A few years into the state legalization experiment, we know one big thing: A legal marijuana industry can function more or less like any other kind of business. What don't we know? Pretty much everything else. We don't know what legalization will mean for youth marijuana use, or which medical conditions marijuana can treat. With less than three full years of legalization in Colorado and Washington state, there's still very little data. [continues 731 words]
My first encounter with the cannabis industry was in November 2014 at a marijuana business conference in Las Vegas. At the time, the plant was not part of my life, but the story of a federally illegal drug at the center of the country's fastest growing industry seemed like an incomparably rich subject. Soon, I was making plans to move to Denver to cover the business story of the decade. Almost two years in, I still think legalization is both inherently fascinating and historically important. It's been a source of puzzlement to me why there aren't more reporters who agree. In its implications for American life, legalization is up there with marriage equality, Black Lives Matter and perhaps even climate change, but it hasn't generated the same kind of national debate. [continues 661 words]
The Drug Enforcement Administration's decision last week not to reschedule marijuana highlights the absurdities of its pre-election limbo. Marijuana will remain a Schedule I drug, meaning that the federal government doesn't recognize any of its medical uses and considers it to have high potential for abuse. "This decision isn't based on danger," DEA chief Chuck Rosenberg told NPR. "This decision is based on whether marijuana, as determined by the FDA, is a safe and effective medicine ... and it's not." [continues 776 words]
Recently in Denver, Donald Trump told a television station that states should decide for themselves whether or not to legalize marijuana. Trump has expressed contradictory views in the past, but this is one of his more believable campaign promises. If Trump believes in anything besides himself, it's in the virtue of making money. He allocated a prime speaking slot at the Republican National Convention to Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley billionaire who - aside from celebrities - is the most prominent businessperson to get his hands green. Thiel's Founders Fund invested millions in Privateer Holdings, the parent company of weed site Leafly and cannabis brand Marley Natural. Like every speaker at either party's conventions, Thiel declined to mention the plant, but he has a stake in the industry's future. [continues 678 words]
Summer is a fabulous time to drink your cannabis. Doing sporty things in the sun can bring up a strong thirst, and outdoor vacation activities - like purchasing an $18 inflatable raft called "The Gator" for a self-guided drift down the not-too-frigid Truckee River - can generate as much stress as they're meant to relieve. (To say nothing of a dusty roadside hike back to the car while schlepping The Gator sets up your bare tootsies for a painful journey laden with rocks and hot pavement.) [continues 781 words]
Marijuana can make life better for some of the more than 5 million Americans afflicted with Alzheimer's disease, but despite an encouraging new study, it remains a long shot as an antidote to the brain disorder that claims about 85,000 lives a year, experts say. Some assisted living facilities and physicians in Sonoma County are quietly administering medical marijuana to patients - with consent from legally responsible parties - for behavioral management, quelling aggression and agitation in people who are losing recognition of their surroundings. [continues 770 words]
In states that have legalized the sale of medical and recreational cannabis, the industry is flourishing. State and local laws have done great work in creating policies and laws that give such businesses a sense of stability that allow them to make business decisions with some confidence. But federal laws still regard cannabis as a Schedule 1 narcotic and have not only closed access to reliable banking, the U.S. Postal Service, and fair tax laws, but there is also the constant threat of law enforcement raids, lengthy and expensive court battles, and prison sentences. [continues 731 words]
As the California campaign for the Adult Use of Marijuana Act gains momentum and state economists forecast an industry that could grow to $15 billion annually by 2020, creating thousands of jobs and generating millions in tax revenue, there's a dark cloud hanging over potential victory celebrations on Nov. 8: The multibillion industry will have no legal baking options. If approved by voters, new cannabis businesses in California will have to overcome an obstacle that has dogged the industry in 25 medical marijuana states and four recreational-use states - Colorado, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska. There simply is no safe, efficient, and legal banking. The Attorney General's Office made that very clear with the now infamous 2011 "Cole Memo," which warned bankers not to open cannabis-related accounts or they could face money-laundering charges or possibly lose their FDIC insurance, which would be ruinous. [continues 755 words]
