Sen. Dianne Feinstein ought to fact check her statements on medical marijuana if she thinks that the Obama administration is going after so-called rogue dispensaries, which according to her "are prevalent throughout California." When the Justice Department threatened hundreds of California landlords with seizure of their property unless they evicted their medical marijuana dispensary tenants, more than 600 state-compliant facilities were forced to shut down. Los Angeles medical marijuana dispensary operator Aaron Sandusky had not violated any local or state laws when the DOJ prosecuted and sentenced him to a mandatory 10 years in prison, where he now sits. [continues 92 words]
Doobie, or not doobie? No, that's not an existential query from Sonoma's Doobie Brothers manager Bruce Cohn. That is the question that circulated the Internet a couple years ago when anthropologist Francis Thackeray, the director of the Institute for Human Evolution at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, suggested that William Shakespeare might have sought creative inspiration by smoking pot. In 2001, a study conducted by Thackeray found marijuana residue in pipe fragments unearthed in Shakespeare's garden, reported the journal Live Science. Though cannabis was cultivated in England during Shakespeare's day for rope-making and other textiles, it's unclear if it was used recreationally. It was possible that references in Shakespeare's work itself encouraged Thackeray's line of inquiry, says Live Science: [continues 608 words]
Statistics rarely reveal the entire truth about anything, and numbers can be compiled and interpreted to confirm different conclusions from the same set of facts. But that caveat notwithstanding, virtually any statistical analysis of the war on drugs leads to an inescapable conclusion: It has been a hopeless failure. The Global Commission on Drug Policy has reported that in the decade between 1998 and 2008, global use of opiates increased more than 34 percent, cocaine use rose by 27 percent and marijuana consumption grew by 8.5 percent. By most estimates, the United States leads the world in illegal drug consumption. [continues 453 words]
There has been high drama in the debate over medical marijuana ever since federal authorities began cracking down on California's pot dispensaries last October. Last week when federal authorities announced that they were filing forfeiture lawsuits to seize the property that houses Harborside Health Center in Oakland and San Jose, the operators of the cannabis dispensary featured on the reality TV show "Weed Wars," held a news conference. The star of the event was Jason David who appeared in one of the "Weed Wars" episodes. David got teary as he talked about how medical marijuana had made such a difference in the life of his 5-year-old son who suffers from seizures. Thanks to medical marijuana, he said his son had gone from needing two dozen pills a day to four. "After he had medical cannabis, it was the first time he went seizure free," David said. "Imagine your kids having seizures every day, being in pain for hours crying and screaming." [continues 574 words]
A lot of smoke led to little fire as Alikchi Wellness, the medical marijuana dispensary in Boyes Hot Springs, vaporized this week as quickly as it materialized. The dispensary began advertising with a hand-drawn sign in December, after operators signed a six-month lease at 17503 Sonoma Highway, but went largely unnoticed until county officials were notified of its presence just after Christmas. Alikchi Wellness operator Kim Pelham said the dispensary never officially opened for business, and that the sign was to notify potential patients of her plans to operate in the Springs. [continues 1125 words]
Though California voters rejected the legalization of marijuana, the debate rages on. The pros and cons of this controversial subject will continue butting heads. Dr. Bob Albo, 78, retired as an Oakland general and oncology surgeon in 2006, but he remains a consultant for the Raiders and Warriors sports franchises, and he's a professor of surgery at UC San Francisco. As for legalizing marijuana, which is a federal offense even though smoking pot occurs in all 50 states, you can basically count Albo among the cons. [continues 607 words]
When Californians put an initiative on the ballot to legalize recreational marijuana smoking, the whole nation tuned in to see whether the state would lead a new marijuana law revolution. After all, California voters pioneered medical marijuana more than a decade ago. But Tuesday they doused Proposition 19, rejecting the country's first effort to legalize marijuana. As of this morning, the no votes totaled nearly 52 percent. The defeat came even as voters in San Jose and other Bay Area cities embraced local regulation and tax measures on pot providers. [continues 559 words]
Like most of the 80-odd marijuana dispensaries that have taken root in San Jose in the past year, the New Age Healing Collective advertises a lengthy menu of high-grade pot, pot concentrates and pot-infused treats for its ill patients. But narcotics agents say the cannabis club on South Bascom Avenue was an illegal pot-slinging operation masquerading behind its medicinal mission and strip-mall storefront. Earlier this week, the Mercury News has learned, a regional drug task force with a search warrant raided the operation, seized about 40 pounds of marijuana and effectively shut the place down. [continues 626 words]
