Medical Marijuana | CalPotNews.com

Angel Raich files Supreme Court amicus brief

Jan 122012

It’s official. I have joined an amicus brief with a doctors group and surgeons regarding Obama health care! We will be filing in support of Florida and all the other many states in the Obamacare legal challenge. As some of you may know, Gonzales v. Raich is at the heart of the Obamacare legal debate from Congress, and now it’s going to the U.S. Supreme Court, Angel Raich writes by e-mail. (Learn more at Angel Raich’s website.) In a month or so we will file the amicus brief. Our team will be working hand in [...]

Medical Cannabis Cup coming to L.A.

Events

Jan 122012

Title: Medical Cannabis Cup – L.A. Location: Los Angeles Center Studios, 1201 W. Fifth St., Los AngelesLink out: Click hereDescription: The world’s premier medical-marijuana competition arrives in Los Angeles for the first time. Panels and seminars with leaders of the medical-marijuana movement, including doctors, patients, researchers, growers, dispensary owners, activists and HIGH TIMES magazine’s own cultivation editors. A Saturday-night VIP party featuring performances by very special musical guests. A closing-night Medical Cannabis Cup awards ceremony honoring the top indicas, sativas, hybrids, concentrates and edibles entered by California’s legally operating cannabis dispensaries and collectives.Start Date: 2012-02-11End [...]

Mendocino man to face cannabis charges in Texas

Marijuana News

Jan 032012

Chris Diaz, a Mendocino man whose arrest for pot possession in Texas has rallied the medical marijuana community, is headed back to the Lone Star state. An extradition order from Texas has been signed by California state officials and Texas officials are making plans to retrieve Diaz soon, rendering moot his request for bail at a Tuesday hearing. His family and supporters had lobbied locally for his release but prosecutors said that was not an option, Glenda Anderson reports in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. California officials by law cannot refuse to comply with extradition [...]

Marijuana violence sours life in Sonoma vineyards

Crime

Nov 062011

Gabino Lopez Santiago refused to join a marijuana-growing venture in the moments before he ran from a group of men and was shot and killed on a rural ranch in the hills edging Sonoma County’s Dry Creek Valley. He had been partying with his brother-in-law who later claimed that he, too, had feared for his life when he was tasked with dumping Santiago’s body 10 miles away. The new allegations surrounding the Oct. 16 shooting were revealed in court documents and interviews, illuminating an argument fueled by alcohol and centered around the lucrative business of [...]

Doctors: CMA supports medical research on marijuana

Health and science

Nov 052011

Drs. Kay Judge and Maxine Barish-Wreden are medical directors of Sutter Downtown Integrative Medicine program. Their column on the science of medical marijuana appears in the Sacramento Bee. ====================================== This month, the California Medical Association made news when it became the first state medical association to recommend the legalization and regulation of cannabis, better known as marijuana. The CMA’s Council on Scientific and Clinical Affairs noted in its recommendations that there is an increasing body of evidence that marijuana may be useful in the treatment of a number of medical conditions, but research to determine [...]

AP report: Central Valley fertile ground for pot growers

Cultivation

Oct 172011

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 [...]

SacBee report: Medical cannabis industry in turmoil

Medical marijuana

Oct 172011

Venture capitalist Steve Berg figured he had an unassailable business model. Berg’s San Francisco firm, the ArcView Group, was pledging to find “angel investors” for startups offering products and services for California’s $1.5 billion medical marijuana industry. But last week, U.S. prosecutors in California announced criminal prosecutions against targeted marijuana dispensaries and threatened landlords with property seizures, Peter Hecht reports in the Sacramento Bee. Suddenly, the state’s burgeoning medical marijuana sector is dealing with fear and introspection. Industry advocates are calling for increased state regulation, thinking that could weed out bad actors in the trade [...]

Cannabis contributions to Redding’s economy unknown

Marijuana News

Oct 162011

To hear medical marijuana advocates and insiders tell it, businesses associated with the north state’s medical marijuana trade have gotten a boost — or are outright booming — in the middle of the Great Recession. They worry the crackdown that federal authorities started this month on medical marijuana growers and sellers might bring further economic woes to an area already suffering from double-digit unemployment rates, flat sales taxes and a rash of vacant retail buildings. The problem is no one — from city and state officials to economists and business experts — really knows just [...]

California Medical Association backs legalized cannabis

Medical marijuana

Oct 162011

The state’s largest doctor group is calling for legalization of marijuana, even as it pronounces cannabis to be of questionable medical value. Trustees of the California Medical Association, which represents more than 35,000 physicians statewide, adopted the position at their annual meeting in Anaheim late Friday, Anthony York reports in the Los Angeles Times. It is the first major medical association in the nation to urge legalization of the drug, according to a group spokeswoman, who said the larger membership was notified Saturday. Dr. Donald Lyman, the Sacramento physician who wrote the group’s new policy, [...]

Hempfest Sacramento to set up in south Sutter

Events

Aug 012011

A marina in south Sutter County known for hosting zydeco music and pirate festivals will be opening its doors for something else next month: A three-day event dedicated to education, promotion and a bit of celebration of marijuana. Billed as the first annual Hempfest Sacramento — even though it’s neither in the city nor county of that name — the event will have both speakers and performers and should draw 10,000 to 15,000 people, according to organizers. “Every day is going to be a knowledge day,” said events coordinator Kristina Wheeler, who lives in Sacramento. [...]