decades. The regulatory scheme, which will cost up to $50 million, must be funded entirely by license fees paid by the industry, while new taxes on the cannabis trade - which some advocates say is one of Sonoma County's major industries - offer the prospect of millions of dollars to help pay for paving roads, hiring police and other public services. [continues 1622 words]
Entrepreneurs are pitching marijuana as a cash crop that would keep college graduates in Vermont and create thousands of jobs. The Vermont Cannabis Collaborative says in a new report that if Vermont lawmakers bring "oeorder to the chaos" of the underground illegal marijuana market, business opportunities would abound. "oeThis provides a whole new industry for our young millennials coming out of college and trying to find what to do in Vermont to jump in and become the next Steve Jobs, to become the next Ben and Jerry's, to become the next Seventh Generation," Alan Newman, a founder of Seventh Generation and Magic Hat Brewing Company, said Wednesday. [continues 641 words]
Online Alerts About Pesticide-Tainted Products Are Required. Denver health officials are requiring marijuana companies that recall products tainted with unapproved pesticides to use websites and social media accounts to alert consumers. The move comes amid concerns that few customers are learning about nine recalls the city has announced affecting tens of thousands of items across dozens of product names. Just three of the companies involved told their customers directly, a Denver Post check of their social media accounts showed. The others appear to have relied only on news releases issued by the city's Department of Environmental Health. [continues 1087 words]
The Humboldt County Planning Commission has been in the throes of a series of meetings over the last few weeks to address a proposed outdoor medical marijuana cultivation ordinance. In the course of five meetings in the last two weeks, commissioners have heard hours of public comment and talked in depth with county counsel and planning staff in the commission's mission to come up with recommendations for the ordinance. County supervisors have asked for recommendations by the commission's Dec. 3 meeting with the hope that supervisors can approve rules by March 1, the deadline to have local ordinances on the books or cede the permitting process to the state. [continues 456 words]
The Governor This Week Ordered the Quarantine and Destruction of Pot Having Unapproved Pesticides. Thousands of marijuana-infused products, recently recalled in Denver over concerns they contain unapproved pesticides, will likely be destroyed in light of the governor's order to label them a public safety hazard. Gov. John Hickenlooper on Thursday issued an executive order to quarantine and destroy any marijuana or its derivative products that contain pesticides not approved for use on cannabis. It could have a profound- and expensive-impact on the billion-dollar industry. [continues 1024 words]
An Executive Order Says Such Marijuana Should Be Destroyed. Gov. John Hickenlooper on Thursday issued an executive order telling state agencies that any marijuana grown with unapproved pesticides is a threat to public safety and should be removed from commerce and destroyed. The order is Hickenlooper's first word on a months-old controversy over pesticide use to grow cannabis and a more aggressive approach than the half-dozen recalls by Denver heath officials have put on thousands of contaminated products, some of it later allowed back into commerce. [continues 602 words]
Supervisors Face Tough Decisions Regarding Commercial Medical Marijuana A package of three bills, passed by the state Legislature in September and signed by the governor last month, has the potential to change the entire landscape of medical marijuana access in California. Broadly speaking, they legalize the sale of medical cannabis, which until now has been strictly a not-for-profit enterprise (officially, at least). The three new laws-Assembly Bill 243, Assembly Bill 266 and Senate Bill 643-lay out a framework for licensing and permitting medical marijuana cultivation for sale as well as taxation. They also set forth a number of environmental regulations for operating a large-scale grow. [continues 877 words]
The Humboldt County Planning Commission embarked on its journey to review the latest proposed medical marijuana ordinance recently with a marathon meeting that saw dozens of public comments. The county is hustling to push through the ordinance, which dictates which land use zones will be allowed to host marijuana grows. Looming overhead is a March 1, 2016 deadline put into place by the package of statewide medical marijuana bills passed by Gov. Jerry Brown in October. While many of the details of how the state will regulate the marijuana industry weren't developed as of the Oct. 5 meeting, the bills allow counties to develop permitting procedures as long as they are at least as stringent as the (mostly yet-to-be-determined) state standards. The catch, the county says, is that local regulations must be in place by March 1 or "the state will be the sole licensing authority." (Assemblyman Jim Wood opposed that deadline, and his staff says removing it is a "top priority" when the Legislature reconvenes in January. [continues 1229 words]
Chico's City Council Needs to Prepare for Recreational Marijuana Numerous initiatives to legalize recreational marijuana in California are now ready for their proponents to begin gathering signatures, signaling the start of a race to make it on the 2016 general election ballot. If what's happened in Alaska, Colorado, Oregon and Washington is any indication of where the Golden State is headed, we expect to see a proliferation of pot shops opening up around the state come January 2017. The writing is on the wall, as evidenced by the trio of medical-marijuana-related bills recently signed by Gov. Brown. They call for, among other things, a framework for regulating a cash crop that has been caught up in the morass created back in the '90s with the passage of Proposition 215, the state's so-called Compassionate Use Act of 1996 (see Associate Editor Meredith J. Cooper's report on page 8). Prop. 215 was designed to give those with medical issues a legal defense for using the schedule 1 drug, but the nebulous law has been most successful at enriching the black market. [continues 449 words]
