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.” [...]
NEWARK — As the co-owners of NBD Collective were getting ready last week to reopen the Tri-City area’s lone marijuana dispensary, authorities were working to put them in jail. Teddy Miller and Bob Uwanawich, whose cannabis club was raided and shut down seven weeks ago, have been charged with more than 25 felony counts, Chris De Benedetti reports in the Oakland Tribune. The pair, out on $100,000 bail each, is scheduled to face those charges Aug. 25 at the Fremont Hall of Justice, said Teresa Drenick, an Alameda County District Attorney’s Office spokeswoman. Miller and [...]
Medical marijuana is as American as apple pie, and Albany is the perfect place for a more wholesome kind of dispensary, according to a Berkeley mom who hopes to set up shop there. Debby Goldsberry, a co-founder of the 11-year-old Berkeley Patients Group who left that organization in January, applied in July for Albany’s single license to dispense medical marijuana. She has joined forces with former Berkeley Land Use Planning Manager Mark Rhoades and Berkeley developer Ali Kashani, Doug Oakley writes in the Berkeley Voice. The new entity, called the United Cannabis Collective, is hoping [...]
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. [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Oakland City Attorney John Russo has delivered another blow to the city’s plans to tax and license large-scale cannabis farms: He’s withdrawn his legal advice and told the City Council to hire their own attorney. Russo’s letter, dated Thursday and addressed to the mayor and each council member, cited California rule 3-700 of the California Rules of Professional Conduct, which defines the rules under which an attorney may terminate a client. In the letter he advises the council to retain outside counsel for the duration of the deliberations on the medical cannabis cultivation issue, Cecily [...]
Feb 042011
For months, Oakland has struggled with a perplexing dilemma: how can the city regulate marijuana sales and production — forbidden by federal law — while providing medical cannabis, as state voters decreed in a 1996 measure? Now the hammer has come down, observes this San Francisco Chronicle editorial. A plainly worded message from the local U.S. attorney, Melinda Haag, makes it clear that the city’s latest scheme won’t fly legally and leaves Oakland open to civil and criminal lawsuits. What part of “no” don’t you understand, Haag is suggesting. Oakland’s nonstop probing for a solution [...]
Jan 072011
It may be a very long time — or maybe not at all — for Berkeley’s voter-approved medical marijuana farms to start growing the green. That’s according to city officials and people in the industry who saw a letter from the Alameda County District Attorney warning Oakland officials they face prosecution for a similar plan. After receiving the Dec. 8 letter from District Attorney Nancy O’Malley, Oakland suspended its plan to allow and tax four medical marijuana farms of unlimited size, Doug Oakley reports in the Berkeley Voice. And to further dampen the spirits of [...]
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