The state has put out new rules for testing marijuana planned for medical use.

With businesses expected to get state licenses in January to sell marijuana in California, the top regulator said Thursday that they will be given up to six months to comply with a requirement the pot be thoroughly tested by a licensed laboratory.

State pot czar Lori Ajax said it may take months for enough testing labs to be properly screened and licensed to handle the supply of marijuana expected to be sold in California starting next year. In addition, many existing medical marijuana dispensaries will have untested supplies when licensing begins, she said.

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"Nobody got hurt" I had to re-read that excerpt from the letter Alex Rubalcava (June 16) wrote regarding former Deputy Police Chief Keith Foster.

"He has been punished enough. He made a bad choice. No one got hurt. No one is perfect."

Are you kidding me?

Illegal drug abuse is at an all-time high. Where does Alex Rubalcava think these addicts get the pills? From people just like him!

"He risked his life for 30 years on the force."

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I just heard Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer on the news discussing our gang problem, killings and crime in Fresno. He then mentioned marijuana as the drug gangs use. That might be true, but why do we rarely hear about the huge methamphetamine problem in Fresno from Chief Dyer, Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims and the local media?

Methamphetamine is being imported, made and sold widely in Fresno and surrounding areas. It is sucking the life out of our communities. Methamphetamine is the problem, not marijuana, which is legal in California. Apparently it's easier to advertise "cracking down on crime" by using our tax dollars to bust growers/dealers of this legal plant.

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In the early 1930s, the federal government cracked down on California's legal drug programs, leading to numerous arrests. Above, a California jail in 1930, occupying the third floor of Ventura City Hall.

In the early 1930s, the federal government cracked down on California's legal drug programs, leading to numerous arrests. Above, a California jail in 1930, occupying the third floor of Ventura City Hall. (Los Angeles Times)

For one bright and flickering moment last year, it looked like the global war on drugs was about to die. California -- the sixth largest economy in the world -- voted to fully legalize cannabis, while a smorgasbord of countries including Uruguay, Canada and Jamaica were also moving toward more sensible policies. But like Freddie Krueger after the nubile teenagers believe he is finally slain, the drug war is suddenly back with even sharper claws. Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions is reviving the worst of the old policies that led to mass incarceration, while President Trump has said that the Philippines is doing "a great job" on the drug war under a President, Rodriguo Duterte, who publicly boasts: "There's 3 million drug addicts. There are. I'd be happy to slaughter them."

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HAYFORK, Calif. - The red and purple opium poppies that his family grew on a mountainside half a world away were filled with an intoxicating, sticky sap that his mother traded for silver coins to feed her children and pay for their escape.

Adam Lee smiles at the memory of a childhood in war-torn Laos and voyage to America, where he spent decades adapting to life in big cities.

Now 47 years old, Mr. Lee has returned to the mountains - the Trinity Alps of Northern California - and to a career farming a different mind-altering crop for his livelihood: marijuana.

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SALINAS, Calif. - This vast and fertile valley is often called the salad bowl of the nation for the countless heads of lettuce growing across its floor. Now California's marijuana industry is laying claim to a new slogan for the valley: America's cannabis bucket.

After years of marijuana being cultivated in small plots out of sight from the authorities, California cannabis is going industrial.

Over the past year, dilapidated greenhouses in the Salinas Valley, which were built for cut flower businesses, have been bought up by dozens of marijuana entrepreneurs, who are growing pot among the fields of spinach, strawberries and wine grapes.

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SANTA ROSA, Calif. - In the heart of Northern California's wine country, a civil engineer turned marijuana entrepreneur is adding a new dimension to the art of matching fine wines with gourmet food: cannabis and wine pairing dinners.

Sam Edwards, co-founder of the Sonoma Cannabis Company, charges diners $100 to $150 for a meal that experiments with everything from marijuana-leaf pesto sauce to sniffs of cannabis flowers paired with sips of a crisp Russian River chardonnay.

"It accentuates the intensity of your palate," Mr. Edwards, 30, said of the dinners, one of which was held recently at a winery with sweeping views of the Sonoma vineyards. "We are seeing what works and what flavors are coming out."

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Recreational cannabis may be legal in California, but buying the actual stuff still makes Scott Campbell, a celebrity tattoo artist and fine artist, feel like a class-cutting teenage stoner.

"You go in to buy weed, and it's like visiting your parole officer," said Mr. Campbell, who lives in Los Angeles. "You get buzzed through three metal gates." Inside, cannabis products are often packaged with loopy Deadhead-style graphics and goofy dorm-humor strain names like Gorilla Glue and Purple Urkle.