Mendocino County is back in the marijuana business. Not that its citizens ever stopped growing, and not that the Emerald Triangle's cash-rich economy found another cash crop. But after a few years' hiatus, Mendocino is again using cannabis as a funding source - - for law enforcement, with the county sheriff taking in $150,000 from marijuana in a single day, and all of it willingly paid. Tired of receiving 911 calls from neighbors complaining about the pot garden next door, only to send a deputy out to investigate what turned out to be a legal grow - wasting an hour's worth of time in the process - Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman came up with a novel plan in 2010. His office would inspect and license legitimate grows, and charge the growers for the privilege. [continues 808 words]
Last Wednesday in Sonoma County, officials responded to a report of workplace safety violations with armed law enforcement officers in Kevlar and camouflage. Until that day, a major cannabis company called CBD Guild had been producing cannabis oil cartridges, cannabis gel-caps, sprays, and other marijuana products sold without issue all over the state under the popular brand names AbsoluteXtracts and Care By Design. Just a few weeks before, the company was comfortable enough to welcome in officials from local and state government to take a peek at the operation, which was considered a "model" for other companies in the state's burgeoning commercial cannabis industry to follow. [continues 755 words]
For almost a year, American visitors to Las Vegas have been able to go to a show, dine at a celebrity chef's restaurant, drink, gamble - and legally buy cannabis. Nevada was the first state in the nation to offer "reciprocity" to medical marijuana users, meaning a physician's recommendation from, say, California - useless in trying to access medical cannabis in, say, Colorado - is enough to gain entry to the cannabis dispensary nearest your favorite casino. The first dispensary in Las Vegas "proper" opened last summer, and the first dispensary on Las Vegas Boulevard opened in March. With an adult legalization measure on the fall ballot in Nevada, it looks as if cannabis could soon be added to the list of must-do activities for a weekend in America's Sin City. And with an estimated 27 percent of Las Vegas' 41 million annual visitors coming from cannabis-friendly Southern California, there are millions of potential customers to make cannabis a complement to Vegas's gaming and dining industries. (In fact, with less than 2.8 million people statewide, there really is no cannabis industry in Nevada without toking tourists.) [continues 751 words]
At least one part of Scarface is accurate - the part when cocaine dealers amass ungodly sums of money and use it to transform the Miami skyline. So much cash was flowing into southern Florida in the late 1970s that, according to a U.S. Treasury analysis, the country's entire currency surplus could be traced to Miami banks. To try to put a stop to this - or to at least grab a cut of the action - Congress amended the federal tax code in 1982 to include a section called 280E, which bars anyone dealing in controlled substances from claiming the cost of the drugs on their federal taxes. [continues 734 words]
One of the chief arguments against legalizing cannabis in California is that legalization is not needed. In 2010, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill decriminalizing up to an ounce of cannabis for all adults, no medical-cannabis recommendation from a physician required. Possessing under an ounce is punishable by a citation, which carries a fine of no more than $100 (plus fees) - or a less serious offense than blowing a stop sign on a bicycle. Thanks to this, misdemeanor marijuana arrests nearly vanished in the state, tumbling by almost 90 percent from 2009 to 2011. Nobody really goes to jail anymore just for a little bit of weed, this argument goes. [continues 798 words]
For decades, being a marijuana advocate required that you be a combination of outlaw, policy wonk, and social-justice warrior. You were pushing illegal conduct, because ending an expensive and racially biased experiment was the right and sensible thing to do - a position backed by data. This came at a cost: The real problems of holding down a job - to this day, casual pot smokers remain closeted for fear of their employers' legal, courts-upheld right to terminate them - while also avoiding undue attention from authorities in government and law enforcement meant most out-there cannabis advocates looked a certain way: mostly white, mostly male. (Quick: Name a female legalization advocate. Now name a black one.) [continues 964 words]
