No medical marijuana dispensaries will be allowed in Mountain View, at least not until April 18 of next year. At their meeting Tuesday night, Mountain View City Council members voted to ban pot clubs for now, but they made it clear they intend to eventually allow them after city officials develop some restrictions. “There is an interest in making this available — medical marijuana — for those that need it, absolutely,” Council Member Laura Macias said. “We just want to make it safe and affordable.” The council cast its 4-2 vote to introduce an ordinance [...]
RED BLUFF – Eight months after it first waded into the choppy waters of medical marijuana regulation, Tehama County has released the draft of a new ordinance that will be up for discussion next month. “The idea was to give everyone ample opportunity to review the document,” county Board of Supervisors Chairman Ron Warner said Wednesday, as reported here by the Redding Record-Searchlight. Red Bluff Daily News coverage Related R-S story: Tehama sheriff no stranger to medipot rules A proposed medical marijuana ordinance crafted by Tehama County calls for limits on the number of plants [...]
The Santa Rosa Press-Democrat urges tighter regulation of medipot in this editorial, but its proposed solutions are every bit as vague as the law itself. Strangely absent is any mention of legalization, perhaps the most useful tool available to cure what ails the medipot industry. Guess I’ll have to write my own editorial… ==================== Anecdotal evidence of marijuana’s medicinal value is nothing new. People with debilitating diseases including AIDS, cancer, glaucoma have long said that marijuana relieves pain and eases other symptoms in ways that conventional drugs don’t. Their stories moved voters in 1996 when [...]
The nation’s main advocacy group for medical marijuana threatened Tuesday to challenge Los Angeles City Attorney Carmen Trutanich’s legal assault on dispensaries, saying it is “unlawful, unconstitutional, and contravenes the spirit and letter of the governing laws.” The city prosecutor’s office filed three lawsuits last week seeking court injunctions to force Organica in the Venice area and two Holistic Caregivers stores in South Los Angeles to stop all sales. As the Los Angeles Times’ John Hoeffel reports, Trutanich maintains that state law authorizes collectives only to grow marijuana and recover their actual costs, not to [...]
Chris Roberts offers this enjoyably pointed blog post in S.F. Weekly, which provides useful context about the landmark medicinal marijuana report released last week. ================= It’s not news that marijuana may have healing qualities: after all, medicinal cannabis has been (sort of) the law of the land since 1996, when California voters passed Proposition 215 . Still, it was a very big deal when the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research released the results last Wednesday of its 10-year, $9 million study on pot’s medical efficacy. The good news? The tests were the first clinical trials [...]
Marsha Taffett says her husband’s death led her to look into herbal remedies for depression, visit a medicinal marijuana dispensary featured on CNN and now propose a wellness center in Capitola that would dispense medical cannabis. California allows storefront facilities for medical marijuana but they are neither specifically allowed nor banned by Capitola’s zoning ordinance, the Santa Cruz Sentinel reports. Capitola Planning Commissioner Michael Termini supports the idea but said the City Council should decide whether to allow such a use and if so, where and under what parameters. The other commissioners concurred earlier this [...]
The Marijuana Control, Regulation and Education Act was reintroduced into the California Assembly on Thursday after its first iteration expired last month, the Eureka Times-Standard reports. The bill, also known as AB 2254, covers many aspects of regulation, but some of its main goals are to legalize and regulate marijuana for adults 21 and older in a manner similar to alcohol and to “deprive the criminal market of revenue,” according to the bill’s language. It is also hoped that the bill will decrease the violence associated with the criminal market. Fees added to the sale [...]
Democratic candidates for state attorney general yesterday took varying positions on the merits of legalizing marijuana, but agreed that medical marijuana needs to be much more heavily regulated than it is now. Assemblyman Ted Lieu of Torrance said he opposes legalization, reports the San Diego Union-Tribune. Assemblyman Alberto Torrico of Fremont and Chris Kelly, chief privacy officer for Facebook, said any discussion of legalization is premature until the medical marijuana industry is reined in. Assemblyman Pedro Nava of Santa Barbara said he is “agnostic” on the subject. The four, along with Los Angeles City Councilwoman [...]
Anderson Planning Commission members narrowly approved an ordinance with numerous restrictions on the cultivation of medical marijuana within city limits Monday. While allowing for cultivation only under certain guidelines, Anderson residents with a verified doctor’s recommendation will no longer be allowed to grow medical marijuana inside a residence or outdoors, should the City Council approve what commissioners passed in a 3-2 vote. Commissioners Susie Baugh and Ron Barnett dissented. Each said they preferred a wholesale ban on cultivation, the Anderson Valley Post reports. The Anderson City Council will hear the proposed ordinance March 16. At [...]
A federal judge on Monday sent back to prison a Chico man who was the first medical marijuana dispensary grower to be tried in federal court. Bryan Epis, 42, was told by U.S. District Judge Frank Damrell Jr. in Sacramento that he had exhausted his appeals and was ordered back to prison after a six-year hiatus, the Associated Press reports. Epis received a 10-year sentence in 2002 after a federal jury convicted him of growing 100 plants and planning at least 1,000 more. The sentence was the mandated minimum because the grow house was within [...]
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