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[photo] Tim Scully, left, and Nick Sand pictured in a graphic from the documentary "The Sunshine Makers." (Nick Sand / Tim Scully / Passion Pictures / FilmRise)

As its title suggests, "The Sunshine Makers" is probably the happiest, most carefree drug documentary you're likely to see. The film explores the people behind the most well-known strain of LSD, who produced millions of doses in a single, sleep-deprived month. Their goal wasn't money, but instead they wanted to save the world: If everyone took LSD, they would experience the feelings of love and connectedness the hallucinogen promises.

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A man in his 20s sat handcuffed in the back of a police car Monday night after about $500,000 worth of narcotics was found in a southeast Fresno home, Fresno police Major Narcotics Unit Supervisor Timothy Tietjen said.

Several undercover investigators waited outside a home on the 700 block of south 4th Street, south of Ventura Avenue.

Tietjen said around 6 p.m. officials made their move while family members, including children between 4 and 7 years of age, were home.

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WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama on Thursday commuted the 20-year prison sentenced imposed on Richard Ruiz Montes, convicted in 2008 for his role in the Modesto's pot-dealing California Healthcare Collective.

In one of his final presidential acts, Obama used his executive authority to cut Montes' sentence by more than half. Now held at a federal facility in Atwater, according to the Bureau of Prisons' inmate locator, the 36-year-old Montes will be released May 19.

He is identified as Richard by the White House and Bureau of Prisons, but has also been known as Ricardo. The White House listed his hometown as Escalon.

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The Chowchilla City Council voted unanimously this week to ban marijuana dispensaries, cultivation, manufacture and transport within city limits. The move comes on the eve of an election in which Californians will vote on Proposition 64, which would legalize recreational pot.

City Manager Brian Haddix said the council wanted to act now to ensure stricter restrictions were in place prior to the Nov. 8 election. He noted that marijuana is still a Schedule 1 substance under the Federal Controlled Substances Act.

Mayor Waseem Ahmed said the move was necessary to "walk the talk of being a family friendly city."

[end]

The city of Sacramento soon may begin accepting applications from businesses wanting to cultivate marijuana.

A City Council committee this week voted to lift Sacramento's moratorium on commercial cannabis cultivation. The action means that aspiring marijuana businesses would be able to apply for cultivation permits beginning April 2 under a new ordinance that could position the capital city as regional hub for commercial pot production.

The council in November voted 5-3 to allow licensed recreational or medical marijuana cultivation in city limits under state rules governing the marijuana industry. But it is unlikely that the city will be issuing actual permits for cultivation businesses until months after the application period opens.

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[photo] A bottle of Oxycontin pills. (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)

A Washington city devastated by black-market OxyContin filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against the painkillers' manufacturer Thursday, alleging the company turned a blind eye to criminal trafficking of its pills to "reap large and obscene profits" and demanding it foot the bill for widespread opioid addiction in the community.

The suit by Everett, a city of 100,000 north of Seattle, was prompted by a Times investigation last year. The newspaper revealed that drugmaker Purdue Pharma had extensive evidence pointing to illegal trafficking across the nation, but in many cases, did not share it with law enforcement or cut off the flow of pills.

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The Tulare County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to continue its ban on growing nonmedical marijuana in unincorporated areas for another two years.

The ban is aimed at commercial growers. It's still legal to grow up to six plants at a private residence under Proposition 64, as long as it's indoors.

Approved by voters statewide in November, Proposition 64 decriminalizes marijuana by allowing adults 21 and older to use, transport and buy it in limited amounts.

But the proposition allows local jurisdictions to impose their own regulations, including a ban on marijuana businesses, which the board adopted as a temporary measure in December and now has extended until December 2018.

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[photo] Cotton candy flavored marijuana is displayed for purchase at Butter & Weed's booth at 420 Vancouver, in Vancouver, B.C. on Wednesday, April 20, 2016.

The legal marijuana industry proved its staying power in 2016, racking up $6.7 billion in business across North America.

That number represents 30 percent growth from the year before, according to a report by Arcview Market Research, and it's expected to climb even higher over the next few years, topping $20 billion by 2021.

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All Newman resident Phillip Blanton wanted to do, he said, was bring some comfort to his granddaughter, who has stage 4 Hodgkin's lymphoma.

But his California medical marijuana card counted for nothing in Texas, where the 67-year-old now faces felony drug possession charges.

Blanton was driving to Houston to see 20-year-old Makayla Farley, who's being treated at the Houston Methodist Hospital cancer center. She's fighting for her life, he said, has a hard time eating and is always throwing up. She's on morphine and other drug cocktails for pain. "I was going to give her Papa's cookies to help with the nausea and pain and to help her relax."

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[photo]

Former Inland congressional candidate Paul Chabot is leaving for Texas. In a Facebook post, Chabot , a Republican, said he and his family are moving "to find a region of the nation that embraces our values and morals we cherish."

Rancho Cucamonga Republican Paul Chabot, who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2014 and 2016, is moving to the Lone Star State -- but not before dispensing some harsh words for California progressives.

