The city of Sacramento is considering a tax on medicinal marijuana dispensaries as it grapples with yet another massive deficit. Faced with a $43 million gap for the upcoming fiscal year, the pot tax is one source of revenue city officials are exploring. A tax on private parking lots and an increase in the city’s business operations also are being investigated, the Sacramento Bee reports. Sacramento would be the second city in the state to enact a special tax on pot shops, behind Oakland. San Jose and Berkeley are exploring the issue. City officials are [...]
Apr 302010
Tehama County drug agents arrested a Los Molinos man who owns a hydroponics shop in Corning this week on suspicion of marijuana sales, saying a year-long investigation showed he was trafficking marijuana to Kansas. Jason Labonte, 42, sold $10 “starter plants” three times to Tehama Interagency Drug Enforcement Task Force agents over the past year, said Eric Maher, special agent supervisor for the task force. Maher said agents arrested Labonte Wednesday while he was negotiating the purchase of 25 pounds of pot from them. Labonte owns Advanced Hydroponics in Corning, the Redding Record-Searchlight reports. Corning [...]
The Chico Enterprise-Record saves the best for last from staff writer Toni Scott and her “Politics of Pot” series. Good writing and sourcing distinguish this article from the usual newspaper fare, and it’s nice to see the E-R tackle a big project in this age of shrinking newsrooms. ================== CHICO — Though Kris Kidd hasn’t received as much as a parking ticket in more than five years, the 42-year-old Chico resident says she is forced into criminal behavior on a routine basis, simply to relieve her pain. Kidd, who holds a graduate degree and has [...]
Apr 302010
If California’s medical marijuana trade were just one big harmonious smoking circle, attorney Daniel Marc Bornstein might be out of business. The veteran civil litigation lawyer formed Confidential Mediation Services so that marijuana dispensaries, cultivators and patients can resolve disputes, Peter Hecht writes in his “Weed Wars” blog. Bornstein offers himself as a peace facilitator for a trade that isn’t always comfortable with settling things the old-fashioned way of going to court and suing. So Bornstein, who has offices in San Francisco and Beverly Hills, says he is the man to call when a dispensary [...]
The contentious race for Sonoma County district attorney took a mellower tone Wednesday night as the two candidates assured a room of medical marijuana advocates they would not step up prosecution of qualified patients. Two-term incumbent Stephan Passalacqua and challenger Jill Ravitch agreed to support existing law that allows medically prescribed cultivation and possession. They also said they would honor any new legislation that would open marijuana use to adults 21 or older, the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat reports. “I understand there is a place for it and understand the law requires safe access in our [...]
?It seems 4/20 isn’t the only holiday on a marijuana aficionado’s calendar. In San Francisco there’s a more important — if more obscure — fete just a few weeks afterward. That’d be Cannabis Freedom Day, which is traditionally the first Saturday in May. That’s this Saturday, May 1. While, in the past there’s been some confusion if it’s called Cannabis Awareness Day, Cannabis Freedom Day, or …eh, it escapes us … it’s been accepted here in San Francisco that this is a fine day to get ripped in public. And that will all happen this [...]
CHICO — Californians’ access to medical marijuana has everything to do with their zip code. Right now, for the residents of Chico and Butte County, there is no legitimate storefront to procure marijuana. Redding, just 75 miles north, has 19 medical marijuana dispensaries. Chico patients must grow their plants themselves, join a collective that grows for them or engage in illegal activity if they wish to medicate themselves with marijuana. Why? It all comes down to the law that made medical marijuana legal in the first place, Toni Scott writes in the Chico Enterprise-Record. Proposition [...]
Apr 292010
RED BLUFF — With barely a whiff in the air of a planned marijuana celebration, Tehama County supervisors Tuesday approved an update of a 40-year-old law originally designed to regulate free outdoor rock festivals. The board adopted the amended law as an “urgency” ordinance, the Record-Searchlight’s Janet O’Neill reports, meaning Tuesday’s unanimous vote makes it effective immediately. County Counsel Arthur Wylene has said marijuana patient and grower Donna Will’s application to hold a marijuana-themed event on her 46 acres south of Red Bluff on Memorial Day weekend affected the timing of the update, but not [...]
When it comes to marijuana policy, California has been stuck in a fairy tale for decades, Oakland City Attorney John Russo writes in a San Francisco Chronicle guest column. This particular fairy tale is like “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” Everybody can see that marijuana prohibition has done nothing to prevent its use, and that arresting tens of thousands Californians every year for misdemeanor possession diverts police resources from violent felonies. And nobody is blind to the fact that marijuana has funded and empowered the sociopathic drug cartels responsible for untold suffering and violence on both [...]
Bud’s note: County sheriffs aren’t known for their statistical analysis of medical marijuana issues — only 3 percent of medipot scrips are legit? — and few go as far as the Lassen County sheriff in calling for a total ban on medipot dispensaries and cultivation. Even so, the quotes in this Lassen County Times article highlight many of the same concerns expressed by law enforcement officials statewide. ==================== Lassen County Sheriff Steve Warren apologized to the Lassen County Board of Supervisors for missing the board’s April 13 meeting when the supervisors discussed the possibility of [...]
Reading is cool; interacting is better