Economic circumstances often feed opioid abuse on the street, writes Jordan Westfall. In Ontario, someone dies of an opioid overdose every 14 hours. Most of them are related to prescription opioids, which are often prescribed for chronic pain. With a reported 50 per cent of chronic pain patients facing wait times of six months or more to see a qualified specialist, prescribed opioids fill a health care gap. Maybe this gap is the issue, and not the prescription that doctors are using to fill it. [continues 589 words]
Mendocino County has begun its review of the existing local 9.31 Medical Marijuana Cultivation Regulation Ordinance in light of the recent medical marijuana regulatory package signed into law in October that will now require state oversight of the entire industry. The new medical marijuana regulations take effect the first of the year, but local municipalities face a March 1, 2016 deadline to put in place regulations to preserve local control. Otherwise, the state will take jurisdiction in regulating that area. [continues 1005 words]
This week we won't start off with a particular reader's question as we usually do. In the past several weeks, we've received a few inquiries about the same topic: What recourse is there if someone's home grow smells up the neighborhood or condo building to the point it becomes a nuisance to others? There's a flip-side to that, too. What can home growers do to avoid such a hassle? Judging just from the Highly Informed inbox, the smell of flowering cannabis may be more noticeable lately, but only slightly. Maybe the recent spate of inquiries have come because Alaska Permanent Fund dividends just dropped, but maybe there are simply more brand-new or beginning home gardeners out there since legalization day. Most of the questions arose from apartment building conflicts, but someone in Anchorage even forwarded a message thread from the Rogers Park community message board in which a few neighbors were discussing what to do about a strong, skunky aroma on one particular street in the neighborhood's northern section. [continues 1345 words]
Monday's long-awaited announcement that billionaire angel investor Sean Parker is backing a marijuana legalization effort was welcome news. It was also doubly misleading. First, as of press time, Parker is not backing the Adult Use of Marijuana Act (AUMA), the legalization initiative unveiled this week by an environmental attorney and the former head of the California Medical Association. Despite headlines to the contrary in the Los Angeles Times, Sacramento Bee, and elsewhere, Parker isn't putting money behind AUMA - at least not yet. [continues 823 words]
Former State Public Health Official Will Head Ballot Effort Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom Says Measure Is in Line With His Views Doctors' Group Backs Legalization; Will Evaluate Measure Donald Lyman, a retired physician and former board member at the California Medical Association, said Monday he will lead a well-funded statewide effort to legalize recreational marijuana next year. Lyman, of Sacramento, is the chief proponent for the Adult Use of Marijuana Act, the long-awaited legalization measure introduced Monday that's expected to receive funding from former Facebook president Sean Parker and be guided by veteran Democratic political consultant Gale Kaufman. [continues 855 words]
A closer look at the economic forces driving ResponsibleOhio's controversial plan to establish 10 wholesale marijuana growers in the state-and some of the plan's potential consequences Ohioans have heard a whole lot about pot this year. In August, ResponsibleOhio gathered enough signatures to put a constitutional amendment on the fall ballot that would legalize both medical and recreational marijuana use. The ResponsibleOhio plan-also known as Issue 3-began attracting controversy long before the coming Nov. 3 vote, sparking heated debate over issues that typically surround marijuana legalization, including how it would impact public health and safety and concern over easier access for minors. But the section of ResponsibleOhio's proposed amendment that's attracted the most controversy centers not on how marijuana would be consumed, but how it would be grown. [continues 1156 words]
Former Facebook President Plans to Spend Millions on Legalization Effort. SACRAMENTO - A coalition that includes former Facebook President Sean Parker on Monday proposed an initiative that would legalize the recreational use of marijuana in California and place a 15% tax on retail sales of the drug. Parker, a billionaire who also co-founded the file-sharing service Napster, plans to put millions of dollars behind the proposal, intended for the November 2016 ballot, according to those in the coalition. "It's very encouraging to see a vibrant community of activists ... coming together around a sensible reform-based measure that protects children, gives law enforcement additional resources and establishes a strong regulatory framework for responsible adult use of marijuana - - one that will yield economic benefits for all Californians," Parker said in a statement. [continues 256 words]
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The push to put California among the states where marijuana can be sold to and legally used by adults for recreation took a major step forward on Monday as ballot language backed by Napster co-founder Sean Parker, other wealthy entrepreneurs who support pot legalization and leading advocacy groups was filed with the state. The proposed legalization initiative is one of more than a dozen that has been submitted in California for the November 2016 election. Because of the deep pockets, political connections and professional credibility of its supporters, however, observers think the so-called Adult Use of Marijuana Act is the vehicle with the greatest chance of success. [continues 324 words]