On Nov. 2, Oakland voters will be asked to decide whether medicinal cannabis businesses in the city should pay $50 in tax for every $1,000 in gross receipts. That is nearly three times the supplemental sales tax rate they already pay and could contribute more than $1 million to Oakland's general fund. The measure would also create a new "Non-Medical Cannabis Business Tax" of $100 per $1,000 of gross receipts if voters approve the California-wide Proposition 19, which would legalize recreational marijuana use. [continues 424 words]
In November, Californians will have an opportunity to make marijuana legal. But a new state law is already doing everything but legalize it -- making possession of less than an ounce of pot no more serious than driving faster than the speed limit. A bill signed Thursday by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger reduces the crime from a misdemeanor to an infraction, meaning that those caught smoking merely need to pay a $100 fine, won't have to appear in court and won't have a criminal record. [continues 584 words]
OAKLAND -- Signaling a break from staunch opposition from law enforcement groups, Oakland City Attorney John Russo on Monday joined about two dozen officials from across California to show support for Proposition 19, the measure allowing recreational marijuana that will appear on November's ballot. Another group gathered in West Hollywood near Los Angeles with the same message. Their public stance goes against the majority of law enforcement agencies in California, which are dead-set against the measure. "It's very difficult for them to change," Russo said Monday in front of Oakland City Hall. Standing next to him was a former police officer and several longtime advocates including Jeff Jones; Harborside Health Center medicinal cannabis dispensary attorney James Anthony; and "Yes on 19" campaign director Mauricio Garzon. [continues 475 words]
Tempers flared as the evening of July 22 wore on, turning an Oakland City Council meeting into a marathon debate over the future of medical marijuana in one of the country's most pot-friendly cities. For months the media had chronicled the unfolding of a modern-day Gold Rush -- quickly dubbed the "Green Rush." Now, the path to El Dorado rested in a bid to permit pot growing on an industrial scale. Opposition to the plan by dispensary operators erupted publicly after quiet lobbying failed. [continues 1584 words]
OAKLAND -- Emmy award-winning former talk show host Montel Williams was in town Tuesday for a second time seeking information about opening a medical cannabis facility here. He met with Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan, who said Williams was interested in applying for one of the city's pot permits to grow refined strains of medical cannabis that he uses to treat the symptoms of multiple sclerosis. He was diagnosed with the disease in 1999. He has since become a vocal proponent of medical marijuana. [continues 259 words]
OAKLAND -- The nation's top narcotics watchdog, the Drug Enforcement Administration, has requested information about Oakland's ordinance permitting large-scale medical pot growing facilities. DEA spokesman Rusty Payne said agents wanted to know if the ordinance on the city website was a draft or a final version. He would not specify why the agency wanted the information, but the inquiry raised speculation that the new plans have put Oakland in the agency's cross hairs. Payne downplayed the speculation but said, "Anytime there is large-scale marijuana cultivation, it is something that would interest us." [continues 210 words]
OAKLAND -- Oakland rushed last week to raise medical cannabis business taxes and to be the first city in the nation to legitimize industrial-sized pot production. The cash-starved city is hoping to reap millions of dollars in tax revenues from medical cannabis businesses while positioning itself to capitalize on the explosion of recreational pot sales should state voters go that way in November. But is it just a pipe dream? No one really knows whether Oakland will find that pot of gold in the cannabis industry. Growers and dispensaries are making money, to be sure, and the city wants its share. But competition, legal risks and the unknown economic effects from potential legalization make the sure bet anything but. [continues 1365 words]
LAST WEEK, Oakland officially became the first city in the U.S. to allow large-scale marijuana factories to grow and process the drug for medical use. Oakland will issue permits to four of these so-called Walmarts of pot production beginning in January. There was plenty of opposition to the proposal, most of it from smaller and medium-sized cannabis growers who packed council chambers to complain that they would be squeezed out by the mega-producers. City council members who support the large pot factories said regulation would lead to safer production facilities. It would cut down on the electrical fires and robberies that have occurred in homegrown operations. Gobs of money could be raised for police officers from pot taxes. [continues 609 words]
IN JULY of 2009, Oakland became the first city in the U.S. to tax the sale of medical marijuana. Now, exactly a year later, the City Council has taken another major step on the road toward outright legalization. The council has voted to license four new industrial-sized marijuana farms in the city. These so-called Walmarts of pot will be authorized to grow and process marijuana to sell to the four city-approved medical cannabis dispensaries. The ordinance must be read at a meeting a second time before it becomes law, which is expected Tuesday. [continues 427 words]
