SAN DIEGO - Four medical marijuana collectives that applied for permits from San Diego County will be allowed to proceed with their plans for facilities despite a moratorium on new places to grow or distribute the controversial substance.

The collectives in North and East County were far enough along in the permit process when the ban was put in place in March, and the county determined that they have the right to continue with their plans for three new dispensaries and one indoor cultivation center. The county also determined that another facility that wasn't as far into the approval process may not proceed.

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No One Speaks Against Extension

Surprisingly, not one person spoke Tuesday for or against an ordinance which will extend the ban on new medical marijuana collectives or cooperatives in Tulare County.

Following a detailed staff report into why the county wants to extend its interim ordinance prohibiting the establishment of new or expansion of existing medical marijuana entities in the county, supervisors passed the extension on a 5-0 vote after no one spoke during the public comment portion of the hearing.

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A new interim zoning ordinance will put the kibosh on new medical marijuana businesses and restrict those already operating in Tulare County.

Supervisors approved the ordinance, following a recommendation from county administrators and a lengthy presentation on Tuesday.

The ordinance is set for 45 days, but it can be extended to 22 months, 15 days. The ordinance goes into effect immediately and, if it were to be extended, a public hearing would be needed.

Previously, county supervisors had adopted regulations and ordinances related to marijuana, said Resource Management Agency Interim Director Benjamin Ruiz. The ordinance presented Tuesday was initiated when county administrators noted a combination of factors. There's an increased interest in commercial marijuana activities, civil enforcement concerns and fire hazards.

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On Monday, the state Assembly approved a bill aimed at curbing abuses of civil asset forfeiture, a practice by which law enforcement may seize a person's property, cash and other assets without first achieving a criminal conviction.

If approved by the Senate and signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, Senate Bill 443, proposed last year by Sen. Holly Mitchell, D-Los Angeles, and Assemblyman David Hadley, R-Torrance, will require a criminal conviction before assets worth less than $40,000 can be seized.

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Should Santa Rosa aspire to be the "New Age Amsterdam," a Wine Country cousin to the Dutch city known for its permissive attitude about marijuana?

OK, that vision comes from a Penngrove pot farmer quoted in Staff Writer Kevin McCallum's report on the city's efforts to create a regulatory framework for the burgeoning medicinal marijuana industry ("SR aims to be epicenter of legal pot industry," Sunday).

Santa Rosa officials are more circumspect, but their direction is clear.

"We're the fifth-largest city in the Bay Area, located between a major market and port and the supply," Councilwoman Julie Combs said. "I think that puts us in an excellent position to get the most public benefit possible from an industry that is here now."

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A year after vallejo's mayor mulled shutting down dispensaries, marijuana offerings are better than ever.

Vallejo's medical-marijuana industry has weathered yet another crackdown and is in full bloom this year.

Thanks in part to state-level regulations, medical-marijuana patients throughout the north and east bays can obtain some of the best regionally grown cannabis flowers, and hence the world - all from a sleepy, bedroom community just across the Carquinez Bridge.

Thirty minutes north of Berkeley by freeway, Vallejo Holistic Health Center had a line nine-people deep on a recent Tuesday afternoon. The huge, community center-like club was stocked with eighth ounces of elite cuts of trendy Wedding Cake, Alien OG, Sherbet and Gelato, as well as Bay Area staples such as Jack Herer and Grand Daddy Purple. VHHC has seven sales stations and a veritable Target aisle worth of starter marijuana plants, or clones; edibles such as Yummi Karma medicated sriracha potato chips; and hyper-potent extracts like "The Clear" vape pen cartridges.

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It's an outbreak of reefer madness, meaning the disconnect between federal drug czars and 25 states that allow marijuana for medical or recreational use. The latest instance is the Drug Enforcement Administration's decision to keep cannabis on the high shelf of dangerous drugs.

There's a crumb of sanity in the outcome, with the DEA allowing more research into marijuana, but the overall result is extra confusion over national drug policy.

In the short run, states will still operate under their own pot rules, a live-and-let-live approach that the U.S. Justice Department accepted in 2013 after going back and forth on cracking down. For California, that means a loose system that makes marijuana easily available and largely unregulated. Proposition 64 in November seeks to clarify this hazy world.

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Please join me in opposing Measure L scheduled for the November ballot.

My issue with marijuana is not whether smoking it is good or bad. What I care about is the impact of growing marijuana has on the personal safety and health of our citizens, the local water supply and the environment.

In July, there was a double homicide related to marijuana growing in my neighborhood. The violence was not isolated to the actual property upon which the grow was located. The homes of our neighbors were hit by stray bullets during the shootout between the growers and perpetrators.

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UPLAND - A proposal that will ban both medical and recreational marijuana-related activities in the city is going to the Planning Commission for review.

After making numerous revisions to the ordinance, the commission will look at zoning and land issues. The council voted Aug. 8, 3-2, expedite to have a total ban in place before the November election - when voters across the state may approve the use of recreational marijuana.

"If we don't have a ban in place, Upland will have not regulations to prohibit recreational marijuana or anything dealing with recreational marijuana, which means the day after the election could be anarchy," said Councilwoman Carol Timm.

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County Looking at Continued Enforcement

County supervisors are being asked on Tuesday to extend the county ordinance prohibiting medical marijuana collectives, cooperatives or businesses.

Extending that ordinance, which was first passed in 2013 then extended in 2015, will be the subject of a public hearing at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday in the board chambers in Visalia.