Just after noon on May 3, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom stood in front of a well-dressed crowd at the Commonwealth Club - an "unusual coalition" of Republicans, doctors, environmentalists, and former cops, as one member put it - talking at length about marijuana. Specifically, the still-magnetic former San Francisco mayor and likely frontrunner for governor in 2018 railed about how much he hates the stuff. "I can't stand it," Newsom said. "I mean it. I don't want it in parks and playgrounds, I don't want my neighbors smoking it. I just don't like it." He took care to mention his position as a concerned father of four, as television cameras and reporters' microphones picked up every word. [continues 860 words]
If the Mission District manifested its own member of Congress - and if this representative were a he in his late 60s - he would look exactly like Earl Blumenauer. A mix of Bernie Sanders and Bill Nye the Science Guy, decked out in a bright-patterned bow-tie and plaid-checked sportcoat - and with a bicycle lapel pin - Blumenauer cut a natty, professor-like figure as we shared coffee on the patio of a Sixth Street cafe (a phrase that still feels unreal to type). [continues 772 words]
In the latest sign that the federal Justice Department is waving the white flag in the war on cannabis, federal prosecutors have agreed to drop a nearly four-year-long effort to shut down Oakland-based mega-dispensary Harborside Health Center, the dispensary announced Tuesday. Harborside, by reputation and by self-declaration the biggest seller of medical cannabis in the world, seemed to be skating through a short-lived and somewhat half-hearted crackdown on California medical cannabis sellers - a pushback that began in 2011, and eventually closed one-third of the legal cannabis sellers in San Francisco - until just before the Fourth of July in 2012, when federal prosecutors filed suit to seize the Oakland Embarcadero property that houses the dispensary. [continues 795 words]
A lame duck with nothing to lose but his legacy, Barack Obama is now in the peculiar position of being America's most cannabis-friendly president. He has earned this title passively: by doing nothing. Obama did nothing when Washington and Colorado legalized recreational cannabis in 2012. He did nothing when Oregon and Alaska did the same in 2014. But in 2010, when recreational marijuana was legal nowhere and when drug agents seized a record number of marijuana plants, Obama's Justice Department also did next to nothing - vague threats of jail time and some threatening letters to property owners - which, at the time, was enough to help kill legalization in California and to slow down the growth of the state's weed industry for a couple of years. Never have a few pieces of certified mail had more effect. [continues 776 words]
The truest words at "Altered State," the Oakland Museum of California's new exhibit all about America's favorite illicit drug - and, according to the museum's curators, the first-ever cannabis-centric museum exhibit in America - greet visitors at the very beginning, well before they reach the four large healthy indica plants behind glass or hear Richard Nixon's diabolical mumble rumble through their ears. "Californians can't seem to agree on cannabis." Some might call this a prevarication, but it is nonetheless the strongest stance the exhibit takes. [continues 790 words]
Vincent Mehdizadeh was in the medical cannabis business for a little more than five years when he made his first billion. Before he could start year eight, it was all gone. In 2010 and 2011, Mehdizadeh - one of those "born entrepreneur" types we hear so much about - was CEO of a company called Medbox. It filled what you could call a "niche market": producing and selling vending machines that sold weed. A definite novelty, and one you could only legally see in a medical cannabis dispensary - and one actually seen in relatively few. (The only one in the Bay Area was, for a time, in San Jose.) [continues 850 words]
If you needed more proof that boom times are here again for the medical cannabis industry - and here to stay - look no further than 15th Street in the Mission District. When Barack Obama was first elected in 2008, the California marijuana industry exploded. The president said medical marijuana would be left alone; people interpreted that to mean it was open season on weed. The Justice Department, which issued a memo in 2009 stating that "limited federal resources" shouldn't be used to bust cancer patients growing a handful of pot plants, as they were under Bush, only seemed to egg them on. [continues 826 words]