The City Council has made it more likely that Oakland residents will see tax increases on everything from telephones to medicinal pot. Despite sharp criticism for their financial stewardship, council members are poised to give their blessing to several measures aimed at boosting revenue to the cash-strapped city, which could face a $50 million budget gap next year. But they stopped short of voting to put the measures, some of which were reworked during the special City Council meeting, on the November ballot. [continues 308 words]
OAKLAND - Oakland is ready to cash in on the medical marijuana boom - and perhaps recreational pot use - now that the City Council agreed to license and tax four industrial-sized marijuana farms and promised to review policies that exclude small and medium-size farmers who grow the marijuana sold at the city's four dispensaries. Hundreds of small growers and collectives complained that the new ordinance could drive them out of business, despite having risked arrest to supply $28 million worth of medical marijuana sold at dispensaries last year. [continues 694 words]
Oakland inched toward a plan to allow industrial-scale production of medical marijuana, sparking a lively debate between supporters and opponents who filled the Public Safety Committee meeting Tuesday evening. The proposal crafted by City Councilmembers Larry Reid and Rebecca Kaplan would prompt the first major expansion six years after Oakland first authorized the distribution of medical marijuana in dispensaries. The Committee voted 3-1 in favor of the plan to license large-scale indoor cultivation of medical marijuana generally grown by either small growers or in illicit warehouses. Both are poorly regulated, according to a staff report prepared for Kaplan and Reid. [continues 317 words]
Legalizing marijuana could cause the drug's price to plummet while increasing use by an uncertain amount, according to a new study from a respected public-policy think tank. RAND Corp. researchers say known production costs and surveys of marijuana's current price suggest the untaxed retail price of high-quality marijuana could drop to as low as $38 per ounce, compared with about $375 per ounce now. "There is considerable uncertainty about the impact that legalizing marijuana in California will have on consumption and public budgets," said RAND Drug Policy Research Center co-director Beau Kilmer, the study's lead author, cautioning against believing anyone who claims to know precisely how legalization would play out. "No government has legalized the production and distribution of marijuana for general use, so there is little evidence on which to base any predictions about how this might work in California." [continues 85 words]
City weighs its position on the matter SAN LEANDRO - Mayor Tony Santos said a group of investors has inquired with him and Councilman Jim Prola about opening a large medical marijuana growing facility in the city's industrial area. "I don't want to give the impression that I'm promoting it, because I'm not," Santos said Friday. "The group is looking for a location to grow medical marijuana - no direct sales. They can only do it in certain locations, and they need a lot of (electricity) to do it." [continues 432 words]
Two new laws greatly expanding Berkeley's medical marijuana industry but also raising taxes on it likely will go before voters in November, following a Tuesday night City Council meeting. The two ballot questions, if approved, will allow up to 11 large-scale growing facilities of various sizes, but none larger than 30,000 square feet in the city's manufacturing zone. And the measures will allow a fourth retail outlet in the city's commercial districts, among other provisions. The Council voted unanimously to approve language in the laws and will bring the matter back next Tuesday for a final vote that may place them on the ballot. [continues 415 words]
The state NAACP is expressing "unconditional support" for the November ballot measure to legalize marijuana, continuing proponents' framing of it as a civil rights issue. "We are joining a growing number of medical professionals, labor organizations, law enforcement authorities, local municipalities, and approximately 56 percent of the public, in saying that it is time to decriminalize the use of marijuana," state NAACP President Alice Huffman said in a news release Monday. "There is a strong racial component that must be considered when we investigate how the marijuana laws are applied to people of color." [continues 431 words]
Win or lose, the marijuana legalization measure on November's ballot proves one thing: The pot industry has arrived in California politics. Oakland's most prominent purveyor of medical cannabis has almost single-handedly financed the Tax Cannabis 2010 campaign - a once-unthinkable occurrence. Election experts say it's a sign that the pot industry has reached a rarefied political pinnacle: Pot can afford to buy its way into voter-approved legitimacy. Just as PG&E spent $46.4 million to push Proposition 16 and Mercury Insurance spent $15.9 million to push Proposition 17 to further their own interests this spring, so too is Oaksterdam University in Oakland shelling out millions to invest in its own economic future. [continues 1425 words]
