Contempt Of Court Charges Filed LOS ANGELES - Medical marijuana advocacy group Americans for Safe Access filed legal briefs Monday accusing the city of Montebello of contempt of court for refusing to return medical marijuana wrongfully seized more than four years ago. On Oct. 15, 2004, local police seized marijuana plants, growing equipment, and personal correspondence from the Montebello home of Terry Gene Walker. Police criminally charged Walker, regardless of his status as a medical marijuana patient, said Joe Elford, chief counsel for Oakland-based ASA, who is representing Walker in his contempt claim. [continues 312 words]
Contempt Of Court Charges Filed LOS ANGELES - Medical marijuana advocacy group Americans for Safe Access filed legal briefs Monday accusing the city of Montebello of contempt of court for refusing to return medical marijuana wrongfully seized more than four years ago. On Oct. 15, 2004, local police seized marijuana plants, growing equipment, and personal correspondence from the Montebello home of Terry Gene Walker. Police criminally charged Walker, regardless of his status as a medical marijuana patient, said Joe Elford, chief counsel for Oakland-based ASA, who is representing Walker in his contempt claim. [continues 313 words]
Contempt Of Court Charges Filed LOS ANGELES - Medical marijuana advocacy group Americans for Safe Access filed legal briefs Monday accusing the city of Montebello of contempt of court for refusing to return medical marijuana wrongfully seized more than four years ago. On Oct. 15, 2004, local police seized marijuana plants, growing equipment, and personal correspondence from the Montebello home of Terry Gene Walker. Police criminally charged Walker, regardless of his status as a medical marijuana patient, said Joe Elford, chief counsel for Oakland-based ASA, who is representing Walker in his contempt claim. [continues 314 words]
Garden Grove Had Appealed a Ruling That Ordered the Return of Drug Seized From a Patient During a Traffic Stop. More than three years after Garden Grove police seized a small amount of marijuana from a chronic pain patient, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to consider the city's argument -- which divided California's major law enforcement organizations -- that it should not have to give the drugs back. Advocates cheered the development as a step forward for medical marijuana users to get their "medicine" back from police. [continues 605 words]
Boxes Of Evidence Removed; No Arrests Made CHERRYLAND - Federal agents on Wednesday raided We Are Hemp, a medical marijuana dispensary at 931 East Lewelling Blvd., and removed six boxes of evidence but made no arrests, authorities said. The Drug Enforcement Administration declined to disclose what spurred the raid. The dispensary has been operating for eight years. "The documents relating to today's enforcement operation remain under court seal," agent Javier F. Pena said in a prepared statement Wednesday. "A federal search warrant was served and items of evidentiary value were seized. No arrests have been made and the investigation is ongoing." [continues 138 words]
California Attorney General Jerry Brown has issued new guidelines for medical marijuana clubs, but Northern California's leading cannabis advocate says they don't represent any major changes. The new guidelines "could be a healthy development, if they indicate the attorney general wants the state to take over enforcement efforts and keep the DEA out of it," said Dale Gieringer, state coordinator for California NORML. The National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) has been at the forefront of the effort to decriminalize cannabis, and the California group was a leading proponent of Proposition 215, the 1996 statewide ballot initiative that provided state-level legal protection for patients authorized by a physician to use the drug. [continues 508 words]
ARCATA - An Arcata cannabis dispensary has filed a petition in Humboldt County Superior Court over the Planning Commission's decision to prohibit commercial cultivation of medical marijuana downtown. The petition names the City of Arcata, City Council and Planning Commission as respondents. In papers filed Tuesday, July 1, Humboldt Medical Supply (HMS) asks that the Planco's decision, later upheld by the City Council, be stayed so that it may cultivate cannabis at its new facility at 855 Eighth Street next to the Arcata Post Office. [continues 1889 words]
An establishment that calls itself a holistic medicinal cooperative has opened in a North Vallejo strip mall, but customers and neighboring businesses say the store dispenses medicinal marijuana. The innocuous store, which bears no sign other than one that says "Open," and has reflective glass preventing outsiders from peering inside, has been operating since April, according to city records. Brian Everett, the man listed as the store's owner on the business license, said the establishment is a "private members only patients cooperative" that provides holistic and herbal medicine. He said it is not a medical marijuana dispensary. Everette said "no comment" when asked if the store sold marijuana. [continues 1606 words]
OROVILLE -- A Vallejo man went on trial Wednesday, charged with the murders of two of three men killed in a gun battle during a marijuana buy at an Oroville motel in 2006. Though there is no evidence Deandre Tyrone Lowe, now 39, was ever armed, prosecutors are charging him with murder under the so-called "felony murder rule," which holds accomplices liable for deaths that occur during certain serious crimes. According to police reports, during the Oct. 22, 2006, transaction at the Best Value Inn in Oroville, one of four would-be buyers, Dejuan Dean, 34, of Vallejo, pulled a gun and ordered the other two men with him -- including Lowe -- to scoop up the money and drugs, from three Concow area pot sellers. [continues 835 words]
When federal drug enforcement agents raided three medical marijuana dispensaries in San Mateo last year, county officials responded to the outcry from local cannabis patients by calling for guidelines to distribute the controversial medication. But the Peninsula's last remaining dispensary was raided by federal agents two weeks ago, and the county is still far from creating a promised model ordinance designed to help medical marijuana patients receive their medication. What's the hold-up? For one thing, the legal landscape for medical marijuana in California keeps shifting with every new appeals court decision and proposed legislation, according to Deputy County Counsel Penny Bennett. [continues 1542 words]
