From the early moments of the groundbreaking reality TV show, “Weed Wars,” it’s clear that longtime pot reform activist Steve DeAngelo is ready for his close-up. After a snappy title track by Snoop Dogg, the opening episode quickly cuts to scenes of a pony-tailed DeAngelo cruising the streets of Oakland and extolling the virtues of medical marijuana. “I have a very close, personal relationship with the cannabis plant,” says the loquacious founder of Harborside Health Center, the state’s largest medical marijuana dispensary. “It was love at first sight.” Cable television in recent years has introduced [...]
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.” [...]
Rio Oso tomato grower Thomas Jopson, charged with cultivating more than 1,000 marijuana plants, invited a Sutter County deputy to tour his property in April, according a criminal complaint filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Sacramento. Jopson and his brother, David Jopson, are among defendants arrested Tuesday at the farm on Pleasant Grove Road. They made an initial appearance Wednesday in court but have not yet been indicted, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. The Jopsons were in custody after the hearing, Rob Young reports in the Appeal-Democrat. Bond was set at $100,000 each, [...]
ALAMEDA — The Alameda City Council approved a contract to hire John Russo as the new city manager. All that remains for Russo to be officially on his way to Alameda is for him to resign his post as Oakland’s elected city attorney, a job he’s held since 2000. He’s expected to resign soon and make the move sometime in June, Sean Maher reports in the Oakland Tribune. The Alameda City Council offered Russo the job in mid-April and he accepted it last week. The council voted 4-1 in closed session Tuesday to approve a [...]
George Mull opposed Proposition 19. Steve DeAngelo campaigned for it. Which made it all the more interesting at the recent CalNORML conference in Berkeley, where both said that medical cannabis distribution in California is — and I’m paraphrasing here — a total fucking mess. Mull is a Sacramento attorney who represents several NorCal collectives, and their struggles in assorted cities and counties have convinced him that statewide regulation is necessary. To that end, he co-founded the California Cannabis Association and actively campaigned against Prop. 19, which he feared would erode patient rights under Prop. 215 [...]
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 [...]
Feb 262011
Oakland City Attorney John Russo, whose relationship with the mayor and City Council members has deteriorated into a finger-pointing contest, is one of three finalists to be Alameda’s next city manager, sources familiar with the process revealed Friday. Russo’s potential move across the Oakland-Alameda estuary comes after months of feuding with Mayor Jean Quan and some council members, who have blamed him for thwarting proposed cannabis cultivation regulations. Quan’s mayoral adviser has also challenged Russo over proposed injunctions to limit the movements of accused gang members, Matthai Kuruvila reports in the San Francisco Chronicle. His [...]
Harborside Health Center proclaims itself the world’s largest marijuana dispensary. For certain, it is California’s most ambitious – a holistic care center with a naturopathic physician, acupuncturist, chiropractor, yoga instructors and therapists in “universal life force energy.” Its Oakland facility handles $22 million in annual medical marijuana transactions. Now Harborside is attracting scrutiny from the Internal Revenue Service, Peter Hecht reports in the Sacramento Bee. Since last year, the IRS has been auditing 2008 and 2009 federal tax returns for the Oakland location, one of two outlets Harborside operates for 70,000 medical marijuana users. 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 [...]
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