The argument for legalizing marijuana for adult recreational use goes something like this: Marijuana isn't bad for you. In fact, it has proved medicinal benefits for those suffering from cancer and other illnesses. Even if you are not sick, a good toke never hurt anybody. Licenses selling for "medicinal" purposes is practically pot legalization anyway, since pretty much anyone with a pulse can get a prescription. The pro-legalization forces argue that marijuana prohibition, just like alcohol prohibition, has been a huge failure. The threat of jail and fines has not stamped out use of the drug. Instead, hundreds of thousands are arrested every year on misdemeanor marijuana possession charges -- which clogs jails and costs a fortune. [continues 587 words]
OAKLAND - Buckingham Boulevard residents are hypervigilant about watching out for their neighborhood, quick to report anything suspicious. But a police detective's early morning knock at one neighbor's front door was the first clue that something illegal was happening inside the house across the street. The detective said there would be a raid, and suggested the neighbor might want to leave in case there was gunfire. When the man drove back up the canyon a few hours later, police were still hauling out marijuana plants, bags of buds, money and growing equipment from two expensive, hillside homes that had housed an extensive indoor pot farm. [continues 1730 words]
Medical Cannabis Employees Opt for Representation As State's Legalization Vote Nears Almost 100 workers in Oakland's medical marijuana industry have voted to be represented by organized labor, a first-of-its-kind event for an industry trying to build public support. Marijuana advocates joined leaders of the United Food and Commercial Workers union in making the announcement Friday. Californians are split over a November ballot measure that would legalize use of marijuana by adults 21 and older, but proponents of the initiative hoped labor can now give them a boost. [continues 542 words]
OAKLAND -- City Attorney John Russo last week endorsed the state's ballot initiative to legalize marijuana, and the City Council seems poised to do the same soon. Californians this November will vote on a measure that would legalize adult use and personal cultivation of marijuana. Russo called it an overdue change in the state's policy on marijuana. "What we've been trying to do is fight a raging fire with a watering can," Russo said. "The better way is to cut off the oxygen." [continues 436 words]
The Springs Redevelopment Advisory Committee declined Thursday to take a stand on banning the concept of a medical marijuana dispensary in the Springs. Some months back, the panel decided that if it were asked to take a stand on an issue that wasn't on the panel's agenda, it would need a unanimous vote. It didn't even get to a vote Thursday as three panel members, during discussion, said they weren't comfortable voting on something that wasn't in the panel's purview. Springs resident Sioux Messinger asked the panel to take a stand against medical marijuana dispensaries in the Springs. [continues 512 words]
The California Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously struck down state law's limits -- and, most likely, local limits, too -- on how much marijuana a patient or caregiver can possess or grow for medical purposes. But the state's highest court revived another part of state law that a lower court had ordered voided, protecting the state's voluntary identification card program for patients and caregivers. The state attorney general's office had agreed with lawyers for defendant Patrick Kelly, of Lakewood, that the limits should be abolished but the ID card system retained. [continues 514 words]
Just in from Stockton, Mary parks her car and enters the downtown Oakland coffeehouse -- but she hasn't come all this way for a cup of joe. Instead, she peruses a menu of dozens of strains and preparations of marijuana, all grown in California, all taxed, all legal. Producing a wad of cash and proof of her age -- but no doctor's note -- for a fragrant ounce of "purple kush," she departs a satisfied customer, perhaps grabbing a snack at a nearby restaurant before hitting the highway. [continues 1987 words]
An incremental acceptance of medical marijuana has spurred a cottage industry of business ventures -- from iPhone applications to lobbyists -- whose expansion shows no sign of slowing despite the recession. Instead, pot is the new growth industry. The market began to take off in 1996, when California became the first state to approve the sale of marijuana for medicinal purposes. Today, medical marijuana sales in California are estimated at $700 million to $2 billion per year. Profits from "canni-businesses" as a whole are potentially much greater. [continues 703 words]
SAN FRANCISCO -- Limited personal marijuana possession and cultivation would become legal, and the drug's commercial regulation and taxation would become an option, under a proposed ballot measure now being circulated for petition signatures. Oakland marijuana activists Jeff Jones and Richard Lee, proponents of "The Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010," kicked off their petition drive Friday with a news conference at the national convention of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML. The measure would legalize personal possession of up to an ounce of cannabis, and would permit up to 25 square feet of cultivation per home. It also would let local governments decide whether to allow, regulate and tax commercial sales, a system somewhat like how alcohol is or isn't sold in "wet" and "dry" counties in some states. [continues 507 words]
