A San Diego County resident is among 40 people nationwide to become infected with salmonella bacteria linked to kratom, the controversial tropical herb that many have begun using to treat opioid addiction despite an import ban from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. According to the county Health and Human Services Agency, a 44-year-old, whose gender and city of residence were not released, became ill in January. Testing performed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed that symptoms were caused by the same subspecies of the salmonella bacteria that has now produced cases in 27 states. [continues 695 words]
The state auditor says Ohio should continue its medical marijuana program despite "multiple" flaws in selecting grower applicants. Republican Auditor David Yost says the program's flaws should be handled by administrative appeals or lawsuits. At issue is the Department of Commerce's admission last week that a scoring error led to a company's inadvertent exclusion from the proposed list of the dozen big marijuana growers in Ohio's new program. The agency says it identified the mistake after Yost expressed concern that two employees had complete access to the scoring data. The agency offered to put the program on hold. Yost said in Wednesday's letter it's too late for that. He urged the agency to get advice from the Ohio Attorney General. [end]
Now that marijuana is legal in California, people don't have to hide their marijuana use -- in fact, some are smoking it right in officers' faces. But these pot smokers aren't being brazen. They're actually helping police better detect impaired drivers on the road, CBS Los Angeles reported. Glendale police Officer Bryan Duncan told the news station that about 75 percent of the DUI arrests he makes these days are drug impaired -- "more cannabis than alcohol." A group of smokers recently gathered at a hotel where they were first given field sobriety tests, and then allowed to start smoking marijuana, Inside Edition reported. They later took sobriety tests for a second time to judge how the drug affected their mental and motor skill, the news outlet said. [continues 349 words]
Berkeley may be the first city to declare itself a cannabis sanctuary city. A customer shops at marijuana dispensary MedMen in West Hollywood in January. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times) The Berkeley City Council voted unanimously to declare the city a sanctuary for recreational marijuana, a move that may be the first of its kind. The resolution, adopted Tuesday, prohibits Berkeley's agencies and employees from using city resources to assist in enforcing federal marijuana laws or providing information on legal cannabis activities. [continues 367 words]
Frustrated with traditional therapies for chronic pain and post-combat stress disorders, a growing number of military veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are turning to medical marijuana for their treatment, a move that has put them at sharp odds with the Trump administration. The White House has resisted calls from Democrats in Congress, pro-reform activists and even the American Legion, the nation's largest wartime veterans service organization, to support research into whether marijuana can help veterans, apparently fearing that any move by the Department of Veterans Affairs to study its effectiveness will be another step toward nationwide legalization. [continues 1156 words]
Even before California legalized recreational marijuana Jan. 1, pot was enjoying a gray renaissance. From 2006 to 2013, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health reported a 250% rise in marijuana use by Americans 65 and older. It is still a small share, climbing from 0.4% to 1.4% of that population, but local dispensaries see plenty of silver-haired shoppers. "This is probably the most interested -- and wariest -- group," said Lincoln Fish, chief executive of cannabis company Outco, noting that the average customer at his Outliers Collective in El Cajon is over 58 years old. [continues 963 words]
Officials in San Francisco said Tuesday they will open two safe injection sites this summer, joining Philadelphia and Seattle on the list of American cities that are planning to open sites where people in addiction can use drugs under medical supervision and be revived if they overdose. The announcement comes three weeks after Philadelphia officials announced their own plans to open a site here. Like Philadelphia's, the San Francisco site will be funded privately. And also like Philadelphia, the funding sources aren't yet clear, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. City officials there said they were working with "six to eight nonprofits that already operate needle exchanges and offer other drug addiction services." Two will host the first safe injection sites, and will likely open in July, officials said. [continues 105 words]
A company responsible for keeping Sacramento dispensaries compliant with the law has run afoul of the city's pot czar for planning an illegal marijuana party. Capitol Compliance Management and its nine affiliated dispensaries have been running advertisements in the Sacramento News & Review for a "Holiday Budtender Bash" that was scheduled for Thursday. Joe Devlin, the city's chief of cannabis policy and enforcement, said the company canceled the event after he told them it would violate state and city laws by allowing public consumption of marijuana and by giving it away. [continues 373 words]
