No Cap on Permits; Policy Among Most Liberal in Area RICHMOND - This city could soon become a major hub for marijuana cultivation and manufacturing after the passage of one of the most liberal policies in the Bay Area. Starting Friday, Richmond will allow an unlimited number of permits for commercial cannabis grows as well as businesses that produce edibles like cookies, brownies and tinctures. The goal of the new law is to bring a sometimes shady industry into the light and generate money for a city that is perpetually strapped for cash. [continues 335 words]
What Five Years in Prison Taught California Former Dispensary Owner Dale Schafer, and Why He's Thinking About Getting Back into the Marijuana Biz A judge sentenced Dale Schafer to 60 months federal prison in 2008, but now the attorney and celebrity drug-war is out - and getting back into marijuana. The 62-year-old resident of Roseville, a suburb just east of Sacramento, and his wife, Dr. Marion "Mollie" Fry, became a poster couple for outrage over the federal crackdown on medical pot when federal prosecutors indicted them for operating a clinic in the Northern California foothills. [continues 786 words]
The medi-pot industry is racing to professionalize itself and lobby Sacramento before new rules remake the multibillion-dollar sector. California's medi-pot industry is racing to organize itself and lobby Sacramento lawmakers before local and statewide rules remake the Golden State's multibillion-dollar legal weed sector. Almost twenty years after state voters legalized medical cannabis, California's historic Medical Marijuana Regulation and Safety Act (MMRSA) took effect on January 1. The state Assembly held its first joint committee meeting on implementing MMRSA on January 19. Representatives of many of the dozen or so state agencies that are tasked with regulating medical weed gave testimony at the meeting, as did members of the medi-pot industry. [continues 776 words]
Jean Kennedy has a BS in biology and a master's in special education. Now, she's trying to decide what to do with her third degree: a certificate of achievement from Oaksterdam University, the Harvard Business School of marijuana. "I'm Italian," said Kennedy, 56, a retired high school biology teacher with graying hair and a heavy New York accent. "You know Italians, we grow tomatoes. Maybe I'll grow some plants." Horticulture 102 is one of the many subjects Kennedy studies at Oaksterdam, whose storefront campus is set amid the hip cafes, restaurants and cannabis dispensaries of downtown Oakland. Founded in 2007, the school sees itself as a training ground for citizen advocates in the fight to legalize marijuana. [continues 1416 words]
Oakland Plans to Capitalize on the State's New Regulations, and Is Proposing to Double the Number of Pot Shops, and to License Farms, Couriers, Hash Labs, and More. but Some Existing Clubs Don't Want the Competition. The City of Oakland is moving swiftly to capitalize on California's historic, state-level medical marijuana regulations with a vast expansion of The Town's cannabis industry permit system. The number of permitted dispensaries could double from eight to sixteen, or the cap on dispensary permits could be eliminated entirely. [continues 802 words]
Nearly two decades after California established a medical marijuana program, the patchwork of local regulations on the billion-dollar industry is often distilled to just two words: Wild West. Supporters and critics alike use the same description, but year after year in the Legislature, attempts to enact statewide controls on medical marijuana cultivation and sales fall through. Now that sophisticated political operators are crafting a 2016 measure to legalize pot, dispensary and law enforcement groups who want a regulatory framework for medical cannabis believe it's time to settle the issue. [continues 978 words]
SAN FRANCISCO - On a dark corner here in the Mission District on March 31, the doors opened at 7 p.m. for an under-the-radar pop-up dinner. Stationed at the entrance was a man who meticulously carded each of the 60 guests, even two with white hair. Inside the bar, long tables were set with wineglasses, place cards and something you don't see much of anymore: ashtrays. Soon after the party began, smoke wafted through the chandelier-lit room. Servers passed kimchi mini-pancakes prepared by the evening's chef, Robin Song, of the Mission's popular ham-and-oyster bar, Hog & Rocks. [continues 1259 words]