Sheriff's deputies from Marin County attempted to confiscate records of pot sales from growers to medical marijuana dispensaries in Berkeley and Oakland Tuesday, but came up empty-handed, a lawyer for the dispensaries said. After leaving the East Bay, the eight investigators planned to execute a search warrant for digital records at a third dispensary in San Francisco, called the Divinity Tree, said William Panzer, an attorney for all three dispensaries. Brad Senesac, a spokesman for the Berkeley Patients Group on San Pablo Avenue, said officials there told the deputies they don't keep those records. [continues 142 words]
If California won't spend the money to treat certain drug offenders and state law forbids jailing them, they're likely to end up right back on the streets, say critics of the state budget agreement. The Legislature and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger have agreed to cut Proposition 36 funding from $108 million last year to just $18 million this year, but the underlying sentencing law remains. "The courts are still obligated to push the people into treatment, knowing that the funds, the programs, the services aren't there," said Haven Fearn, director of the Contra Costa County Health Services Department's Alcohol and Other Drug Services Division. "That's the craziness that everyone is having to deal with. "... What's the answer to that?" [continues 548 words]
Oakland attracted national attention last week with the country's first voter-approved medical marijuana business tax -- a 15-fold increase that won easy victory in a special election Tuesday. Some supporters -- including some operators of the dispensaries that will be taxed -- see the measure as a step toward legalizing marijuana. Cities with dispensaries are eyeing the move as a way to fill empty municipal coffers in the wake of crushing local and state budget deficits, and to standardize their approach to medical marijuana outlets. [continues 769 words]
Most Bay Area television stations rejected or apparently ignored a new advertisement urging Californians to reconsider legalizing and taxing marijuana as a way to help close the state's gaping budget deficit, the ad's sponsors say. Marijuana Policy Project communications director Bruce Mirken said NBC affiliate KTVU and ABC affiliate KGO rejected the ad, while CBS affiliate KPIX and Fox affiliate KTVU "never got back to us with rate cards." The ad will begin airing today on KRON, on stations in Sacramento and Los Angeles, and statewide on cable news channels CNN, Headline News, MSNBC and CNBC. [continues 250 words]
Measure F carries with it perhaps the smallest financial benefit to the city, though its backers like something else about the proposal: the potential to further legitimize medical pot. Measure F would create a new business tax rate for Oakland's four legally operating medical marijuana clubs, hitting them with a levy of $18 for every $1,000 in gross sales. That compares to $1.20 for every $1,000 in gross sales the clubs now pay under the standard retail business tax. [continues 246 words]
Want to open your own medical marijuana collective in unincorporated San Mateo County? In a few weeks, you'll have to fill out an application, pay a $100 fee and submit to inspections to make sure your club is in line with all the terms of the county's new ordinance governing the collectives. Buck those requirements and you may soon have the sheriff's office knocking on your door. The county's first-ever ordinance governing pot clubs goes into effect on July 6, and county officials are trying to hash out how the process to license the collectives will work. [continues 325 words]
A federal appeals court has let stand Oakland "Guru of Ganja" Ed Rosenthal's marijuana conviction and one-day prison sentence, finding his defense at trial wasn't unfairly curtailed. Attorney Michael Clough in January had argued that Rosenthal was denied the ability to present witnesses who would corroborate his claim that he honestly, reasonably believed he had been deputized by the city of Oakland to grow marijuana for area medical marijuana cooperatives and was protected from federal prosecution. But 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judges Richard Paez and Sidney Thomas, joined for this case by U.S. District Judge David Ezra, of Hawaii, noted on Thursday in an unpublished memorandum -- a ruling that can't be cited as precedent -- that "none of the offenses at issue require knowledge of the law or intent to violate the law to sustain a conviction." That is, it doesn't matter what Rosenthal was thinking: "(T)he government needed only to prove that Rosenthal knew that he was manufacturing marijuana," the panel wrote. [continues 197 words]
Tie Vote Dooms Dispensary Law There won't be a medical marijuana dispensary inside Sonoma city limits any time soon. That was the result of a 2-2 vote stalemate by the Sonoma City Council Wednesday night, with Mayor Ken Brown recusing himself from the debate on advice of City Attorney Tom Curry. Brown's wife, Jewel Mathieson, is owner and operator of a medical marijuana dispensary in Santa Rosa. But the debate over legal pot promises to continue in the wake of proposed legislation by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, to legalize and tax its sale, and in light of comments by Gov. Schwarzenegger encouraging a debate on the issue. [continues 690 words]