Tikisha Ong wants to change the world. The East Bay 30-something wants to become something rarer than a Silicon Valley unicorn: a black person in a position of ownership in the medical cannabis industry. No honest conversation about drugs can neglect race. If decades of blatantly biased arrest and incarceration statistics, the odd coincidence of the crack epidemic and then poverty ravaging once-middle-class black neighborhoods, and clear and cogent arguments like Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow did not convince you of the direct connection between drug prohibition and white supremacy, the recent revelation in Harper's that the drug war was cooked up by Nixon administration operatives specifically to "disrupt" blacks and the left made this undeniable. And thus far, the "Green Rush" of economic opportunity presented by the legitimization of marijuana has been lily-white. [continues 837 words]
In San Francisco, no game of NIMBY bingo is complete without a complaint of "used needles." In Chronicle columns, letters to the editor, and harrowing tales of urban living, evidence of heroin use ends up everywhere: in children's sandboxes, at Muni stops, and anywhere else people walk. For once, this problem could possibly be understated. As this column has pointed out before, it's a small wonder we aren't all swimming in discarded syringes: San Francisco is experiencing a needle boom. [continues 927 words]
Eleven years is a lifetime in technology, real estate, and the California cannabis industry. But to find a taste of 2005 in 2016 San Francisco, all you have to do is head south on Mission Street past Cesar Chavez - do not be afraid, Valencia Street ends, yet the city continues - and pull up on the narrow block of 29th Street that connects Mission to San Jose Avenue. Here, after you're buzzed in past a mirror-glassed door, a handful of people - some old, some crippled, some indigent - can be found lounging on well-worn couches. There are black-light posters on the walls, and New Orleans jazz wafts softly through air heavy with the sweet smell of cannabis from the counter at one end of the room. It's run-down, it's homey, it's comfortable. It's very, very chill. [continues 910 words]
It is the age of the vape. On our streets and in (some) of our buildings, bros and girls of all ages are pulling on propylene-glycol-powered tubes, and in Washington, clouds of vapor are replacing the proverbial smoke-filled room. Last month, U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-San Diego), a 39-year-old ex-military man, vaped on the floor of the House during a debate over banning e-cigarettes on planes. He lost his rhetorical point, and e-cigs were added to the list of banned devices on flights. Shortly thereafter, the e-cig vote appeared: Signs boldly proclaiming "I Vape I Vote" appeared at Donald Trump rallies in Texas. A few weeks later, on Feb. 24, Hunter became the first House member to endorse Trump. [continues 720 words]
Buying cannabis in San Francisco has been supremely easy for a long time. If walking out the door to one of the city's 28 licensed dispensaries was too onerous - or if "your guy" was out of town, or if you were tired of dealing with the dealers on the street - you could pick up the phone and call one of more than 40 weed delivery services. The problem was that, with a few notable exceptions, these deliveries were all of varying degrees of illegitimacy. Next to none of them had city permits; a few even didn't care if you were a legitimate medical cannabis patient with a recommendation from your doctor. [continues 779 words]
On Dec. 5, 2014, San Francisco police were on the corner of Hyde Street and Golden Gate Avenue in the Tenderloin, arresting crack sellers. It was a busy day: Shortly after busting one man for selling a few rocks to an undercover police officer, a cop returned to the scene of the crime to gather data to fill out his report when he witnessed another drug deal in action. The cop busted that seller, who identified himself to police as "a Sureno from the south side," according to court records. Police later found that both sellers had extensive rap sheets for narcotic sales. [continues 953 words]
California's cannabis gold rush has at last reached the august halls of government. Noting that legal sales of medical cannabis exceed $1 billion annually, state Sen. Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg) last week unveiled a proposal that would make California's biggest cash crop one of the most heavily taxed commodities in the state. Under McGuire's "Marijuana Value Tax Act," a 15 percent tax would be slapped on medical cannabis at the point of sale. This would be added to taxes already paid on weed: state sales tax - 8.75 percent in San Francisco and 9.5 percent in Oakland - and any local taxes applied by local governments (which in Oakland is another 5 percent). [continues 764 words]