The recommendation before the supervisors is to once again extend the ban, a decision sure to come under fire from those medical marijuana proponents.

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On a Sunday morning in late July, in a small town in southwest Alabama, Barbara Moore Knight gave her fellow church members news that brought spontaneous applause and murmurs of "Amen!" She told them that her son, James LaRon Knight, was among the drug felons whose sentences had been commuted by President Barack Obama the week before.

In 2004, Knight was convicted of conspiracy to sell cocaine. Although the crime was nonviolent, he was sentenced to more than 24 years in a federal prison. The sentence was a travesty, an unduly harsh punishment for a family man never accused of running a substantial criminal enterprise.

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Re: "DEA rules that marijuana has no medical value" [News, Aug. 12]: The Drug Enforcement Administration will not change the Schedule 1 designation for marijuana because of the strength of new pot strains compared to 1968. Perhaps one should remind the government that the strength of the THC content in marijuana was never considered or even measured before making it Schedule 1. The schedule change was done purely in the spirit of retribution. Rescheduling stems from Leary v. United States, which found the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 unconstitutional. Congress responded by placing marijuana on the Schedule 1 list the next year.

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I'm no fan of Debra J. Saunders, but in "Willful blindness, reefer madness" (Insight, Aug. 14) she makes a good case for marijuana's use.

I wonder: Can the liquor industry be part of the opposition for legalizing sales of marijuana? It is definitely a competitor in the market for bliss.

Doris Mendell, Oakland

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At least once a week, Steve McDonald drives from his home in Irvine to an industrial stretch of Santa Ana filled with auto shops and home-improvement wholesalers.

Inside a beige storefront, McDonald consults with young budtenders about the jars of raw cannabis flowers and rows of infused edibles that fill the shelves at From the Earth medical marijuana dispensary.

The 40-year-old said cannabis products help him avoid prescription medications for pain from severe burns he suffered in a fire two years ago, as well as lingering back trouble and anxiety that plague him from his days as a paratrooper in the Army's 82nd Airborne Division.

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For the first time since 1988, both major parties' nominees - Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump - say that they have never smoked or experimented with marijuana (without inhaling).

President Obama has been open about having used marijuana and other drugs in his youth, yet his administration has taken insufficient steps to inject some sanity into the federal government's approach to marijuana policy. In 2008, the Obama campaign talked about keeping federal prosecutors from going after medical marijuana dispensaries in states that have legalized medical use such as California. To the contrary, in his first term especially, Obama's Department of Justice was merciless on medical marijuana providers, as well as users. If you hoped for big change, get over it. Wednesday, the Drug Enforcement Administration announced it would not change marijuana's classification from the Schedule I drug status it has held since 1970.

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Larry Schaeffer has grown marijuana in Sonoma County for more than a decade.

His Cherry Kola Farms outside Penngrove supplies award-winning strains of pungent pot to one of Sonoma County's largest medical cannabis collectives, as well as discerning dispensaries around the state.

But after years of operating in a quasi-legal status as a nonprofit collective, Schaeffer is ready to go legit. He wants to be an above-board business, in an approved location with proper permits, and pay taxes like any other legitimate enterprise.

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D.A.'S Offices Dealing With Fallout

About a dozen felony marijuana-related criminal cases have been thrown out or reduced to misdemeanors - the fallout of the December arrest of a Yuba-Sutter drug task force agent.

Christopher "Mark" Heath's career as a Yuba County sheriff's deputy came to an abrupt end when he resigned from his position of 12 years soon after he was arrested in Pennsylvania on suspicion of trafficking more than 200 pounds of marijuana. The effects of his arrest sent ripples through the Yuba-Sutter criminal justice system, some of which have yet to be worked out.

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Two North Coast Legislators' Medical Pot Tax Bills Go Down to Defeat

Two medical marijuana tax proposals submitted by North Coast lawmakers have failed in Sacramento, leaving California voters to decide on higher taxes incorporated in a pot legalization measure on the November ballot.

The tax rates in Proposition 64, the Adult Use of Marijuana Act, exceed the rates in the two failed bills by state Sen. Mike McGuire and Assemblyman Jim Wood, both Healdsburg Democrats whose districts include the pot-rich Emerald Triangle.

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Roadside drug tests can be a good tool for police to determine whether someone has broken law and potentially poses a threat to others, but they can also get you locked up for eating a glazed donut.

A Florida man is suing the Orlando Police Department after he was arrested on officers' mistaken claims that he was in possession of crystal methamphetamine. During a traffic stop, the officers noticed a few whitish flakes on the floorboard of Daniel Rushing's car and alleged that they were crystal meth. "I recognized through my 11 years of training and experience as a law enforcement officer the substance to be some sort of narcotic," one of the officers wrote in a report. In fact, it was just some crumbs from the glaze of a Krispy Kreme doughnut Mr. Rushing had consumed.

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Both advocates for and opponents of California's marijuana legalization measure are claiming victory after a judge determined Friday that they each made misleading statements in arguments to be included in official ballot pamphlets for the Nov. 8 election.

Pro- and anti-Proposition 64 groups sued each other last week in Sacramento County Superior Court, challenging comments submitted to the secretary of state concerning how the initiative might affect pot advertising and minors, among other things.

Opponents were ordered to tweak all six statements objected to by the Yes on 64 team, while proponents were instructed to change four of the six arguments challenged by the No on 64 campaign.

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