Chabot recently used Facebook to announce his family's move to McKinney, Texas, lamenting that liberals "have degraded the State of Reagan to but a shell of its former self."

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[photo] A cross-border drug smugglers' tunnel that had been shut down but left unfilled on the Mexican side was found to be back in operation in December, officials said. (Mexico attorney general's office / Associated Press)

Mexican drug cartels have burrowed dozens of tunnels in the last decade, outfitted them with rail and cart systems to whisk drugs under the U.S. border and, after being discovered by authorities, abandoned them.

But some of the illicit passageways live on.

At least six previously discovered border tunnels have been reactivated by Mexican trafficking groups in recent years, exposing a recurring large-scale smuggling threat, according to U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials.

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[photo]

At a roadside restaurant outside Kabul, Gula Jan, far left, sells hashish to a wide array of clients. (Sultan Faizy / For The Times)

Gula Jan ground a small amount of hashish, about the size of a marble, in his hand. He mixed it with tobacco and carefully rolled it into a cigarette. Then he smiled.

"Do you know how many people come and smoke hash here?" he said. "Thousands!"

The 34-year-old counts parliamentarians, government officials, doctors, engineers and businessmen among his clients. They all stop by his usual spot on a river bend 45 miles outside Kabul for a taste of his specialty.

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What is cannabis topical oil? And why is this Rancho Cordova couple so good at making it?

The runner-up in the "topicals" division at December's Emerald Cup cannabis competition in Santa Rosa had a familiar name attached to it: Lavender Epsom Salts by Whoopi & Maya, a company co-founded by comedian Whoopi Goldberg.

Chelsea Dudgeon and Newell Taylor of Rancho Cordova didn't have the same kind of name recognition with their product, which also provides pain relief from cannabis via skin absorption. But these partners in business and romance were equipped with something better: the winning formula.

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Uri Zeevi is used to skepticism. People hear about his Seedo indoor home cultivator and they're astonished.

"Nobody has seen anything like this," he said from his office in Israel. "It's really new, just coming onto the market."

But someday, indoor home cultivators may be as common as dishwashers or backyard gas grills -- indispensable home appliances that changed the way people live.

Without sunlight, outdoor space or experience, anyone could grow tomatoes, strawberries, gourmet lettuce, herbs and, yes, cannabis year-round inside a home cultivator.

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Marijuana and its derivatives can be effective medicines for treating pain, nausea, vomiting, muscle spasms and other conditions, but cannabis is not harmless, and more research is needed, the nation's top scientists concluded in a landmark review of research released Thursday.

The nonprofit National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine issued their report, "The Health Effects of Cannabis and Cannabinoids," summarizing the current state of evidence for the efficacy of medical marijuana and recommending new studies.

The 395-page report will stand as the most official medical review of the botanical drug, which an estimated 8 percent of Americans used in the last month.

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The health and public safety concerns that kept marijuana illegal for generations are proving unfounded where it is now legal.

A new study from Columbia University found that traffic fatalities have fallen in seven states where medicinal cannabis is legal and that, overall, states where medical marijuana is legal have lower traffic fatality rates than states were medical marijuna remains illegal.

The study found that "medical marijuana laws were associated with immediate reductions in traffic fatalities in those aged 15 to 24 and 25 to 44 years, and with additional yearly gradual reductions in those aged 25 to 44 years." Medical marijuana is now legal in 28 states.

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Newport Beach Police Chief Jon Lewis, seen in this file photo, says Prop. 64, which legalized recreational marijuana possession and use for adults 21 and older in California, will make for "an interesting year" in Newport. (File photo)

Marijuana dispensaries and growing and delivery remain illegal in Newport Beach, but residents can smoke it in their homes under California law.

The possible effects of the statewide legalization of recreational marijuana use, which voters approved in November, were the focus of discussion Wednesday night at a Speak Up Newport event where Police Chief Jon Lewis and City Attorney Aaron Harp answered questions in front of more than 50 Newport Beach residents and officials.

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[photo] In this Jan. 5, 2010, file photo, a northbound Amtrak Acela passes through Middle River, Md.

For years, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has engaged in a questionable use of thousands of informants.

The DEA has used airline employees, parcel services workers and even staff at other government agencies, such as the Transportation Safety Administration and Amtrak, as its informants, in violation of Justice Department policies.

According to a recent audit from the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General, the DEA amassed an army of more than 18,000 informants between October 2010 and October 2015. Informants are offered cash rewards of up to $500,000 or 25 percent of successful cash seizures, whichever is less, and the DEA made $237 million in payments to more than 9,500 sources during this period.

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Though Prop. 64 legalized recreational marijuana, businesses aren't allowed start selling it until the state establishes a licensing system.