I hate to be the party pooper but I feel there is a need to point out that the possession, transportation, processing and use of marijuana is still illegal. It is not legal in Alaska, nor Colorado, nor Washington, nor Oregon. It's not legal in your house, nor in a car, or on a train, or in a plane. No Charlo Green I am; it's not legal to grow pot in this here land. There is this thing called the Controlled Substances Act. You can find it in Title 21, Section 800 or so of the U.S. Code. Section 812 lists marihuana (with an h) as a schedule I substance. [continues 779 words]
Professional reformers, longtime activists, and stakeholders in the marijuana industry attended an invitation-only meeting at the Waterfront Hotel in Oakland January 9 to discuss plans for a marijuana 'legalization' initiative to be on the ballot in California in 2016. The invitations came from the Coalition for Cannabis Policy Reform (CCPR), a group led by Dale Sky Jones that was formed after the defeat of a legalization measure in 2010, and the Drug Policy Alliance, represented by lobbyist Jim Gonzales The keynote speaker was Bill Zimmerman, a Los Angeles campaign consultant who is widely credited with masterminding the 1996 Proposition 215 campaign, which legalized marijuana for medical use in California. [continues 3333 words]
The authors miss the point entirely by using Gonzales v. Raich as evidence that federal jurisdiction over home-grown marijuana for personal use "has been legitimately invoked." It is as absurd to think marijuana grown at home for personal use affects interstate commerce as it is to think the tomatoes I grow in my garden affect interstate commerce and should likewise be subject to federal regulation. While the conservative Justice Antonin Scalia jumped ship in Raich, the stalwart Justice Clarence Thomas with his usual adherence to the written word of the Constitution did not. He wrote in dissent that "in the early days of the Republic, it would have been unthinkable that Congress could prohibit the local cultivation, possession, and consumption of marijuana," and warned, "if the Federal Government can regulate growing a half-dozen cannabis plants for personal consumption . . . then Congress' Article I powers . . . have no meaningful limits." Justice Thomas then concludes: "If the majority is to be taken seriously, the Federal Government may now regulate quilting bees, clothes drives, and potluck suppers throughout the 50 States. This makes a mockery of Madison's assurance to the people of New York that the "powers delegated to the Federal Government are 'few and defined', while those of the States are 'numerous and indefinite.'" Mr. Rivkin and Ms. Foley, Congress, and the majority in Raich got it badly wrong. Marc Garrett Remsenburg, N.Y. [end]
2014 was a weird year for me, and good riddance. I started out 2014 in the horrible Burlington County Jail and ended it as the writer of this weekly column for The Trentonian yeah, that's weird! My new year's resolution(s): to eat better and to open a religious temple in Trenton that provides marijuana to its congregants. I hope everyone has a happy new year, but we all know there will be a lot of unhappiness in 2015 as there is every year. Sorry to be a schleprock. My hope is marijuana legalization happens in 2015, but I'm not a dope. It won't, but we are winning the war on the herb. [continues 925 words]
The recent U.S. Justice Department move giving Native American tribes the green light to legalize marijuana on their reservations gives us pause. While we respect the sovereign right of tribal governments to run their affairs as they see fit, the situation in the Coachella Valley is somewhat unique. The close proximity of tribal territory and adjacent cities gives decisions made by one entity tremendous impact on the entire region. This is especially true in Palm Springs, where the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians has authority over 32,000 acres in the western Coachella Valley, including a checkerboard grid of sections encompassing about half the city. [continues 1110 words]
Irate about harmful spillover from Colorado's marijuana legalization, two neighboring states sue to overturn it. The attorneys general of Nebraska and Oklahoma have asked the Supreme Court to declare unconstitutional Colorado's law legalizing marijuana. The lawsuit states that, "The Constitution and the federal anti-drug laws do not permit the development of a patchwork of state and local pro-drug policies and licensed-distribution schemes throughout the country which conflict with federal laws." Many conservatives have criticized Nebraska and Oklahoma for being "fair-weather federalists" because their claims hinge, in part, on Gonzales v. Raich, a 2005 Supreme Court decision, upholding the broad reach of Congress's power to regulate commerce. [continues 907 words]