It was in a low-rent town in flyover country, playing a gig in front of a crowd of squares and straights in the Ronald Reagan '80s - the dark days of Just Say No, compulsory D.A.R.E. classes for children, and the crack-cocaine epidemic, all the things that led to our country's current drug-fueled incarceration crisis - when Tommy Chong really blew his audience's minds. Chong and his partner Cheech Marin had been plying their brand of stoner humor for almost two decades, their comedy LPs and films on the Hi-Fis and Betamaxes of cannabis users around the world. (And the pair would separate soon after, when Marin tried to make a break from the THC-fueled typecast and go for a straight-laced acting career.) But on this night and in this town - some nameless "right-wing Christian" place Chong cannot recall - the still-bearded longhairs were not playing to their audience. Still, the crewcuts paid to see these freaks, leftovers from the '60s, in action. And they were curious. [continues 792 words]
Barack Obama was elected president on the promise of change. Back in 2008, there was plenty to improve upon: a wrecked economy, two foreign wars, a fatal addiction to imported fossil fuels. Eight years later, income inequality is rampant, American soldiers are still in Iraq and Afghanistan (and now Syria, too), and men vying to succeed Obama deny the science of carbon emissions on national television. Instead, one of the biggest and most remarkable changes in America has been on a "fringe" issue Obama's White House has taken pains to block. [continues 813 words]
"They didn't even call me," says Dennis Peron, perched on one of the fold-up chairs arranged around his Castro District kitchen table on a recent evening. "Why not even call?" "They" are the people who are continuing Peron's work, his life's mission: to make marijuana legal. At 70, his hair white and his speech still rapid but softened by a stroke, Peron has been at it for almost 40 years - ever since he arrived in San Francisco fresh from Vietnam, his Air Force duffel bag stuffed with southeast Asian ganja. And his body bears the scars. [continues 824 words]
Doug Benson has smoked his way to the title of America's most cannabis-friendly comedian - or, at least, the comedy world's best-known pothead. This mantle has served him well. After the success of the 2008 documentary Super High Me - in which Benson gave cannabis the Morgan Spurlock treatment and subjected his body to 30 straight days of copious cannabis use, to no measurable ill physical or mental effects - - stoner shtick has become indispensable to his act. [continues 849 words]
Last week, Sean Parker made an honest issue out of cannabis legalization. The former Napster and Facebook whiz kid (and current philanthropic billionaire) plunked down $500,000 towards the Adult Use of Marijuana Act, a legalization measure vying for the Nov. 2016 ballot. The check was a long-awaited confirmation: It had been known as the "Parker Initiative," despite no material support from Parker until last week - and only tepid verbal approval. Along with $250,000 donations from a political action committee controlled by WeedMaps - the dispensary-finding website that serves as the "Google Maps for Pot" - and from legalization veterans Marijuana Policy Project and the Drug Policy Alliance, to whom much of the credit for legalizing in Washington, Colorado, and Oregon are due, Parker's half-million is the biggest donation to the campaign committee called "Californians to Control, Regulate and Tax Adult Use of Marijuana While Protecting Children." [continues 765 words]
In the heart of the Central Valley, a pair of women who dress in habits, call themselves nuns, and refer to each other as "sister" are growing marijuana in the garage of their Merced tract home. The strain the "Sisters of the Valley" are growing is high in CBD - the cannabinoid touted by Sanjay Gupta on CNN as the "healing-only, no-high" compound in cannabis - and true to nuns who are into cannabis rather than the crucifix, their plants are harvested according to the cycles of the sun and moon. [continues 688 words]
Lists, reflections, and other filler: these are the newspaper reader's "reward" when the calendar flips. This is when both writer and reader would rather be polishing off the last of the egg nog and dusting off champagne flutes than taking stock or pondering the future - and usually, it shows. 2015 was mostly good for cannabis in America. Congress made moves, recreational shops opened in Oregon - and, like every other year in recorded human history, nobody died from a marijuana overdose. [continues 803 words]