Medical marijuana returns to the City Council Wednesday evening in the form of a draft ordinance that would regulate establishment of dispensaries within city limits. The draft ordinance is the product of three Planning Commission meetings during which proposed regulations were modified at the suggestion of both proponents and critics of the dispensaries. Central to the council's deliberations may be a recent state supreme court decision defining legal protection for "primary caregivers" who supply patients with medical marijuana, along with a recent opinion from the state attorney general's office on the same subject. [continues 251 words]
OAKLAND -- Here in the East Bay's growing hotbed of marijuana-related commerce -- an uptown stretch that some call "Oaksterdam" -- the buzz just got thicker. They're talking about it at Oaksterdam University, where seminars fill up months in advance on marijuana law, cultivation, bud-tending and other pot topics; and at a shop across Broadway that sells the latest hash-making machines and German vaporizers, while a dozen people wait for patient ID cards in the back, some with babies on their laps. [continues 779 words]
OAKLAND -- Come July, voters will have a chance to decide on tax measures -- including a levy on medical marijuana -- meant to help fill a gaping hole in the city's budget. In a meeting that stretched well into Tuesday night, City Council members unanimously gave the go-ahead for a special July 21 ballot that will include a 1.8 percent business tax -- or $18 on every $1,000 -- in gross receipts earned by Oakland's medical marijuana dispensaries. The proposal passed easily among the full City Council because the levy has the potential to generate about $300,000 in annual revenue for the city. The $18 figure was a compromise between the original proposal of $14 and the $24 figure that approximates the state's tax on cigarettes and alcohol, city officials said. [continues 374 words]
SAN FRANCISCO -- Sparks flew Wednesday as Northern California's top federal prosecutor squared off in a debate against a national medical marijuana advocacy group's attorney. U.S. Attorney Joseph Russoniello and Joe Elford, chief counsel of Berkeley-based Americans for Safe Access, agreed on little, often challenging each other on the history of the federal marijuana ban and pressing each other for details of how best to reconcile that ban with California's law allowing medical use of the drug. [continues 351 words]
OAKLAND -- A proposal to increase the business tax on Oakland's four medical marijuana dispensaries won the support of a four-member City Council committee Tuesday, and it could be headed for the ballot July 21. The tax increase is billed as one way to generate a small amount of additional revenue from medical marijuana dispensaries, which require more oversight than typical businesses, for a city facing a deficit that could reach $65 million in the 2009-10 fiscal year. What remains in dispute is what the new tax rate should be. The council's finance committee Tuesday sent the proposal on to the full council, which could set the proposed tax rate at anywhere from $12 to $24 for every $1,000 in gross receipts. [continues 349 words]
California medical-marijuana advocates are celebrating a verbal promise that federal raids on the state-law-abiding dispensaries have ended. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, in a news conference on an unrelated matter Wednesday in Washington with Drug Enforcement Administration chief Michele Leonhart, said the raids -- in many cases, searches and seizures without arrests -- are not part of President Barack Obama's policy. "What the president said during the campaign, you'll be surprised to know, will be consistent with what we'll be doing in law enforcement," Holder said. "What he said during the campaign is now American policy." [continues 395 words]
State Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, announced today he has introduced legislation to legalize and tax marijuana in the state of California. AB 390 would require that all sales of marijuana be made by licensed sellers and that sales be taxed $50 per ounce. It would also forbid sales to anyone under 21. "With the state in the midst of an historic economic crisis, the move towards regulating and taxing marijuana is simply common sense," Ammiano said at a morning news conference at the state building on Golden Gate Avenue in San Francisco. [continues 53 words]
California may be going to pot -- literally. Marijuana would be grown and sold openly to adults 21 and older under legislation introduced Monday morning by a San Francisco lawmaker. Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, said the cash-starved state could generate more than a billion dollars by taxing pot growers and sellers. Ammiano predicted that the public would support loosening marijuana laws that require substantial public funds to enforce. "I think there's a mentality throughout the state and the country that this isn't the highest priority," he said. "And that maybe we should start to reassess." [continues 348 words]