San Francisco is on track to open its first two safe injection sites this July, a milestone that will likely make the city the first in the country to embrace the controversial model of allowing drug users to shoot up under supervision. Other cities - including Seattle, Baltimore and Philadelphia - are talking about opening their own safe injection facilities, but San Francisco could get there first. Facilities already exist in Canada, Australia and Europe. Barbara Garcia, director of San Francisco's Department of Public Health, said Monday that she's tending to the details, including where the facilities will be located. She's working with six to eight nonprofits that already operate needle exchanges and offer other drug addiction services, and two of them will be selected to offer safe injection on-site. [continues 956 words]
California's top cannabis regulator said the state deserves credit for a successful rollout of retail marijuana sales, but acknowledged that significant issues loom in the near future. One month after the start of recreational marijuana sales, Lori Ajax, chief of the state Bureau of Cannabis Control, gave an assessment of the state's performance for a few hundred people at the International Cannabis Business Conference. She praised her employees, who worked through the weekend before the Monday, Jan. 1 beginning of legal sales, granting licenses to dispensaries eager to start. Employees continued to work on Jan. 1, expecting to receive complaints from license applicants and holders, but they never came, Ajax said. [continues 360 words]
When California voters legalized recreational weed in 2016, they made the law retroactive, allowing residents to petition to overturn or reduce old convictions for possession, cultivation and distribution of marijuana. But it is a difficult and expensive legal procedure, advocates say, and many people are not even aware they are now eligible to clean up their records. State courts received 4,885 petitions in the first 11 months after Proposition 64 passed, while the pro-legalization Drug Policy Alliance found more than 460,000 arrests for marijuana offenses between 2006 and 2015 alone. [continues 275 words]
State Treasurer John Chiang laid out a plan Tuesday to create a public bank for marijuana merchants in open defiance of what he called an =93out of step=94 Trump administration fixing to take the hose to California's sizzling new herbal trade. Chiang said he and California Attorney General Xavier Becerra have initiated "a methodical and disciplined" cost-benefit analysis to determine whether a public bank would work in California amid the threat of a federal crackdown. The move comes 30 days after California's recreational market officially began, creating a financial windfall for marijuana merchants and illuminating a serious problem. Store owners, growers and distributors are being forced to use cash because most banks won't open accounts for them while the federal government still considers marijuana illegal. [continues 738 words]
Bay Area marijuana retailers who went fully mainstream this month were forced to act like gangsters anyway as they rumbled down freeways and across bridges in sport utility vehicles and sedans and, in at least one case, a Tesla, bearing cash piled in shopping bags and suitcases. The money was headed for the collectors at the San Francisco and Oakland offices of the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration, which are handling tax payments under the 2016 state law that legalized recreational cannabis. [continues 1174 words]
Dennis Peron, an activist who helped legalize medical marijuana in California, died Saturday afternoon in a San Francisco hospital. He was 71. Peron was a force behind a San Francisco ordinance allowing medical marijuana, a win that later helped propel the 1996 passage of Prop. 215, which legalized medical use for the entire state. A Vietnam War veteran, Peron spent some of the last years his life on a 20-acre farm in the rolling hills of Lake County, growing and giving away what he once sold: medical marijuana. [continues 434 words]
During his 25 years of researching cannabis, Dr. Daniele Piomelli has received hundreds of emails from people desperately wanting to know whether the plant can help them with medical problems. He recalls the one he received from the father of a girl with autism who was desperate for help. "Ninety-nine percent of the time, I have to say, 'We just don't know,' " said Piomelli, a professor at the University of California, Irvine. "It's heartbreaking." While Piomelli and other marijuana researchers acknowledge a shortage of research on the benefits and risks of the drug, they also said they feel the need to spread what is known about cannabis as California and seven other states move forward with legalized, recreational weed for adults. Piomelli was one of several public health experts who spoke Thursday during a legislative briefing at the state Capitol on the health effects of cannabis. [continues 385 words]
Critics said this ad promoted drug use. Now the state of California has pulled it Video: The campaign, released ahead of California legalizing marijuana on Jan. 1, stirred controversy with viewers over its descriptions of the drug. California Office of Traffic Safety The California Office of Traffic Safety has pulled a public service advertisement that was intended to stop stoned driving but critics said promoted marijuana use. The office joined with law enforcement leaders last week to announce a marketing campaign called "DUI Doesn't Just Mean Booze," which included the controversial advertisement. The campaign was timed to coincide with the start of recreational weed sales in California on Jan. 1. [continues 319 words]
