San Jose’s new ordinance to regulate medical marijuana clubs has run into a buzz saw of challenges, not the least of which is a referendum qualified for the June ballot to repeal the regulations. Rather than take on that fight, the City Council should suspend the ordinance, as Mayor Chuck Reed has proposed, and hope that the courts, the Legislature or both will clarify what cities can do to regulate dispensaries. Pot clubs need to move back to the spirit of Proposition 215, the Compassionate Use Act voters passed in 1996, the Mercury News editorial [...]
On Jan. 18, the Supreme Court of California issued an order granting review of the now infamous line of medical marijuana cases of Pack v. City of Long Beach, City of Riverside v. Inland Empire Patient’s Health and Wellness Ctr., Inc., Traudt v. City of Dana Point, and People v. G3 Holistic. Unless the Supreme Court decides otherwise, this means that medical marijuana advocates can rejoice because local jurisdictions and lower courts cannot use the logic of Pack or Riverside as a vehicle to scuttle the regulatory processes that assure safe access to California’s medical [...]
When California voters approved Proposition 215 in 1996, their intent was to provide compassionate care to patients by legalizing the use of marijuana to ease pain from illnesses such as cancer. Prop. 215 was never meant to give the green light to the hundreds of profit-making dispensaries that have cropped up in the years since to sell marijuana to people who don’t need it, the Long Beach Press-Telegram writes in an unsigned editorial. But intent and reality collided, and the result has been a muddled mess for the cities, such as Los Angeles and Long [...]
City Councilman Jose Huizar is asking his colleagues to ban medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles. It’s a great idea. Or rather, it would have been a great idea three or four years ago — before the city purported to regulate the storefront cannabis-selling shops. The idea would not be to ban dispensaries forever but to track court rulings, determine what regulations are and are not allowable, and then construct a smart and enforceable ordinance. But it’s too late for that now, this Los Angeles Times editorial concludes. L.A. city government took its seat on [...]
Even if the city of Redding orders its many medical-marijuana “co-ops” to close their doors by the end of the month, and they comply, does anyone think fewer users will be buying marijuana under the protections of Proposition 215? That’s the question asked in this insightful Redding Record Searchlight editorial. Whether you sympathize with patients suffering severe health problems who find cannabis eases their pain or think that pot smokers are just scamming the system to avoid criminal prosecution, it’s hard to see the business going away. Not so long as state law grants near-total [...]
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? That ancient philosophical – or would it be biological? – question has a political counterpart in California, Dan Walters observes in his McClatchy Newspapers column. To wit: Did California’s Legislature become dysfunctional because voters adopted too many contradictory ballot measures, or were those ballot measures merely responding to the chronic inability or unwillingness of the Legislature to deal with substantial issues? Countless academic conferences, newspaper op-ed essays and even books have been devoted to answering, or attempting to answer, the question ever since ballot measures became the [...]
The Nevada County Board of Supervisors is preparing an ordinance to restrict or ban marijuana cultivation in agricultural and residential neighborhoods. This ordinance could have unintended consequences on our quality of life and devastate the local economy. I suggest that we would be better served by taxing, limiting, and tightly regulating cannabis cultivation in Nevada County, Patricia Smith writes in a guest column for The Union. Cannabis is our state’s No. 1 cash crop, outpacing the second highest ag producer, dairy, two to one. State tax collectors estimate that $14 billion in marijuana sales remain [...]
The federal government’s recent attacks on medical cannabis providers are a disgraceful waste of precious resources, writes Oakland cannabis attorney Robert Raich. Barack Obama himself said as a presidential candidate that “I’m not going to be using Justice Department resources to try and circumvent state laws on this issue.” His Administration, however, has repeatedly targeted medical cannabis providers through several agencies, with the most recent attacks coming from U.S. Attorneys in the form of letters to California landlords threatening criminal prosecution and property forfeiture if they continue to lease to dispensaries. This flood of intimidating [...]
It’s a good thing that some legislators are willing to take on California’s medical marijuana morass. Attorney General Kamala Harris just tossed it in their laps. It’s perhaps a safer course to stay out of the fray and issue a carefully crafted, completely inoffensive statement, as she did Thursday, that supports the “compassionate use” of medical marijuana for the ill, expresses concern about criminal enterprises exploiting the law and urges federal authorities to focus enforcement on significant traffickers. But for the state’s top law enforcement officer, that’s just not good enough, says this Sacramento Bee [...]
As the Obama administration escalates its threats to crack down on California’s medical marijuana dispensaries, two voices have been conspicuously silent: state Attorney General Kamala Harris and Gov. Jerry Brown, her predecessor. Is she going to vigorously defend the dispensaries if the feds attempt to shut them down?, this San Francisco Chronicle editorial asks. Does she agree with the U.S. attorneys that some of them are not only in violation of federal law but also are criminal enterprises that break even the state’s lax guidelines – and, if so, why hasn’t the state’s top prosecutor [...]
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