Search Results: tacoma (60)

Steve Elliott ~alapoet~
Tacoma Police officers hassle booth vendors selling pipes at this year’s Tacoma Hempfest in June. Police claimed that pot was “already their lowest priority,” but voters made it official on Tuesday.

​Voters in Tacoma, Washington, just south of Seattle, sent a powerful message Tuesday to law enforcement and to state legislators in Olympia by joining Seattle in officially declaring marijuana possession laws the city’s “lowest law enforcement priority.”

Organizers Don Muridan and Sherry Bockwinkel, cosponsors of Tacoma Initiative No. 1, CannbisReformAct.org, gathered the necessary signatures and the voters of Tacoma resoundingly agreed, passing with measure with 65 percent approval.
The measure overwhelmingly passed by an almost 2:1 margin, despite being voted on in an off-year election. Modeled after Seattle’s 2003 initiative, Tacoma Initiative No. 1 makes adult marijuana possession offenses the lowest priority for law enforcement.

Graphic: Tacoma Hempfest

​If you’re in the Puget Sound area and want to help break down the negative stereotypes surrounding cannabis and the people who use it, I have a great, free destination for you this weekend — and the weather’s supposed to be pretty, too. The second annual Tacoma Hempfest happens this Saturday, June 25, at Wright Park in Tacoma, Washington.

“We’d like everyone to come out and show the variety of people who truly support cannabis culture in the area,” Tacoma Hempfest creator and organizer Justin Prince told Toke of the Town.

Photo: Ken Lambert/The Seattle Times
“I am a wolf”: Emiel Kandi, 34, has made hundreds of thousands of dollars in a lending industry with few consumer protections. Now he’s in the medical marijuana business.

​Operating Cobra Medical Group, a medical marijuana dispensary in Tacoma, Washington, isn’t Emiel Kandi’s only business. The former mini-casino operator also charges desperate people as much as he can get away with — up to 45 percent interest, in one case — in deals set up so that he can quickly take borrowers’ homes, and in some cases, flip them for a profit.

Unsophisticated borrowers trying to avoid financial collapse or foreclosure then lose their property, reports Christine Williamson of The Seattle Times. “I am a wolf,” Kandi, 34, said to the paper.
“He’s in the business of taking people’s property,” said Martin Burns, a lawyer who sued Kandi on behalf of an unemployed mechanic. “He finds vulnerable people and exploits them.”
“I’m not your friend,” Kandi said. “If you step off the tightrope, I’ll take your house.”
A Seattle Times examination of numerous Kandi loan deals showed that they take advantage of lax regulations in the lending industry, which provide little protection for consumers.
Kandi knows this, and skirts mortgage requirements and disclosures by writing up his loans as “commercial,” the Times reports. Mortgages have interest-rate caps, consumer protections and full disclosure of all costs, while commercial loans do not.

Graphic: Tacoma Cross

​With hundreds of cannabis supporters in attendance, the Tacoma City Council on Tuesday night agreed to a compromise plan that would allow established medical marijuana dispensaries to continue selling to patients until the Washington Legislature spells out more clearly how patients can legally access the herb.

“The Tacoma City Council is not opposed to safe and legal access to medical marijuana for patients with legitimate need,” Tacoma Mayor Marilyn Strickland said, reports Lewis Kamb of the Tacoma News Tribune.

Graphic: Cannabis Defense Coalition

​The city of Tacoma, Washington, has ordered eight local medical marijuana dispensaries to stop doing business by Saturday, sparking outrage among patients and providers. Cannabis advocates are planning an impromptu rally at Tuesday night’s City Council meeting to support the dispensaries.
In a three-paragraph letter dated October 14 from Tax and License Manager Jodie Trueblood, dispensary operators were told that selling medical marijuana “to more than one patient” is illegal in Washington state, and outlines possible penalties if the shops don’t comply, reports Stacia Glenn at the Tacoma News-Tribune.
Business licenses will be revoked, fines and penalties could be assessed, and criminal prosecution isn’t out of the question, according to Trueblood’s letter.
Dispensary workers said on Monday that they were surprised when they received the cease and desist letters. Some have already appealed the decision, with others saying they plan to do so.
Advocates say that hundreds of supporters have been mobilized for a rally before Tuesday night’s City Council meeting. If they are unsuccessful on getting the dispensary question onto the Council’s agenda, they said they plan to speak during the public comment portion of the meeting.

Photo: KOMO News
Guy Casey, North End Club 420: “I’m calling for everybody in the medical marijuana community to stand behind us”

​Law enforcement officers served three warrants Tuesday morning in their attempt to shut down a Tacoma, Washington-based medical marijuana dispensary, North End Club 420.

The warrants were served at two Tacoma addresses — a home and an office building — and an Olalla home, according to the West End Narcotics Enforcement Team (WestNET), reports Stacey Mulick of The Tacoma News Tribune.
The multi-agency WestNET force, which focuses primarily on Kitsap and Mason counties, claimed it had been working on the case since January with the help of undercover snitches.
The North End Club 420 is one of three new medical marijuana dispensaries in Tacoma.

Update – 2:55 p.m. 7/25/2013: According to the Associated Press, four dispensaries were targeted in raids yesterday, despite claims by one Washington attorney that as many as 18 were on the chopping block.
So far, Seattle Cross, Tacoma Cross, Key Peninsula Cross and Bayside Collective (formerly Lacey Cross) are the four dispensaries identified. All four were also parts of raids in 2011. The feds haven’t officially commented on it, but employees at Bayside Collective say agents told them that the raids were part of a two-year investigation.

Mt. Rainier behind Tacoma, Wash.

Last May, a Tacoma, Wash. cop pulled over Joseph Robertson for speeding. The cop said he smelled marijuana in the car, and after a search police ticketed Robertson for marijuana possession and took his stash in addition to a driving without a valid license charge.
Since then Robertson, who is a medical marijuana patient, had the pot charge dropped says he should get his bag of meds back – and the municipal court has agreed. Twice.

Think you know cannabis better than the Washington state government? You do? Great. You’re probably right, and because of that they might like to talk to you.
In an effort to begin constructing laws and regulations around Washington’s Initiative 502 that legalized limited amounts of cannabis possession and created a state-regulated recreational marijuana industry, Washington officials are looking for a few knowledgeable cannabis cultivators, tokers and scientists to help guide the policy.

Northwest Leaf

No On I-502 says that New Approach Washington is using a McCarthy-style campaign, employing their considerable financial resources, complicit members of the media and influential local political connections to misinform the public regarding the specific issues surrounding the group’s opposition to I-502, a marijuana “legalization” initiative on the November general election ballot.

The “No On I-502” Committee has announced a Wednesday press conference “to clarify, once and for all, our opposition to I-502 and to debunk the propaganda from NAW, and some in the press, that we represent some mysterious, greedy group of marijuana business interests that they’ve failed to specifically identify.”

Speakers at the press conference will include top marijuana attorneys Jeffrey Steinborn, Aaron Pelley and Douglas Hiatt, who will address the facts surrounding both legalization issues and the “per se” DUID provisions of I-502, including the dramatic impact this law will have on tens of thousands of voters in Washington state.
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