This month, Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, introduced legislation to change the spelling of "marihuana" in the 1970 Controlled Substances Act to "marijuana" - and then to drop the word altogether from the federal list of "controlled substances" - that is, illegal drugs. Removing the marijuana prohibition from federal law is just the warm-up act to the bill's primary goal: to end a counterproductive war on drugs. It's past time to reform drug laws that have ruined lives and devastated communities. [continues 608 words]
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%. [continues 75 words]
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. [continues 263 words]
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. [continues 194 words]
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. [continues 816 words]
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. [continues 925 words]
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. [continues 110 words]
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. [continues 105 words]
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. [continues 55 words]
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 [end]
"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!" [continues 1117 words]
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. [continues 139 words]
Legal sale of recreational marijuana began in California on Monday with fanfare, and some anxiety. Companies began selling pot in a relatively small number of businesses Monday, with more expected to join in the coming days and weeks. The state has issued dozens of permits for retailers to begin recreational sales this week, expanding a market that is expected to grow to $7 billion annually by 2020. Several of those retailers are in West Hollywood, but they won't open until Tuesday at the city's request. That makes Santa Ana's licensed stores the closest option for Angelenos who want to buy recreational marijuana on New Year's Day. Buyers could also trek to San Diego or the Palm Springs area to purchase pot. [continues 1015 words]
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." [continues 801 words]
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. [continues 92 words]
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. [continues 702 words]
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." [continues 891 words]
In advance of the legalization of recreational marijuana sales on Jan. 1, there have been lots of debates over the details of the cannabis business. How many feet should pot shops be from schools or daycare centers? How many acres may a marijuana farmer cultivate? Who should be eligible for a license to sell and who shouldn't? But there's been much less discussion over an equally important question raised by the end of prohibition in California: What is the right public health message to send to adults who can now legally buy and use marijuana? Voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 64 last year and polls continue to show broad support for legalization. But just because marijuana is legal doesn't mean it is risk-free. [continues 640 words]
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. [continues 899 words]
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. [continues 626 words]
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. [continues 954 words]
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. [continues 283 words]
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. [continues 323 words]
In a dark room, Jahful Price slowly worked a row of pungent plants guided by his headlamp. He wore a white biohazard suit, methodically picking up cannabis plants by their stems and hanging them upside down on a rack with plastic clothes hangers. Price, a 31-year-old Oakland resident who is black, is getting hands-on experience in cannabis cultivating that he hopes will help him run his own business one day. Since July, he's had a paid internship at NUG, a cannabis business owned by Bloom Innovations, a horticulture consulting and management firm in Oakland. NUG chose Nine Mile Tribe, a business owned by Price's family, as one of its equity partners. [continues 1023 words]
At the two malls in town you can buy key chains and Christmas ornaments shaped like marijuana leaves. Along a downtown shopping corridor, paintings of cannabis plants grace storefront windows. Even Kmart stocks its shelves with T-shirts and mugs decorated with the signature green leaf and "Colorado est. 2012" -- the year the state legalized recreational marijuana. But that is the one pot product you can't buy in Colorado Springs. When Coloradans voted overwhelmingly to make non-medical marijuana legal, they left it up to cities whether to allow sales. Colorado Springs, home to five military bases and known for its conservative politics and religious values, blocked recreational cannabis sales. Now some in town want to change that, saying the state's second largest city is missing out on sales taxes that are enriching cities across Colorado. [continues 1017 words]
Medical marijuana dispensaries and other portions of the medicinal cannabis supply chain could be legal in Fresno as the result of a unanimous vote Thursday by the City Council. The 7-0 vote begins the process of rewriting the city's complete ban on commercial marijuana operations that was adopted earlier this year. It will likely be several months, however, before drafts emerge for ordinances and rules that will govern where and how businesses that cultivate, process, manufacture, distribute or sell medical marijuana can operate within the city. [continues 990 words]
