Efforts to lower marijuana taxes to help the transition to California's new legal market have suffered a setback. A bill that would have slashed taxes on legal pot for three years to entice people away from the black market failed to advance out of a key legislative committee Friday. Assemblyman Tom Lackey co-authored the bill and said the setback is a win for the black market. The Los Angeles-area Republican says he hopes the policy can still be passed this year. He says opponents of the bill in the Assembly had argued it is too soon to slash the taxes without further evidence they are driving people to the black market. Growers and sellers of marijuana in California have complained the taxes are too high. [end]
A cloud of smoke hung over Cal Expo Friday afternoon as thousands gathered for the High Times Cannabis Cup, the first permitted event in California to allow recreational use of marijuana. Organizers expected upwards of 15,000 people over the course of the two-day festival, which boasts musical performances from acclaimed artists, including Lauryn Hill, Lil Wayne, Gucci Mane, Rich The Kid, Cypress Hill, Rick Ross and Ludacris. The event was at risk of becoming a music-only festival until the Sacramento City Council approved a license for on-site consumption and sales in a 6-2 vote Tuesday. Weeks earlier, a similar High Times event had its permit denied by the San Bernardino City Council just before it was scheduled to take place. [continues 603 words]
There's a problem with access to legal weed in California, and a Senate bill may help solve it. A 2016 voter-approved measure to legalize marijuana in the state gave cities and counties the authority to pass regulations outlining the types of weed businesses that can operate within their borders. With limited time to craft rules before the law took effect at the start of the year, many towns approved outright bans of all marijuana businesses. The patchwork of local laws have created vast "pot deserts" that will remain until cities and counties opt to reconsider rules. A Bee analysis in March found that 40 percent of the state is 60 miles or more from a legal dispensary. [continues 105 words]
It's already used to treat epilepsy in some children -- and now researchers are examining whether a marijuana compound could also be helpful for those with autism. The University of California San Diego announced in a news release that it will be conducting a test on children with "severe" autism to see if cannabidiol, commonly referred to as CBD, can help treat some of their symptoms. The research, which will involve 30 children, was made possible thanks to a $4.7 million donation from the Ray and Tye Noorda Foundation in Lindon, Utah, according to The San Diego Tribune. The goal is to see if CBD can lessen seizures, anxiety and self-harming. [continues 622 words]
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a longtime opponent of legalizing recreational marijuana, now says the federal government should not interfere in California's legal marijuana market. In comments to McClatchy Tuesday -- in the middle of a 2018 campaign for her seat in a state that has settled into the legal pot market -- the California Democrat said she was open to considering federal protection for state-legalized marijuana. Feinstein's office said her views changed after meetings with constituents, particularly those with young children who have benefited from medical marijuana use. [continues 968 words]
For decades, it has embraced its gay and lesbian bars and the rock 'n' roll debauchery of the Sunset Strip. It runs a free nightlife trolley called The PickUp, with a jar of free condoms by the door. Now, it's embracing a different type of social scene: pot lounges. The city is poised to allow cannabis lounges where people can consume the once-taboo product in a social setting. West Hollywood will join San Francisco, Oakland and South Lake Tahoe, which earlier this year became some of the first cities in California to open the consumption lounges modeled after those in Amsterdam. Communities in the Coachella Valley are also joining the ranks. [continues 1020 words]
State and local regulators are warning dispensary owners against holding off-site parties or allowing on-site cannabis consumption Friday during the annual celebration known as 4/20. A number of Sacramento-area dispensaries are advertising special events for the day, but most are scheduled for on-site and make no mention of on-site consumption. One exception is the second annual "Hella 420," billed as "Sacramento's only 4/20 recreational cannabis event." It is scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. at midtown Sacramento's Exhale Smoke Shop and is sponsored by Ohana Gardens, a licensed dispensary. [continues 266 words]
An Inland church that uses marijuana to worship is embroiled in a bitter dispute with Jurupa Valley, which alleges the Vault Church of Open Faith is primarily a pot store and has been trying to shut it down for more than a year. An association representing the church and about 15 others like it fired back Friday, April 13, filing a claim against the city seeking $1.2 million in damages and alleging harassment and discrimination. Church leaders say they smoke marijuana or eat edibles as part of spiritual meditation as a religious sacrament, but city officials say they're using religion as a front for selling pot. [continues 887 words]
SAN DIEGO - Support for drugs like Suboxone, Vivitrol and methadone was one of the rallying cries at the annual American Society for Addiction Medicine conference this week in California. Broadly known as medication-assisted treatments, the drugs are sometimes-controversial tools for battling the growing opioid epidemic. Though they work in different ways, all three can be taken long-term to reduce the chance of relapse into drug use. "It's not a matter of ideology," said ASAM president Dr. Kelly Clark. "It's a matter of the facts show a person's risk of dying is higher when they don't take medication." [continues 546 words]
SARASOTA COUNTY -- More medical marijuana is coming to the county after the Sarasota County Commission on Wednesday approved the second dispensary application in two days. The County Commission voted 4-1 to allow Sarasota-based AltMed to open a medical marijuana dispensary at 5077 Fruitville Road in the Cobia Bay shopping plaza -- making it the second approved dispensary in unincorporated county. Commissioner Mike Moran, who has concerns medical dispensaries could be the gateway to legalizing recreational marijuana in the state, cast the dissenting vote. [continues 133 words]
