San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed said Tuesday he would consider softening the city’s recently approved medical marijuana ordinance after critics succeeded in qualifying a referendum to repeal the new rules. The ordinance the City Council approved in September would shrink the number of medical marijuana collectives allowed in the city from more than 100 to just 10, in addition to requiring them to grow all of the marijuana they distribute on site. Critics collected more than 49,000 signatures in a month to repeal the law, which they argued would require the creation of marijuana superstores [...]
The traditionally conservative doctors attending the California Medical Association’s annual meeting Friday weren’t high on the state’s No. 1 cash crop when they called for the legalization and regulation of marijuana. They were simply acknowledging the obvious: Our current laws and the resulting war on drugs aren’t working. The consequences of pushing pot underground, CMA docs argue, are worse than the potential problems of legal pot shops. This bold pronouncement moves the legalization debate further into the mainstream, and that is where it belongs, this San Jose Mercury News editorial declares. The professionals who run [...]
For the last couple of years, medical marijuana has been a booming business in San Jose, but now it’s also a promising new source of tax revenue, according to new figures released by the city’s finance department. San Jose officials say the city’s medical marijuana collectives paid $290,000 in the first month the city levied a 7 percent tax on businesses selling the drug, John Woolfolk reports in the San Jose Mercury Register. Councilman Pierluigi Oliverio, who has led the city effort to regulate and tax medical marijuana collectives, called it a positive sign for [...]
Some owners of medical marijuana shops operating in San Jose are concerned that paying the city’s new marijuana business tax would be an admission to breaking state and federal laws and could land them behind bars. About 100 people attended a workshop Monday morning at City Hall to learn exactly how San Jose’s new marijuana business tax will work, Mark Gomez reports in the San Jose Mercury News. Starting Tuesday, San Jose will enforce a 7 percent tax on marijuana dispensaries under a measure voters overwhelmingly approved in November. But some of San Jose’s pot [...]
San Jose still considers all of the city’s 100 or so medical marijuana shops to be unlawful nuisances, but officials will welcome the pot providers to City Hall Monday to talk about a new program of great interest to the broke city: a marijuana tax. Starting Tuesday, San Jose will slap a 7 percent tax on marijuana dispensaries under a measure voters overwhelmingly approved in November, John Woolfolk reports in the San Jose Mercury News. The city — which has emerged as a key battleground in the state’s “green wars” over medical marijuana regulation — [...]
Mountain View may become the only city in the county to specifically allow medical marijuana dispensaries, and city officials say they need more time to finish an ordinance, which would delay a City Council vote scheduled for Tuesday. “Staff feels we need some more time to make sure we’ve covered everything in the ordinance,” said City Attorney Jannie Quinn, who will recommend the council delay its vote on a draft ordinance. “We would be the only city in the county and we want to get it right.” A reason for delay, Quinn said, is that [...]
Feb 152011
Regulation of medical marijuana in California is a mess. In a column on this page last month, San Jose City Councilman Sam Liccardo suggested the best solution: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration should establish national standards. That won’t happen anytime soon, since obsession with the war on drugs still grips much of the nation. But Assemblyman Tom Ammiano is offering the next best thing. The San Francisco Democrat plans to introduce a cannabis bill that would set state rules governing marijuana dispensaries. Almost anything would be better than the current chaos, the San Jose [...]
Dec 302010
An armed invasion of a San Jose marijuana grow house dominoed into violent chaos Tuesday night near the Children’s Discovery Museum, the latest in a string of crimes aimed at pot growers and dispensaries. It ended with a San Jose police officer blasting his gun at an onrushing vehicle, shattering the leg of a suspect who might not have been involved in the robbery at all. Update: Man shot by police was unrelated to robbery By Wednesday, four people were in custody and a fifth was on the run, Sean Webby and Mark Gomez report [...]
Bud’s note: Today’s must-read story is by Marcus Wohlsen of the Associated Press, as picked up by the Sacramento Bee. Think of the AP as a news collective, with members “donating” their local news in exchange for some dank nugs off the AP newsfeed. ============ SAN JOSE — As marijuana goes mainstream in communities across California, the state’s third-largest city has become the next big battleground over the drug’s future. Medical marijuana retailers this fall have faced raids and stings by narcotics agents who accuse them of old-fashioned drug trafficking, even as the San Jose [...]
San Jose’s medical marijuana clubs are deeply concerned about being raided by narcotics officers. But in recent days, a number of them have been raided by criminals. Four dispensaries and one marijuana grower were hit by vandals, burglars or armed robbers in the past week, one just hours after a City Council meeting in which the fate of the city’s cannabis clubs was debated. In the case Wednesday night, a dispensary owner was knocked out of his wheelchair by a masked intruder and robbed. Police are investigating the possibility that some or all of the [...]
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