Compton voters Tuesday soundly rejected two competing proposals for regulating cannabis businesses in the city, where marijuana dispensaries and other pot-related operations are now banned.

The city's proposal, known as Measure C, would have allowed marijuana sales while imposing a 10% business tax and banning commercial cultivation of marijuana. It was rejected 76% to 23%. The competing initiative, Measure I, included many of the same provisions as Measure C, but called for a 5% business tax and would have allowed indoor marijuana-cultivation businesses. It was rejected 77% to 23%.

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Recreational weed is now legal in California. So what does that mean?

In January 2018, state and local authorities will begin issuing licenses for the sale of legal recreational marijuana. But what do you need to know before you rush to the dispensary? Information courtesy of Ballotpedia.com.

The California Department of Food and Agriculture has defied the will of voters by allowing large-scale marijuana farms, a group representing growers alleged in a lawsuit filed Tuesday.

At issue is a dispute that has divided the industry over whether the state should prohibit sizable cultivation facilities for the first five years of legalized retail marijuana sales, which started Jan. 1 of this year.

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Laguna Beach police this month shut down what they allege was a marijuana dispensary posing as a church, the department said Monday.

Officers seized more than 20 pounds of marijuana and more than $3,000 in cash, according to police Sgt. Jim Cota.

Officers responded to Divine Church of Gardens at 910 Glenneyre St. at about 4:40 p.m. Jan. 12 after a passerby reported a potent marijuana smell emanating from the property and people leaving with white bags, Cota said.

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As a teen in the '70s, Alexis Bronson sold joints to his Berkeley High School classmates in front of the school cafeteria.

Bronson lived in hotels with his father and two brothers and made enough money selling weed to eat and to buy clothes. He figured he could probably make enough to keep a roof over his head, too.

In 1980, two years after he graduated from high school, Bronson began cultivating cannabis, planting the seeds for his future business. After California voters passed Proposition 215 to legalize marijuana for medicinal use in 1996, Bronson began selling his cannabis flowers to a dispensary in San Francisco.

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A Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy has been charged with operating a large-scale drug trafficking operation in which he boasted that he hired other law enforcement officers to provide security to drug dealers and could assault people for his clients, according to court records.

Kenneth Collins, a deputy assigned to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and two other men were arrested by FBI agents Tuesday morning in a sting operation when they arrived to what they thought was a drug deal, according to records unsealed following the arrest.

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Sacramento has more retail cannabis shops than any other city in California, which is the largest retail marijuana market in the country.

According to recent records from the state Bureau of Cannabis Control, Sacramento has 15 dispensaries licensed to sell recreational weed to adults 21 and over, followed by San Diego with 13, San Francisco with nine and Cathedral City with eight.

These figures will change as the bureau continues to process license applications. Dispensaries in some places, notably Los Angeles and San Francisco, lagged in the application process because local officials did not approve their own regulations as early as Sacramento and other cities.

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To the editor: The commercial interests driving the rapid legalization of marijuana in California call to mind the playbook of Big Tobacco. ("For marijuana users, it's high times as California makes recreational use legal," Jan. 2)

Decades passed and millions of lives were harmed before the adverse impact of cigarettes was acknowledged. During that time, Big Tobacco stifled government investigation of tobacco's potential harm while manipulating their product's addictive properties and marketing to children.

Since the liberalization of marijuana laws in Colorado, more people use marijuana than ever before, and many have or will become addicted. Use of healthcare resources for marijuana-associated illnesses has also increased here.

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To the editor: The three letters you published in "California moves into its marijuana future on Jan. 1. Some readers are not eager to make the leap" stated the following concerns about marijuana use, most of which apply equally to alcohol.

Law enforcement does not have adequate test criteria for driving under the influence. While there is no blood-alcohol test for pot, police have many other field sobriety tests, including "walking the line," reciting the alphabet backward and the "eye and penlight test." A driver may pass the 0.08% blood alcohol content test and still be arrested for DUI if he or she drives erratically or exhibits slurred speech or other cognitive difficulties.

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To the editor: For far too long, our poor, working class and communities of color have been suffering due to unjust criminal persecution for minor offenses like possession of marijuana.

The time for criminal justice reform is long overdue. We ought to divert money from prisons into education and drug recovery programs.

What happened in Portugal after it decriminalized drugs compared with the U.S. when Presidents Nixon, Reagan and Clinton fought their war on drugs is incredibly telling. We need to change our way of thinking and get back to helping our communities, our brothers and sisters, succeed and thrive in this country.

Melissa Veenhuizen, Long Beach

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"Groove on! Groove on!" blared from speakers outside a gray warehouse in Santa Ana. Inside, a line of 60 people snaked through the shop, waiting to be helped by a budtender.

"We were bombarded!" said Robert Taft Jr., founder of the marijuana dispensary 420 Central.

When the shop opened at 7 a.m. Monday -- Day 1 of legal recreational pot sales in California -- a handful of people had already lined up. Within two hours, more than 100 customers, some still nursing holiday hangovers, had made purchases. As they walked out, Taft shouted, "Enjoy your new freedom!"

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The state has issued 104 licenses for retail stores to sell marijuana for recreational use in California and 239 other applications for those permits are pending, officials said Tuesday.