Two legislators called Tuesday for changes to regulations for growing marijuana in California to better protect small family farmers from being driven out of business by big corporate cultivators. Initial proposals to cap licensed marijuana farms at one to four acres were discarded by the state Department of Food and Agriculture, which has since proposed new rules without any cap, according to a letter of complaint to the agency by State Sen. Mike McGuire (D-San Rafael) and Assemblyman Jim Wood (D-Healdsburg). McGuire and Wood support a one-acre cap. [continues 146 words]
When a rising Chinese American power broker became a partner in a proposed cannabis dispensary in San Francisco's Outer Sunset, he knew it would hit resistance. But David Ho sees himself as the perfect emissary to the mostly older Chinese residents and merchants who are deeply skeptical of the pot trade. "I'm the working-class, westside Asian American story," said Ho, who is a co-owner of the Barbary Coast medical cannabis dispensary that has applied to open at 2161 Irving St., on a block lined with grocery stores, dry cleaning shops and banks. [continues 957 words]
For 17 years, Chalfonte LeNee Queen suffered periodic episodes of violent retching and abdominal pain that would knock her off her feet for days, sometimes leaving her writhing on the floor in pain. "I've screamed out for death," said Queen, 48, who lives in San Diego. "I've cried out for my mom who's been dead for 20 years, mentally not realizing she can't come to me." Queen lost a modeling job after being mistaken for an alcoholic. She racked up tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills, and her nausea interrupted her sex life. Towards the end of her illness, Queen, who stands 5-foot-9, weighed in at a frail 109 pounds. [continues 985 words]
There's hardly a more receptive or captive audience for marketing an intoxicant than the beleaguered commuters crowded onto a rush-hour Muni bus (except perhaps the ones packed onto a rush-hour BART train). But unlike many of the dopey regulations proliferating ahead of California's legalization of marijuana for recreational purposes in 2018, Muni's decision to ban cannabis advertising makes sense. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency's board voted Tuesday to ban recreational marijuana advertising and stop accepting medical marijuana ads once current contracts expire. The policy is in keeping with Muni's refusal of alcohol, tobacco and firearms advertising in light of the number of children who ride city buses and trains. It's also in line with statewide regulations that prohibit cannabis advertising that targets children or reaches audiences with large numbers of young people. [continues 166 words]
VICTORVILLE - San Bernardino County Sheriff's Deputies seized 3,475 marijuana plants after serving search warrants at four High Desert locations Friday, the agency announced Saturday. All of the marijuana grows were not in compliance with the California medical marijuana law or other ordinances, the sheriff's department said in a statement. At three of the four locations investigators found that the illegal growers had tampered with the main power lines at residences to bypass the electrical meters installed by the utility company, allowing the theft of electricity needed to operate equipment used to grow marijuana. [continues 68 words]
State Sen. Scott Wiener, who has adopted the cannabis industry as one of his major concerns, is taking aim at new state regulations for recreational marijuana that will allow for big growing operations in California. "By not limiting the amount of land that can be cultivated by any one operation, we are basically inviting mega industrial-scale operations into the state," the San Francisco Democrat said. "It will squeeze out the small farmers that have been at the forefront of the industry for many, many years." [continues 218 words]
The Sacramento City Council on Tuesday approved funding sources for increased law enforcement against illegal indoor pot grows, following a two-month pilot program that led to the closure of 614 pot houses. The city expects to spend between $700,000 and $1.1 million on police efforts to stop the approximately 1,000 illegal grows in Sacramento houses in the fiscal year ending June 30. The city will pay those costs with tax revenue collected from legal marijuana businesses, which are expected to start operating sometime after Jan. 1, when adults can purchase pot for recreational use statewide. The city plans to supplement that tax revenue with administrative fines collected from illegal pot growers. [continues 338 words]
Demonized for decades, marijuana remains controversial even on the brink of its statewide legalization - and even in pot-friendly strongholds such as San Francisco. The city is one of many still debating local regulations that will either embrace an overdue retreat from the drug war or effectively prolong the failed policy at the neighborhood level. For vacillating municipal officials, some context is in order. This week alone, New Jersey and Virginia voters resoundingly elected gubernatorial candidates promising to liberalize marijuana policy; Constellation Brands, a Fortune 500 seller of many popular wine and beer brands, was reported to have bought a nearly $200 million stake in a Canadian cannabis company; and California's attorney general approved signature-gathering for a ballot measure to legalize psilocybin mushrooms. [continues 272 words]
California
