The Mendocino Major Crimes Task Force on Wednesday seized more more than 100 marijuana plants from the the home of Angela Pinches, daughter of a member of the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors, authorities said. The search of the Redwood Valley property was based on evidence found during a Sheriff’s Office incident earlier in the month, said Task Force commander Bob Nishiyama. At that time, sheriff’s officers did not arrest Pinches, who has a medical recommendation for pot, but confiscated the outdoor plants growing in excess of the 25 allowed per land parcel under the [...]
Federal firearms regulators are telling gun shops it’s illegal for someone who uses marijuana to possess or buy guns or ammunition, regardless of whether states have passed laws allowing patients to use the drug for medicinal purposes. In an open letter to all federal firearms licensees posted last week, Arthur Herbert, the assistant director of enforcement programs and services for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said his office has received “a number of inquiries” about whether medical marijuana patients can own or buy guns and ammunition in medical marijuana states, Ryan Sabalow [...]
COLTON – After months of risking potential jail time, defying orders to shut down, operators of the city’s last medical marijuana dispensaries are now packing up. The landlords of G3 Holistic and Nature’s Quest are both succumbing to pressure from landlords facing fines of $1,000 a day for hosting what the city says are illegal business, according to John D. Higginbotham, the Riverside-based attorney representing the city for Best Best & Krieger. Organic Garden Collective, another medical marijuana dispensary known to have opened in the city, obeyed a shut-down order in April, Ryan Hagen reports [...]
Facing two difficult options — repealing their ban on storefront medical marijuana collectives or sending the issue to the voters — Kern County supervisors chose to do nothing Tuesday. County lawyers said the board will, eventually, have to make a decision, James Burger reports in the Bakersfield Californian. So why delay? Supervisor Mike Maggard said the board was hoping the county would get more clarity from the U.S. Department of Justice about whether supervisors can regulate medical marijuana without exposing the county and its employees to federal prosecution. A DOJ letter to the county has [...]
To federal authorities, Bryan Smith was living a most profitable existence. The 27-year-old ran R & R Wellness Collective, a south Sacramento dispensary registered as a nonprofit medical marijuana provider. But U.S. prosecutors say the young dispensary boss was part of a lucrative conspiracy involving multiple growing houses, stolen electricity, pot distribution to Southern California and vast wads of cash, Peter Hecht reports in the Sacramento Bee. In a Sept. 12 criminal complaint against Smith and five others, authorities suggested Smith courted a medical marijuana high life and boasted of his success in a video [...]
A Long Beach judge ruled Monday there was sufficient evidence to try a 32-year-old woman as an accessory in the slaying of a medical marijuana distributor. Rosemary Sayegh (pronounced Sage) is charged with her husband, Marcel Mackabee, in the killing of Philip Victor Williamson, a 29-year-old Los Angeles man who regularly delivered marijuana grown in the Chico area to clinics and collectives in the Los Angeles region. Police said robbery was the motive for the slaying of Williamson, whom they say may have had $500,000 cash and seven pounds of marijuana at the time of [...]
A Sacramento businessman behind plans for a medical marijuana dispensary already booted from one Stockton neighborhood said he’s now receiving resistance for asking to open shop not far from Cesar Chavez High School. Nicholas Street is applying to run Stockton Non-Profit Collective Inc. from 3646 Telstar Place, next to Hertz Car Sales. Street said he chose the location because it’s on a fenced-off lot and is tucked away in an industrial area, Scott Smith reports in the Stockton Record. That’s exactly the kind of place city leaders told him to find, he said, when they [...]
Alta Sierra neighbors have complained for weeks about a large marijuana garden on an Annie Drive vacant lot, less than a half-mile from the local elementary school. The garden has become a catalyst for a new community group pushing for a county-wide ordinance to restrict or ban marijuana growing in residential neighborhoods. The ordinance, being developed by Nevada County Counsel Michael Jamison, has drawn the support of Supervisor Ed Scofield, who represents Alta Sierra. “It’s frustrating because there is no regulation,” Scofield said of those growing marijuana with medical prescriptions. “It’s not so much the [...]
Sacramento District Attorney Jan Scully will not file charges in Isleton’s aborted plans for a large medical marijuana farm, but she made it clear that she believes the whole matter was bungled from the start. “Had the marijuana cultivation farm project become operational it would have been illegal under state and federal laws and not in compliance with attorney general guidelines,” Scully’s office wrote in a scathing 21-page report released Thursday. The report is the latest swipe at the Delta town’s failed efforts to generate revenues by approving a 15,000-square-foot farm on the northern edge [...]
Two Sonoma County lawyers behind a new statewide effort to legalize marijuana believe 2012 could be their year. Joe Rogoway and Omar Figueroa have drafted a ballot initiative that would repeal all laws against possessing pot, allowing anyone 18 or older to have up to three pounds and to maintain a 100-square-foot garden. The state Department of Public Health would oversee regulation and taxation of commercial sales, Paul Payne reports in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. The measure could go before voters at the November presidential election when turnout is expected to be larger and [...]
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