An official with the state Bureau of Cannabis Control added that the agency is prepared to begin taking enforcement action against pot shops that are not properly licensed.

"The bureau's enforcement team is ready to respond to any complaints it receives and start doing compliance checks and site visits at any time," said Alex Traverso, a spokesman for the bureau.

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As Los Angeles moves toward allowing the sale of recreational marijuana, joining cities across the state in the newly legal enterprise, police here offered a stern word of caution.

Yes, recreational pot will be legal to sell (and buy, and consume, and cultivate). But there are limits. And the Los Angeles Police Department will help enforce them.

"Let me be clear," Assistant Chief Michel Moore said Tuesday. "The use of marijuana needs to be done in a responsible manner that's consistent with the law."

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Each new year brings new driving or transportation-related laws in California and 2018 is no exception. We'd like to share these new laws with readers in the next few columns.

Marijuana and edible cannabis use in vehicles, Senate Bill 65: Recreational marijuana/cannabis is now legal to be purchased and consumed in certain places, but that doesn't mean you can light up a joint on your daily commute.

Consuming cannabis while driving or while riding as a passenger in a vehicle in California is illegal. This new law is similar to the "open container" laws that outlaw drinking alcohol while driving, though having some alcohol in your system while driving isn't outlawed.

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Marijuana legalization arrives Monday in California with lots of hoopla, but only a handful of cities will initially have retail outlets ready to sell recreational pot.

By Thursday afternoon, California had issued only 42 retail licenses. Another 150 applications were pending and regulators planned to work a second straight weekend to review them.

Los Angeles and San Francisco were late to approve local regulations, meaning no recreational pot shops there will open their doors Monday.

The lucky few outlets with licenses -- mainly in San Diego, the San Francisco Bay Area, Palm Springs area and Santa Cruz -- think they have an edge being first out of the gate.

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California legalizes marijuana for recreational use Monday, but that won't stop federal agents from seizing the drug -- even in tiny amounts -- on busy freeways and backcountry highways.

Marijuana possession still will be prohibited at eight Border Patrol checkpoints in California, a reminder that state and federal laws collide when it comes to pot. The U.S. government classifies marijuana as a controlled substance, like heroin and LSD.

"Prior to Jan. 1, it's going to be the same after Jan. 1, because nothing changed on our end," said Ryan Yamasaki, an assistant chief of the Border Patrol's San Diego sector. "If you're a federal law enforcement agency, you uphold federal laws."

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SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - At a state briefing on environmental rules that await growers entering California's soon-to-be-legal marijuana trade, organic farmers Ulysses Anthony, Tracy Sullivan and Adam Mernit listened intently, eager to make their humble cannabis plot a model of sustainable agriculture in a notoriously destructive industry dominated by the black market.

In line with a 2017 study that found marijuana grows are more damaging, plot for plot, than commercial logging in Northern California forests, Anthony said he has seen too many destructive grows. Trash-strewn clearings. Growers heaping fertilizer at the foot of a centuries-old sequoia tree, needlessly endangering it. Wild streams diverted for irrigation.

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Cannabis 101: Here's what you need to know about recreational marijuana

With recreational marijuana becoming available for sale on New Year's Day, you may be asking yourself: Do I want to try this stuff?

If you have never used cannabis, or if it has been a long time since you have, you need to know that pot isn't just consumed through joints and bongs anymore. Consumers also use vape pens, edibles and other products.

And marijuana has higher amounts of THC -- pot's psychoactive ingredient -- than it once did. In the early 1990s, the average amount of THC in confiscated marijuana samples was roughly 3.7 percent, according to the National Institute of Drug Abuse. Now, many retail strains test in the high 20s and some even top 30 percent.

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Some details of legalized recreational marijuana have changed since California voters approved Proposition 64 in 2016.

California is days away from launching a legal marketplace for adults to buy and sell recreational marijuana. On Jan. 1, the state will carry through on a vision voters endorsed by passing Proposition 64 last year.

Yet as legal cannabis moves from campaign pitch to reality - amid lots of lobbying by industry groups along the way - some details of the plan have changed. State regulators approved the official rules last month and will update them in about a year.

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For Jack in the Box Inc., the warm smell of marijuana is rising in the air.

As California prepares for legal recreational pot on Jan. 1, the fast-food chain is partnering with a digital media company backed by rapper Snoop Dogg on a new "munchie" meal aimed at cannabis enthusiasts. While marijuana's connection to fast food is well-established, Jack in the Box will become the first national chain to explicitly embrace the drug.

The "Merry Munchie Meal," which will be available at three California locations for a week in January for $4.20, features two tacos, french fries, onion rings, five mini churros, three chicken strips and a small drink. The price isn't random: The number 420 is used as a code by potheads.

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SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- A marijuana activist whose advocacy dates to the 1960s counterculture has been arrested in California toting 22 pounds of illegal marijuana, prosecutors said Wednesday.

Irvin Dana Beal, 70, of New York, was arrested Saturday in far Northern California after prosecutors said his rental car was spotted weaving across the road and driving 20 miles below the speed limit. James Statzer, 51, of Michigan, also was arrested.

The arrest occurred along a well-traveled highway in California's famed Emerald Triangle area, known for its high-grade pot. A police dog smelled marijuana during the stop and 22 pounds of the drug was found.

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