Time was when the only Nebraska- Colorado rivalry was about pigskin prowess. That annual NU-CU fall tilt gave sportswriters a chance to tell crude jokes about each other's jurisdictions to rile the fan base while coaches worked the teams to fever pitch by game day. That all went away, of course, when CU decided that it was too good for the Midwest and, seemingly forgetting that Boulder is still located on the Great Plains, looked westward in search of greener financial pastures. So far at least, that hasn't worked out very well. Rivalries are now few and far between. [continues 775 words]
A weird lawsuit filed in the Supreme Court of the United States against Colorado only formalizes what we know. Colorado's marijuana free-for-all is a burden to our neighbors. We grow and sell some of the most potent pot in the world and it crosses into other states as dealers and drug tourists come and go. Colorado voters chose to subject themselves and their children to this ill-fated experiment, but neighboring states get to live with an abundance of our spillover. [continues 483 words]
Measure Z Designates Oakland Pot Crime As the Police Department's "Lowest Enforcement Priority" - Yet Raids and Arrests Persist. Oakland's marijuana speakeasies - dispensaries that do not have a license to operate from the city - are facing renewed heat despite the fact that we're in the waning days of the war on pot. The Oakland Police Department has raided at least three unlicensed cannabis shops since December. Police rousted so-called "Measure Z" clubs in North Oakland and Uptown in December and January. And last week, authorities raided "Herbal Wellness Center" at 1921 Martin Luther King Jr. Way. [continues 922 words]
The fact that people of color are punished disproportionately by drug prohibition is now widely acknowledged in the United States. Just last week in the New Yorker David Remick quoted the President stating: "Middle-class kids don't get locked up for smoking pot, and poor kids do. And African-American kids and Latino kids are more likely to be poor and less likely to have the resources and the support to avoid unduly harsh penalties." Still unacknowledged, however, is the leading role that African Americans have played not as victims but as active opponents of prohibition. This being Black History Month (we knew her when she was Negro History Week) O'Shaughnessy's is honoring some men and women whose contributions to the abolitionist cause have been underappreciated or overlooked. Starting with... [continues 1785 words]
Five members of a Browns Valley family have sued Yuba County, alleging their rights were violated when a sheriff's deputy confiscated most of their medical marijuana plants. The lawsuit filed this month in Yuba County Superior Court seeks an injunction to stop future "unlawful seizures" and "reasonable compensation" for the lost plants. "What I hope, a case like this will discourage the county or the Sheriff's Office from taking similar actions against other legal patients in the future," said Oakland attorney Robert Raich, who represents the family members. "It's sad that we need something like this to send a message to reluctant law enforcement about the need to comply with state law." [continues 297 words]
The President Decides Not to Enforce Another Law He Doesn't Like. One irony of the Syria debate is that President Obama is now appealing for support on foreign policy from a Congress that he treats with contempt on domestic issues. Witness, in merely the latest example, his decision to suspend the enforcement of a federal drug law because it doesn't fit his political agenda. In a sweeping memorandum last week, the Justice Department all but ordered U.S. attorneys nationwide not to enforce federal marijuana laws. The memo was a long-delayed response to voter referenda last November in Colorado and Washington states that legalized adult recreational use of marijuana, not merely in the usual fake "medical" context. [continues 671 words]
Legislative Panel Oks Rules on Sale for Medical Use Hartford- The General Assembly's Regulations Review Committee approved regulations Tuesday covering who produces, dispenses and purchases medical marijuana. Shouts and cheers rose from the audience as Sen. Andres Ayala, D-Bridgeport, announced that the regulations had been approved after a voice vote. Tracey Gamer- Fanning of West Hartford, who suffers from brain cancer and turned 43 Tuesday, said this was the best birthday present ever. "I am not a criminal. I have a card that says I am allowed to use medical marijuana and I have wanted people to understand what this meant," Gamer-Fanning said. She said she is a mom and had a career and never thought she would get brain cancer at age 36. [continues 904 words]
