Though Gov. Jerry Brown called federal regulation of industrial hemp plants “absurd,” potential enforcement of those regulations ultimately led to his veto of state Senate Bill 676, which would have allowed hemp cultivation in four California counties, including Kern, as part of an eight-year pilot program. Supporters of the bill said the federal categorization of industrial hemp plants as the same as marijuana plants is woefully outdated, Jill Cowan reports in the Bakersfield Californian. The fact that industrial hemp is imported for legal products means Californians are missing out on a cash crop, advocates say. [...]
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 [...]
Fifteen years after California voters legalized medical marijuana, state lawmakers are still struggling with how to regulate and tax what has become a billion-dollar industry fueled by the growing number of pot dispensaries up and down the state. Lawmakers took steps recently to ban pot shops from residential neighborhoods and give local governments the authority to shut down problem operators. They also rejected proposals to reduce penalties for illegal pot cultivation and protect medical marijuana patients from workplace discrimination, Michael J. Mishak and Patrick McGreevy report in the Los Angeles Times. Some legislators and others [...]
Journalists don’t get any respect, which sucks, but that’s nothing compared with the scorn and ridicule heaped upon our public servants in Sacramento. Let’s face it: It feels good to talk smack about those stuffed suits in the Legislature, especially when it comes to cannabis. Honestly, you couldn’t find a more ignorant bunch of canna-phobes unless you went slumming to your local school board. Enter Mark Leno, the state senator from San Francisco, and a powerful exception to the rule. He was presented the 2010 Friend of Freedom award at the California NORML conference in [...]
David Bronner’s third-generation family business – Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps – imports 20 tons of hemp oil a year from Canada to make soaps, shampoos and skin lotions near San Diego. Now Bronner hopes California’s Proposition 19 to legalize marijuana for recreational use can give impetus to legalizing cultivation of hemp – pot’s cannabis cousin. Proposition 19 proponents say the initiative’s language allowing local governments to permit cannabis cultivation – by definition – includes both marijuana and hemp. But the measure variously inspires or infuriates hemp advocates, who are waging arguments over whether it will [...]
ANAHEIM – An activist group working to legalize pot in California will host the county’s first large medical-marijuana expo Saturday, featuring hemp products, speeches from attorneys and a former judge and live reggae music. Organizers of the Know Your Rights Expo expect up to 20,000 people from across Southern California to attend the conference – across the street from Disneyland Resort – at the city-owned Anaheim Convention Center. Legal experts are scheduled to talk about the status of the state’s medical-marijuana laws and Prop. 19, a November ballot measure that would regulate and tax the [...]
May 242010
RED BLUFF — Permit or not, Donna Will said the stage for a Memorial Day weekend marijuana festival will go up today. “Everything is going forward,” said Will, organizer of the World Hemp Expo Extravaganja. After an update last month of a 40-year-old law designed to regulate outdoor rock festivals akin to Woodstock, leaders from several Tehama County departments turned in comments to the Tehama County Planning Department on Friday. “The agencies are getting together on Monday,” said Bob Haplin, senior planner for the Planning Department. He declined to say whether that meant they would [...]
Apr 292010
RED BLUFF — With barely a whiff in the air of a planned marijuana celebration, Tehama County supervisors Tuesday approved an update of a 40-year-old law originally designed to regulate free outdoor rock festivals. The board adopted the amended law as an “urgency” ordinance, the Record-Searchlight’s Janet O’Neill reports, meaning Tuesday’s unanimous vote makes it effective immediately. County Counsel Arthur Wylene has said marijuana patient and grower Donna Will’s application to hold a marijuana-themed event on her 46 acres south of Red Bluff on Memorial Day weekend affected the timing of the update, but not [...]
Apr 162010
The sad news has been confirmed. Jack Herer, author of “The Emperor Wears No Clothes” and renowned around the world for hemp activism, died Thursday in Eugene, Ore. Jack Herer suffered a heart attack last September just after speaking on stage at the Portland HempStalk festival, Salem-News.com reports. The last seven months have proven to be a huge challenge to the man, with several health issues making his recovery complicated. Portland Oregonian coverage Los Angeles Times coverage Jack Herer’s health has been poor lately, this last week there have been reports of the severity, and [...]
LOS ANGELES – Three decades ago, Bruce Perlowin was smuggling hundreds of thousands of pounds of Colombian marijuana to California in fishing boats passing beneath the Golden Gate Bridge. His childhood friend, David Tobias, was trafficking dope across turquoise Caribbean waters to Florida and Georgia, the Sacramento Bee’s Peter Hecht writes here. On Saturday, at a Los Angeles medical marijuana trade show teeming with entrepreneurs hoping to cash in on California’s legal pot market, the two chums were reunited as business consultants marketing “solutions for an emerging industry.” Los Angeles Daily News coverage Their Medical [...]
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