After months of delay, Berkeley’s new Medical Cannabis Commission will meet for the first time on Thursday, ushering in, city officials hope, a new era of oversight and accountability. For the past 15 years the medical marijuana business has operated in a gray zone, legal in the city and the state but at risk from crackdowns by the federal government, which does not recognize cannabis as medicine. Despite this uncertainty, the medical cannabis industry has flourished in Berkeley, spawning three dispensaries, numerous collectives and cultivators, and thousands of patients coming from around the Bay Area. [...]
A draft ordinance to ban outdoor medical marijuana grows in Live Oak will be prepared for the City Council after a study session Tuesday produced mostly public opposition. “This is ridiculous,” resident Raymond Cooper said of a ban. Cooper said he refuses to take pharmaceutical drugs for problems that include spinal degeneration, using medical marijuana instead, Ryan McCarthy reports in the Appeal-Democrat. A ban on outdoor grows would boost electrical use for indoor cultivation, he said. “If you push it indoors,” Cooper said, “It’s bad for the planet.” But council members Diane Hodges and Steve [...]
Operators of a temporarily closed marijuana dispensary should pay Marysville $68,000 in penalties and be prevented from reopening without a business permit, according to the city. The recent motion filed in Yuba County Superior Court seeks a summary judgment in a lawsuit against NorCal Health and Wellness Collective, which ran a medical marijuana dispensary at 825 9th Street for much of 2010. City Council members and officials met in closed session Tuesday to discuss the suit, which is scheduled to be heard in court Sept. 26, Nancy Pasternack reports in the Appeal-Democrat. At the heart [...]
In October 2009, medical marijuana advocates celebrated a U.S. Department of Justice memo declaring that federal authorities wouldn’t target the legal use of medicinal pot in states where it is permitted. The memo from Deputy U.S. Attorney General David Ogden was credited with accelerating a California medical marijuana boom, including a proliferation of dispensaries that now handle more than $1 billion in pot transactions. But last month brought a new memo from another deputy attorney general, James Cole. And this time, it is stirring industry fears of federal raids on pot dispensaries and sweeping crackdowns [...]
STOCKTON – The city’s planning leaders refused Thursday to approve a proposed medical marijuana dispensary, opposed by some for its proximity to homes and over fears of inadequate parking. The Planning Commission voted 4-2 to reject the dispensary, proposed for one of the primary entrances into Stockton, 1220 W. Fremont St., within walking distance of another dispensary approved in May. “This is in my backyard,” said Commissioner Christina Fugazi, who voted against the project. In a bid to save their proposal, the pot dispensary’s applicants gave commissioners 41 letters of support from nearby businesses and [...]
SAN LEANDRO — Jason Fredriksson, the San Leandro police detective accused of giving more than a pound of marijuana to a female informant with whom he was having an extramarital affair, has resigned. Fredriksson, 38, told San Leandro officials of his decision Friday, said his attorney Harry Stern. “He weighed his overall situation against the idea of litigating the employment aspect of it, and he decided it would be in everybody’s best interest for him to resign,” Stern said. Fredriksson, a San Leandro officer since 2002 and one of four detectives in the department’s vice [...]
San Mateo resident Rob Bueno knows it won’t be easy to convince San Mateo County to let him open a medical marijuana dispensary in an unincorporated pocket of Redwood City. He is well aware that the county has not allowed any medical pot clubs since the Board of Supervisors adopted an ordinance in 2009 allowing them in unincorporated areas, Bonnie Eslinger reports in the Palo Alto Daily News. “I’m sure there will be people protesting it,” Bueno said. “But if the county didn’t really want to have these, why do they even have a law?” [...]
A ban on growing medical marijuana outdoors — spurred by concerns about the odor of the plant and crimes cultivation can lead to — will be discussed today by the Live Oak City Council. “My main concern is public safety,” Mayor Gary Baland said. He cited crimes connected with outdoor marijuana grows in other communities that include theft of plants, Ryan McCarthy reports in the Appeal-Democrat. “It’s not a good thing,” Baland said. Jim Goodwin, city manager for Live Oak, said an ordinance for review at a future council meeting will be prepared if the [...]
Seville’s 400 residents have lived years with tainted drinking water from their only well, but they say there is a new problem in town — water-hogging marijuana gardens. The outdoor gardens planted in the last year are taking so much of the town’s water that it sometimes takes 45 minutes to fill the kitchen sink for dish washing, they say. But it appears little can be done to fix the problem in this Tulare County community north of Visalia, Mark Grossi reports in the Fresno Bee. Law enforcement authorities say the gardens are legal because [...]
A Superior Court judge said Thursday she won’t make an immediate decision on the fate of a Monterey medical marijuana cooperative and two pot clinic directors accused of contempt. After a three-day hearing, Judge Lydia Villarreal asked for written final arguments from attorneys for the MyCaregiver Cooperative and directors Jhonrico Carrnshimba and Mark Rowland. The three are accused of contempt of court for allegedly violating an October 2010 court injunction by continuing to operate as a medical marijuana outlet on Lighthouse Avenue. City officials searched the members-only co-op in February and turned up evidence of [...]
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