San Francisco is the city that does not know how to deal with cannabis. The city has 22 permitted medical marijuana dispensaries, spread unevenly throughout town, although mostly in SoMa and the Mission. They are not the most popular spots in some neighborhoods. The large black and brown men working security and the constant traffic of customers rattle leery homeowners, who then squawk to City Hall about crime, blight, and an "unsavory element." (The first two, at least, are not supported by data; the third is purely subjective). [continues 785 words]
The manifestation of the once-rogue marijuana industry's current commercial success and its untold future potential were on display last weekend at the Emerald Cup, the state's largest cannabis convocation. But while some of the state's 55,000 outdoor cannabis farmers were dressed for success in Carharts, hoodies, and flannel, the biggest name - subject of the biggest news - was a no-show. In between lining up for dabs of artisanal pressed hash made by Frenchy Cannoli and rushing the Cookies booth to pose for selfies with social media phenomenon Berner, more than 20,000 weedheads also heard two words, whispered like a mantra and uttered like a curse, over and over and over again: "Sean Parker." [continues 750 words]
Most of California's 3 million or so cannabis consumers don't care how the state's biggest cash crop and America's favorite illegal substance becomes legal - just when. November 2016 is looking more and more likely, with the disappearance this week of one major roadblock to the legalization movement in California: the movement itself. For most of the second half of 2015, several competing legalization measures have presented themselves as contenders for next year's ballot - and not in a friendly way. Specifically, some organizers who worked on 2010's Proposition 19 - which bootstrapped its way to a losing effort in California but paved the way for Colorado and Washington to go legal in 2012 - took issue with the latecomer but current frontrunner campaign that is supposedly guaranteed funding from tech billionaire Sean Parker (himself a Prop. 19 donor). [continues 793 words]
A curtain made from milk jugs cut into various patterns and shapes hangs in the locked doorway of 70 Second Street, a drab, three-story white brick building a few steps from Market Street in downtown San Francisco. Behind this middle-school-worthy art project is one of San Francisco's most lucrative business opportunities, advertised by a handwritten sign hanging in a nearby window. "AVAILABLE BUILDING," it reads, "WITH MEDICAL CANNABIS DISPENSARY." Commercial real estate in San Francisco is currently fetching $703 a square foot, according to LoopNet, which would peg this 7,600-square-foot building's value at a little under $5.4 million. But the asking price for this opportunity is rumored to be $15 million or higher. [continues 749 words]
It's a good time to be one of California's roughly 1.1 million marijuana users. Yes, cannabis is legal for recreational purposes in Oregon, Colorado, Washington, and elsewhere - but so what? In the Golden State, weed is also widely available - and for free. For years, medical cannabis dispensaries have offered promotional gimmicks like a free joint or edible for first-time patients. This year, as the state's biggest cash crop inched towards $2 billion in legal sales at storefronts, several outfits started offering free eighths (worth about $50) - and they have gone to great lengths to make sure that patients are aware of the offer of free pot. [continues 832 words]
For a certain generation, Joe DiMaggio was San Francisco's greatest citizen. The son of a Sicilian fisherman, whose people gifted the city cioppino and christened Fisherman's Wharf, DiMaggio never forgot his roots. Even after the Hall of Fame baseball career with the New York Yankees and the marriage to Marilyn Monroe - whose legend eclipsed his own during his lifetime - he spent much of his retirement at the family's waterfront restaurant on Jefferson Street. Located next to the docks where, when Joe was a boy, the clan would gather on Sundays to help repair his father's fishing nets, the restaurant's two story building - now named after his younger brother, Dominic - is still in the DiMaggio family. [continues 821 words]
A few years ago, State Controller Betty Yee went to the funeral of her close friend's mother, who had died of cancer. At the service, after prayers and eulogies had been made and the proper respect paid to the deceased, Yee's friend stood up. Instead of more words of comfort, she issued a proclamation that shocked her mother's straight-laced, "very conservative" family and friends. "I just want you all to know," she said, according to Yee's retelling, "that my mom died really happy." [continues 722 words]
