A failed plot by three Fresno men to grow pot under the guise of medical marijuana users but instead sell it for profit has led to prison sentences for three Massachusetts men who bought the drugs. The men were sentenced Monday in U.S. District Court in Fresno to between 24 and 30 months in prison, to be followed by two to three years of supervised release, according to Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims and federal court and drug officials. They pleaded guilty in September, the Fresno Bee reports. According to court documents, they admitted buying [...]
Fresno County supervisors may have reaffirmed support for the county’s medical marijuana restrictions this week, but the new rules are still not a sure thing. A lawsuit filed by attorney and medical marijuana patient Bill McPike contends that the county has no business regulating the drug. Hence, the suit claims, the county ordinance shouldn’t stand, Kurtis Alexander reports in the Fresno Bee. McPike’s argument is similar to one pitched successfully in the city of Long Beach: that because marijuana is a federally controlled substance, meaning the federal government considers it illegal, the county can’t try [...]
Medical marijuana users in Fresno County saw perhaps their last hope for easier access to the drug vanish on Tuesday. By a 4-1 vote, the Board of Supervisors rejected recommendations by an advisory group to loosen the county’s strict marijuana regulations, Kurtis Alexander reports in the Fresno Bee. Citing a drug trade that sells indiscriminately and profits by doing so, supervisors underscored the need for the current law, which bans pot dispensaries and prohibits people from growing marijuana anywhere but in industrial areas. “What happens to all those people who benefit greatly from marijuana?” asked [...]
Local medical marijuana advocates have dropped plans for a ballot initiative aimed at loosening Fresno County’s new marijuana law, Kurtis Alexander reports in the Fresno Bee news blog. Organizers of the drive, who are largely owners of pot dispensaries, said they couldn’t afford to shell out the more than $100,000 it would cost — especially with the federal government threatening to crack down on California’s quasi-legal marijuana trade. “Why invest the time and money in doing an initiative if the feds are going to shut them down anyway?” said attorney Brenda Linder, who was involved [...]
SANGER — This summer, California narcotics officers have pulled millions fewer pot plants from the state’s remote forests than in past years. The reason, investigators say, is that drug traffickers have come down out of the mountains to plant pot in plain sight in backyards and on prime farmland, where California’s medical marijuana law makes them tougher to bust. Historically, growers of large-scale illicit pot gardens relied on the cover and isolation of California’s wildernesses to protect their plants. Last year, the state’s annual campaign to root out such grows netted more than 4.3 million [...]
The federal government’s vow to clamp down on medical marijuana this month comes as a boon to Fresno County authorities who have recently begun enforcing their own restrictions. Since a new county law took effect a month ago, sheriff’s deputies have sent notices to a dozen medical pot dispensaries and roughly 100 growers demanding they close up shop. Deputies have yet to follow through on the demands but say federal support will make that task easier, Kurtis Alexander reports in the Fresno Bee. “We’ve needed federal help and prosecution shutting these places down,” Sheriff Margaret [...]
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 [...]
Illegal marijuana farming has been moving from the Sierra foothills and mountains to the Valley floor, law enforcement officials say, and they suspect it has something to do with California’s controversial medical marijuana law. The theory is that growers, facing increased law enforcement pressure, have abandoned mountain and foothill hideouts and headed to the Valley because of the opportunity to grow black market marijuana under the veil of legality, Lewis Griswold reports in the Fresno Bee. For the past three years, authorities have found fewer pot farms on public lands in the Sierra Nevada and [...]
Fresno County sheriff’s deputies on Thursday shut down a Centerville medical marijuana dispensary that Sheriff Margaret Mims said was operating illegally. The dispensary, called Herbal Solutions, is in a historic building that once housed an Independent Order of Odd Fellows lodge. Mims said the woman who operates the dispensary would face state charges because Herbal Solutions was opened after the Fresno County Board of Supervisors enacted a moratorium last summer against any new medical-marijuana stores. The owner also could face federal charges because the dispensary is within 1,000 feet of a school – Centerville Elementary, [...]
Marijuana cultivation is out of control in Fresno County. When men in gun turrets protect plots, medical marijuana plants are diverted to street sales and residents complain that dispensaries foul their neighborhoods, the county has a problem. Criminals and a poorly written medical marijuana law passed by California voters bear the blame, writes Fresno Bee columnist Bill McEwen. So, too, does a Fresno County Board of Supervisors that refused to confront the reality of what voters approved in 1996. Instead of adopting regulations that protected neighborhoods while allowing people that need marijuana for medical reasons [...]
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