By the time Thomas Hodorowski made the connection between his marijuana habit and the bouts of pain and vomiting that left him incapacitated every few weeks, he had been to the emergency room dozens of times, tried anti-nausea drugs, anti-anxiety medications and antidepressants, endured an upper endoscopy procedure and two colonoscopies, seen a psychiatrist and had his appendix and gallbladder removed. The only way to get relief for the nausea and pain was to take a hot shower. He often stayed in the shower for hours at a time. When the hot water ran out, "the pain was unbearable, like somebody was wringing my stomach out like a washcloth," said Hodorowski, 28, a production and shipping assistant who lives outside Chicago. [continues 892 words]
CALIFORNIA SLOW TO ACCEPT PROP. 64 Recreational marijuana is legal in California, but it probably isn't legal to buy in your city. Fewer than one in three cities in California have approved any kind of cannabis industry, and only a sliver of cities allow recreational pot shops. The Southern California News Group has tracked the rules for every city and county in California, to show the patchwork of rules governing a product that became street legal four months ago. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group) [continues 1645 words]
In the first two months of cannabis legalization, consumers bought an estimated $339 million worth of marijuana products from retailers in California, 50 percent less than state projections, according to a leading analytics firm. The state has estimated that retail cannabis sales for the year would be $3.4 billion, or $570 million every two months. BDS Analytics of Boulder, Colorado, provided the firm's data to The Bee. Greg Shoenfeld, vice president for operations, said the company collects sales data from dispensaries and uses statistical modeling to project statewide sales. BDS Analytics also collects and analyzes such data in the three other states with recreational marijuana: Oregon, Washington and Colorado. [continues 443 words]
Three months after recreational marijuana went on sale in California, San Diego retailers say business has been brisk and the customer base diverse, including older people who use a private shuttle bus to reach one dispensary. "There's been a change in the culture," said Will Senn, who operates two Urbn Leaf marijuana stores in San Diego and is about to open a third. "Cannabis is becoming more accepted. Now that adult-use marijuana is legal, people are giving it a try. The average age of our customers has gone from about 40 to about 50." [continues 687 words]
What makes a 40-year-old marijuana movie relevant? Cheech and Chong have an answer. When Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong made their groundbreaking movie "Up in Smoke" 40 years ago, marijuana and the culture surrounding it were much different. People smoked "Mexican brick weed," and often had to search high and low to "score a lid" because it was illegal. Nowadays, consumers vape, eat and smoke cannabis, which is much stronger and comes in so many strains that someone mimicked the periodic table to keep track of them all. And, of course, cannabis is legal in some form in much of the country. [continues 641 words]
The Riverside City Council voted Tuesday, March 27, to have staff members prepare an expansive ban on marijuana-related activities. The ban, which must be approved as a city ordinance before it takes effect, would replace Riverside's current moratorium that temporarily bans most marijuana business. Councilman Chuck Conder proposed the ban, which would prohibit the retail and commercial sale, commercial cultivation, distribution, and outdoor cultivation of medical marijuana plants. He did so after a delegation of city officials who traveled to Denver, including Conder himself, gave a three-hour presentation on the effects of marijuana legalization there. [continues 469 words]
Three months into the start of California's recreational marijuana market, industry leaders are voicing concerns that sales are not meeting projections, and that high taxes, complicated regulations and a thriving black market are having deleterious effects. The leaders pressed government officials to make changes during Tuesday's gathering of an estimated 600 people at the California Cannabis Industry Association conference at the Sheraton Grand in Sacramento. "This is an industry in crisis," said Kristi Knoblich, president of the association's board and co-founder of Kiva Confections, a manufacturer of edible cannabis products. "This is me sounding the alarm." [continues 599 words]
Moreno Valley officials have set the stage for a range of legal marijuana businesses to open in Riverside County's second-largest city while limiting the number of commercial pot enterprises to 27 -- eight of them dispensaries. The widely anticipated move, approved Tuesday, March 20, comes as the city is working to shut down illegal pot stores. City Attorney Martin Koczanowicz said that since last summer the city has discovered 20 dispensaries operating illegally in Moreno Valley and closed 15. It's now working to eliminate the other five. [continues 607 words]
OAKLAND, Calif. - When officers burst into Rickey McCullough's two-story home in Oakland a decade ago they noted a "strong fresh odor of marijuana." Mr. McCullough had been growing large amounts of marijuana illegally, the police said. He was arrested and spent a month in jail. A few weeks ago the city of Oakland, now promoting itself as a hub for marijuana entrepreneurs, awarded Mr. McCullough, 33, a license to sell marijuana and the prospect of interest-free loans. Four hundred miles to the south, in the Los Angeles suburb of Compton, Virgil Grant, 50, straddles the same two worlds, but with a different outcome. He was a marijuana dealer in the 1990s whose customers are said to have included rap stars like Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and Tupac, and he spent more than eight years in prison on marijuana convictions. But his vision of starting a marijuana dispensary in his hometown was dashed in January when the residents of Compton voted decisively to ban marijuana businesses from city limits. [continues 1415 words]
A popular marijuana website has told the state's cannabis czar that she lacks the authority to make the company stop running advertisements for unlicensed pot retailers. In a letter sent Monday to Lori Ajax of the Bureau of Cannabis Control, Doug Francis and Chris Beals of Weedmaps.com said the company is not licensed by the bureau and therefore not subject to its enforcement. They also said Weedmaps is protected from such action because the company is an "interactive computer service" covered under the federal Communications Decency Act. The law states that such a service shall not be treated as the publisher of information provided by a third party. [continues 405 words]
