A divided Eureka City Council voted Tuesday to essentially shrug off federal threats and make only minor revisions to its medical marijuana ordinance, rather than approving an emergency moratorium on dispensaries within city limits. Acting without absent Councilman Lance Madsen, the council voted 3-2, with council members Melinda Ciarabellini and Marian Brady dissenting and Mayor Frank Jager casting the tie-breaking vote, to ask the city’s planning commission to recommend revisions to the city’s existing ordinance that would limit the size of cultivation operations within the four dispensaries allowed to operate under the ordinance. The vote [...]
RED BLUFF — About to enter its third year, the marijuana case against two Red Bluff men was prolonged once more Tuesday, this time pending the decision of a state appellate court. Proceedings for Joseph Froome, 49, and his son-in-law Daniel Ludwig, 28, were continued to 9 a.m. Nov. 21 in Tehama County Superior Court. The two are charged with cultivation of marijuana and possession of marijuana for sale in connection with an Oct. 21, 2009, raid on a Baker Road warehouse. Froome also faces eight counts of money laundering, Janet O’Neill reports in the [...]
A leading Oakland marijuana dispensary was hit with a $2.5 million tax bill this week, which may force its closure, dispensary staff said Tuesday. Harborside Health Center owes the Internal Revenue Service back taxes for 2007 and 2008, based on a federal law prohibiting marijuana dispensaries – unlike other businesses – from deducting payroll, insurance, rent, workers’ compensation and other operating costs from its revenues. “We think this assessment is unfair and inaccurate. We have no choice but to fight this,” said Harborside executive director Steve DeAngelo. “I’m profoundly concerned on behalf of our patients.” [...]
Kern County Superior Court Judge David Lampe has refused to issue a preliminary injunction against an ordinance that limits the number of marijuana plants that can be grown on a single parcel of land to 12. That’s a victory for Kern County in its ongoing battle with medical marijuana advocates, James Burger reports in the Bakersfield Californian. But the judge’s ruling, on Monday, may have thrown a wrench into the sheriff department’s campaign to eradicate medical marijuana grown in violation of the 12-plant limit created by the county law passed on Aug. 9. Chief Deputy [...]
A father and his son – owners of two Fresno-area marijuana collectives raided in June – were arrested Tuesday morning on suspicion of continuing to possess and distribute pot, according to a federal criminal complaint. Mark Stephen Bagdasarian, 53, and Ryan Christopher Bagdasarian, 24, owners of Buds 4 Life and Buds 4 Life North, were taken into custody around 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, about the same time search warrants were served at the elder Bagdasarian’s Clovis home and their collectives in Tarpey Village and Friant. Law-enforcement officers seized processed marijuana, food products believed to contain marijuana [...]
We don’t know when the clash between federal laws barring any marijuana use or sale and the increasingly permissive state and local polices allowing “medicinal” use of the drug will reach its absurd climax. But it’s getting closer with the recent open letter to gun dealers from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives clarifying that, Proposition 215 protections notwithstanding, marijuana users are not allowed to buy or even possess a firearm under federal law. It’s not that ATF is wrong, the Redding Record Searchlight opines in this editorial. Marijuana remains a “Schedule [...]
Elk Grove medical marijuana growers could find their agricultural activities facing heavy oversight in the months ahead, thanks to a City Council plan to impose stringent regulations on cultivation sites. “It’s a shame that it has to come to this sort of thing,” Councilman Pat Hume said in an interview Thursday. “But there’s too much abuse and wanton disregard for (neighbors at cultivation sites).” The City Council last week set in motion staff work on a draft ordinance that could force pot growers to keep their cultivation out of sight – either in a separate, [...]
The Eureka City Council is poised to approve a 45-day moratorium on medical marijuana dispensaries and cultivation facilities Tuesday in order to allow time for the city to decide how to proceed in the face of federal threats. At its last meeting, the council asked city staff to put together a proposed moratorium ordinance, with members saying the city needs more time to study how best to amend its medical marijuana land use ordinance to shield the city from federal scrutiny, Thadeus Greenson reports in the Eureka Times-Standard. Passed in August of 2010, and modified [...]
It may be distantly related to pot, but industrial hemp most definitely is not, say supporters of a California Senate Bill aimed at legalizing cultivation of the cannabis cousin in four counties, including Kern. Senate Bill 676 or the California Industrial Hemp Farming Act — which is on the governor’s desk for signing by Oct. 9 — would create an eight-year pilot program permitting farmers in Imperial, Kern, Kings and San Joaquin counties to grow industrial hemp for sale of its seed, oil and fiber to manufacturers. After six years, the Attorney General would report [...]
Federal law enforcement officials are the wild card in the regulation of medical marijuana in California. Sometimes they play the trump. Sometimes they’re not even in the game. When storefront shops selling medical marijuana first appeared in Kern County, the Drug Enforcement Administration aggressively raided them and federal prosecutors filed charges against the operators. Then federal intervention slacked under a new administration and the burden of hefty law enforcement costs, James Burger reports in the Bakersfield Californian. Now, U.S. Attorneys’ offices are warning California cities and counties that they could face criminal or civil action [...]
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