Changing Court Rulings Make Drafting Pot Ordinance Difficult When federal drug enforcement agents raided three medical marijuana dispensaries in San Mateo last year, county officials responded to the outcry from local cannabis patients by calling for guidelines to distribute the controversial medication. But the Peninsula's last remaining dispensary was raided by federal agents two weeks ago, and the county is still far from creating a promised model ordinance designed to help medical marijuana patients receive their medication. What's the holdup? [continues 924 words]
A California appellate court ruled Thursday that state legislators overstepped their bounds in 2003 by limiting the amount of marijuana that patients could possess for medical purposes. The unanimous opinion by Los Angeles' 2nd District Court of Appeal said legislators acted unconstitutionally when they passed a statute that effectively amended Proposition 215 -- also known as the Compassionate Use Act of 1996 -- to allow patients a maximum 8 ounces of dried pot and six mature or 12 immature marijuana plants at any given time. [continues 491 words]
Feds Say That Belief Is Irrelevant As Trial Gets Under Way Monday Two Modesto men who ran a medical marijuana clinic on McHenry Avenue, raking in $6 million in less than two years, might have a difficult time mounting a defense against federal drug charges when they go to trial Monday. Luke Scarmazzo and Ricardo Ruiz Montes claim they were abiding by the terms of Proposition 215 when they ran a cannabis dispensary that paid state and federal taxes, opened its books to the city and had a business license. [continues 1094 words]
The owner of an Oakland factory that produced marijuana candy with names like Buddafinga and Mr. Greenbud has pleaded guilty to conspiring to manufacture and distribute marijuana. Michael Martin, 33, of El Sobrante entered a guilty plea at a hearing Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Oakland. He is scheduled to be sentenced July 2 by Judge Claudia Wilken. Martin is the owner of Tainted Inc., which started as a boutique business that made chocolate truffles and grew into a large marijuana-candy maker that bought chocolate by the ton, authorities said. [continues 366 words]
Lawsuit Claims City Conspired With Feds To Drive Out Business A Modesto man who managed a medical marijuana dispensary on McHenry Avenue is suing the city, saying local authorities conspired with the federal government to shut down a lucrative business that raked in $6 million in less than two years. Luke Scarmazzo, formerly the treasurer and secretary of California Healthcare Collective, filed the lawsuit Thursday in Stanislaus County Superior Court, seeking compensation for emotional distress, mental anguish and the loss of a job that paid him $13,000 a month. [continues 686 words]
Suppliers could be banned from opening in unincorporated areas Donuel Bruno has a list of ailments: inverted scoliosis, degenerative disk disease, carpal tunnel syndrome, insomnia. Simply walking across a room or sitting for a half-hour caused him extreme pain until he discovered the remedy for his health problems - -- medical marijuana. The 38-year-old Oakley resident gets his marijuana from a dispensary and uses a vaporizer to breath in a mist of THC, the active chemical in the sap of a cannabis plant. [continues 647 words]
A new Assembly bill with two Bay Area co-authors seeks to protect medical-marijuana users' jobs. AB 2279, introduced Wednesday, would prohibit employment discrimination against those who use marijuana as medicine in compliance with state law away from the workplace. It would leave intact already-existing provisions barring consumption in the workplace, and would protect employers from liability by carving out an exception for safety-sensitive jobs. Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, had vowed to introduce such a bill last month after the state Supreme Court ruled 5-2 that an employer can fire a worker solely because he or she uses medical marijuana outside the workplace. [continues 173 words]
This will be a make-or-break year for medical marijuana dispensaries - - if they can survive the tactics employed by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which recently added busting dispensaries' landlords to its repertoire of raids and fear. As urged by Senate Joint Resolution 20 by state Sen. Carole Migden, D-San Francisco, the federal government needs to back off and respect state compassionate use laws that authorize a network of responsible, law abiding and tax-paying medical marijuana providers. [continues 580 words]
When Hillary Rodham Clinton announced her campaign for the Senate in 2000, she declared - emphatically, according to an interviewer - that she supported the death penalty. When Barack Obama first ran for the Illinois state Senate in 1996, he said in a campaign questionnaire that he opposed capital punishment. Their positions seemed to reflect their political roots - Clinton, the moderate "New Democrat," a term she has used to describe herself; Obama, the insurgent who got his start as a community organizer. But times change, and so do candidates, particularly on issues that loom as potential minefields for Democrats with presidential ambitions. It's a less delicate topic for Republicans, whose leading candidates - with the exception of maverick Rep. Ron Paul - espouse time-tested, nearly identical law-and-order platforms. [continues 1376 words]
Despite 1996 State Law, Employers Can Fire Those Who Flunk Drug Test. In the latest blow to medical marijuana rights, the California Supreme Court ruled Thursday that employers can fire workers who test positive for the drug, even when it is used under a physician's advice. The decision immediately spurred calls by activists and lawmakers for the overhaul of the state's medical marijuana law voters passed more than a decade ago. But business leaders welcomed the court's position. [continues 891 words]
Oakland Cannabis Court Case
