Bud’s note: This isn’t really a blog post, just an expansion of my About page. Please let me know what you think by commenting at the bottom. ===================== CalPotNews.com aggregates news and opinion articles about cannabis, medical marijuana, hemp and related topics with a focus on California. As a former newspaper reporter and editor, I founded the website in November 2009, shortly after losing my last “real” news gig, with two main goals in mind: 1) To develop my expertise in web hosting, multimedia and content management, important skills to have in this age of [...]
I wish I had something more exciting to say after more than a month of being offline. CalPotNews.com went buh-bye suddenly and unexpectedly, thanks to a certain web hosting company, and the weeks that have passed since then have been both frustrating and educational. I’m a words guy, not a web wonk, and wonks understand the technology behind a website far better than I do. It’s not surprising, therefore, that it took six weeks for me and the techies to speak the same language, and we won’t know for 24 hours or so whether the [...]
George Mull opposed Proposition 19. Steve DeAngelo campaigned for it. Which made it all the more interesting at the recent CalNORML conference in Berkeley, where both said that medical cannabis distribution in California is — and I’m paraphrasing here — a total fucking mess. Mull is a Sacramento attorney who represents several NorCal collectives, and their struggles in assorted cities and counties have convinced him that statewide regulation is necessary. To that end, he co-founded the California Cannabis Association and actively campaigned against Prop. 19, which he feared would erode patient rights under Prop. 215 [...]
The Drug Policy Alliance gets top billing today in our belated video coverage of CalNORML’s marijuana reform conference in Berkeley. Ethan Nadelmann, DPA’s founder and executive director, and California director Stephen Gutwillig both possess a keen understanding of the political process, and their thoughts on legalization in 2012 deserve special attention. First and foremost is understanding that political compromises will be necessary to craft a winning initiative. Politics is a contact sport, after all, and purists can only watch from the sidelines. “It’s what’s winnable that goes as far as possible,” Nadelmann told the CalNORML [...]
Today’s videos arrive from the better-late-than-never department, considering a month has passed since the CalNORML conference in Berkeley. But context is important, as is video editing, so taking my time isn’t a bad thing. We begin with a new and slightly improved video of Oakland Vice Mayor Desley Brooks, who has taken the lead on rewriting the city’s proposed regulations for large-scale cultivation. Brooks credited Oakland City Council President Larry Reid and Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan for their leadership, but she also noted the difficulties caused by City Attorney John Russo’s reluctance-turned-refusal to work on the [...]
I wish I could tell you more about what’s happening in Oakland, but sometimes it’s more useful to tell you what’s NOT happening. For the past month or so, we’ve been hearing that the feds have warned city officials to back off on its medical cannabis cultivation ordinance. That’s probably because that’s exactly what the feds have been telling the media, and now Oakland’s city attorney has such cold feet he won’t even work on the thing. Big, bad, scary feds. Enter Desley Brooks, Oakland’s vice mayor and the latest on the City Council to [...]
Feb 012011
This weekend’s CalNORML reform conference in Berkeley sold out, prompting organizers to promise a larger venue next time. Their agenda was plenty big enough already, with complex issues facing medical cannabis advocates and proponents of legal, non-medical use. (Click here for CalNORML video coverage.) Steph Sherer, the national director of Americans for Safe Access, called for more civil discourse after Prop. 19 launched a war of words online. But she didn’t mince words when she targeted “outrageous” cannabis taxes, like the ones passed by conference host Berkeley and nine other California cities in November. “As [...]
Sorry for the late notice, but I’ve been working on an Internet radio show that focuses on the cannabis scene in Fresno. Barring technical difficulties (cross your fingers), The Medical Marijuana Show will air live at 5 p.m. today on wsRadio.com, Studio A. The Medical Marijuana Show is something of a work in progress, with a national broadcast and affiliated shows in Montana and Southern California. It’s a pay-to-play formula that I couldn’t sell on short notice, so we just ditched the playbook for two 15-minute segments. I interviewed Diana Kirby, a longtime medical cannabis [...]
Dear friends: I hope you had a happy new year and all that jazz … now take my tax survey. Please. It’s not like there’s anything else going on right now, give or take a few lawsuits, dispensary raids, bans, bans and more bans. The election is over, and the headlines are few and far between. News is cyclical that way, so medical cannabis patients in Oakland, Los Angeles, San Jose, Fresno, Orange County — and the list goes on — are facing huge challenges without getting much attention (or support) statewide. If you haven’t [...]
Nov 242010
A news blog is pretty useless when there’s no news to report, and since Election Day the cannabis headlines have become few and far between. Proposed dispensary bans passed their first vote by Los Angeles and Orange supervisors, but apart from that it’s back to grow house fires, random pot busts and small-town news. Prop. 19 coverage has disappeared, and its 2012 sequel hasn’t been scripted yet. Our focus thus reverts to local issues involving medical cannabis, and it’s a very mixed bag in California. Dispensary bans have gone viral with city councils and boards [...]
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