A security guard enters a shop with a sign posted that reads PROP 64 FRIENDLY! in Compton on Wednesday. (Photo by Ed Crisostomo, Orange County Register/SCNG)

The online ad for Green Light District -- a pot shop in a brick office building 5 miles from Disneyland -- was clear: Anyone 21 years and older was welcome to buy weed with only a "valid ID."

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Pot's legal in California. So why are people still getting busted in Yosemite?

Think pot is now legal in California? Try telling that to the National Park Service rangers ready to bust people caught with marijuana in Yosemite, Redwood, Death Valley and other federal lands across the state.

The federal government says it's not backing off on citing people who are caught with marijuana in California's national parks, monuments, recreational areas and other federal lands regardless of the landslide vote that legalized recreational marijuana in the state.

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Hi is a cannabis brand. Its logo -- "hi" in white letters inside an orange circle -- can be found above the front door of a Portland, Ore., marijuana shop and on a handful of cannabis products, including massage oil and Hi Releaf pain-relief balm.

But you wouldn't guess any of that from Hi's trademark filings. In 2015, the brand's parent company, Cannabis Sativa Inc., filed a trademark application -- not for any of Hi's core products, but for hats, T-shirts and a wide array of other apparel.

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A pot bust against legal growers in Yolo County seems to go too far

If ever you needed proof that we live in an age of confusion about marijuana laws, let me share with you the story of Ted Hicks and Ryan Mears, two Sacramento-area entrepreneurs who decided to start a legal medical cannabis business last year and ended up on the business end of assault rifles wielded by officers from a multi-agency, anti-drug task force.

I first heard about the case from Yolo County Supervisor Don Saylor in September, at a "State of Marijuana" conference aboard the Queen Mary in Long Beach. Saylor, who was on a panel discussing how cities and counties were dealing with cannabis regulation, said that Hicks and Mears and their business, Big Red Farms, were considered by county officials to be "shining stars" in the cannabis licensing arena.

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Los Angeles residents awoke Sunday morning to see that one thing, at least, looked different in the New Year: the Hollywood sign.

Photos shared on social media showed the iconic sign modified to read, "HOLLYWeeD."

Security footage taken around midnight Saturday showed a "lone individual" climbing up Mount Lee, scaling the sign using the built-in ladders and hanging tarpaulins over the sign's O's to change them to E's, said Sgt. Guy Juneau of the LAPD's Security Services division.

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It was March when fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 100 times more powerful than morphine, insinuated itself into Sacramento County. In a matter of weeks, dozens of people overdosed. The drug killed 12 people, including Jerome Butler, a 28-year-old father of three young children.

"We have lost so many of our kids behind this pill," Butler's mother, Natasha Butler, said at the time. "All the parents that (have) lost their kids behind this, we have to stand together. We have to get it stopped."

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[photo] Production supervisor Joshua Ramos trims marijuana plants in a flowering nursery at ButterBrand farms in San Francisco, California, on Friday, Oct. 28, 2016.

In 2016, the legal marijuana industry in the United States earned $5.8 billion dollars, according to San Francisco-based Arcview Market Research, first reported by Forbes.

In the whole of North America, those sales add up to $6.7 billion for the year, meaning the cannabis industry in the U.S. and Canada grew by an incredible 30 percent over the previous year - "faster and larger than," as Forbes writes, "the dot-com era."

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[photo] What looks like oxycodone pills are actually fentanyl. The pills were seized and submitted to crime labs in Tennessee. (Tommy Farmer The Associated Press(

[photo] Fentanyl is often legally prescribed to cancer patients to manage pain. It comes in patches and lozenges. (Tom Gannam Associated Press file)

It was March when fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 100 times more powerful than morphine, insinuated itself into Sacramento County. In a matter of weeks, dozens of people overdosed. The drug killed 12 people, including Jerome Butler, a 28-year-old father of three young children.

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Huron could be the second city in Fresno County to allow medical marijuana cultivation, manufacture and distribution, city documents show. Meanwhile, growers already are lining up to court neighboring Coalinga, which approved medical cannabis in July.

But other cities in conservative Fresno County, which has opposed all marijuana use for decades, remain in opposition to medical cannabis. Some have even passed resolutions formally opposing California Proposition 64, the state initiative in the upcoming election that would legalize adult recreational marijuana use. The initiative is likely to pass, but most of the county appears ready to forgo millions in potential marijuana revenue due to public safety concerns.

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As Victor Emilio Cazares Gastellum stood in a San Diego courtroom for sentencing Tuesday, the judge acknowledged the defendant was unlike the vast majority of drug offenders he sees day in and day out.

Cazares was not your typical drug mule caught crossing the border, nor was he a low-level distributor.

Cazares, 53, was a kingpin, the head of a large Mexican drug-trafficking organization aligned with the powerful Sinaloa cartel. He was in the business of shipping tons of cocaine from producers in Colombia and Venezuela to Mexico and distributing the drug throughout the U.S.

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