Monday's long-awaited announcement that billionaire angel investor Sean Parker is backing a marijuana legalization effort was welcome news. It was also doubly misleading. First, as of press time, Parker is not backing the Adult Use of Marijuana Act (AUMA), the legalization initiative unveiled this week by an environmental attorney and the former head of the California Medical Association. Despite headlines to the contrary in the Los Angeles Times, Sacramento Bee, and elsewhere, Parker isn't putting money behind AUMA - at least not yet. [continues 823 words]
On Sept. 24 of last year, Joseph Briones and a friend walked into the Westfield Centre mall on Market Street and headed towards the bathrooms, in search of a safe place to get high. The pair, heroin users with no fixed addresses, knew that the upscale mall has toilets off the beaten track. Briones went into a stall and prepared his shot. It was his last. By the time his friend realized that Briones had overdosed, mall security was on the scene. The friend pleaded with security to be allowed to give his friend another shot - this time of naloxone, the overdose antidote that's sold under the brand name Narcan. [continues 692 words]
For years, the biggest risk in the cannabis industry - and the one scaring away the biggest investors - was the federal Justice Department. As U.S. attorneys and DEA agents have demonstrated, medical marijuana operations can follow state law to the letter only to lose everything when federal law enforcement decides to get involved. This is what shut down a third of San Francisco's licensed and permitted medical marijuana dispensaries during the 2011-2012 crackdown. That risk appears to be over now. On Monday, a federal judge ruled that recent actions in Congress bar the Justice Department from interfering with a state-legal marijuana enterprise - a stunning rebuke for federal drug cops, and a game-changing victory for legal weed. [continues 752 words]
California government is finally on board with the state's enormous cannabis industry. Last week, Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law the Medical Marijuana Regulation and Safety Act (MMRSA), a package of laws that - at long last - attempt to get a handle on how the state's biggest cash crop is grown, processed, and sold. Every step of the supply chain will, by 2018, be overseen by a new Sacramento office called the Bureau of Medical Marijuana Regulation. Run by a "weed czar" appointed by the governor, the BMMR will issue state licenses to commercial cannabis businesses, which will also need to be licensed and approved by local authorities at the city or county level. [continues 851 words]
With legal sales of medical cannabis in California approaching $2 billion, it's hard to understand how and why nobody in the marijuana legalization movement has any money. But it's true. Legalization's money troubles were evident earlier this week when Reform CA - a coalition of NORML and Americans for Safe Access, the state's marijuana activist groups; industry lobbyists representing dispensaries and growers; and the state NAACP - filed with the Attorney General its proposed language for a Nov. 2016 cannabis legalization voter initiative. [continues 709 words]
At about 7:30 a.m. last Wednesday, James Joseph Munson was shouting at his two daughters, asking who had failed to feed the cat, when he saw lights flash through a window and onto a wall in his Sonoma County home. Hollering is customary for the 52-year-old, who is near-deaf even with his hearing aids. Seeing odd lights is not. Cat food can in hand, Munson went to the front door to investigate. "Twenty to thirty" Sonoma County sheriff's deputies in camouflage and Kevlar were amassed outside, weapons drawn and aimed at his chest and head. It was the sheriff's tactical squad, complete with an armored truck. The lights he'd seen flashing through his front window, he told me later, were the red and green laser sights now dancing on his face and chest. [continues 1329 words]
Nothing like a deadline to get something done. Just ask state lawmakers. After years of stalemate, the Legislature just barely beat a midnight deadline last week to approve a set of laws that dictate how medical cannabis can be grown, processed, and sold in California. (How you use it is still up to you.) This means California, which has allowed access to medical marijuana since a 1996 ballot initiative, now has answers as to "how" cannabis is supposed to be supplied. [continues 815 words]
California has allowed some form of access to medical marijuana for almost 20 years. In that time - as the "movement" to relax and reverse cannabis prohibition morphed into a multibillion-dollar "industry" - most of the state's elected officials have reacted by either decrying the state's cannabis trade or ignoring it completely. There is one major exception. And if the state Legislature succeeds in crafting statewide rules on cannabis and passes them onto the governor for signature by tomorrow's deadline, the exception will have ruled again. [continues 794 words]
