Toke of the Town

Browsing: Growing

Judge Rules Medical Marijuana Not An Agricultural Crop

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By on Growing, Legislation, News

Photo: Cigarettes Flavours
Sure looks “agricultural” to me.

​Yes, marijuana is a plant you grow from the ground. No, it’s not an agricultural crop. Confused yet?

In what is believed to be the first ruling of its kind in the state, a judge in California has ruled that a marijuana collective can’t operate on land zoned for agriculture, reports Lewis Griswold of the Fresno Bee.
In his ruling last week, Tulare County Superior Court Judge Paul Vortmann dismissed a property owner’s argument that a medical marijuana collective’s cultivation of marijuana is legal because it is in an agricultural zone.
“In this state, marijuana has never been classified as a crop or horticultural product,” Judge Vortmann wrote in his ruling. Marijuana is a controlled substance, the judge said.
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‘Marijuana Is Sexy’: Talking Pot with Mendo Sheriff Tom Allman

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By on Culture, Growing

Photo: Santa Rosa Press Democrat
Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman: “We are, of course, supportive of legitimate medical marijuana here.”
By Jack Rikess

Toke of the Town

Northern California Correspondent

​

The Coming of the New Prophet
Rikess: Last time we spoke in August of last year… (See Toke of the Town’s 2010 interview with Sheriff Allman here.)
Sheriff: Seems like yesterday…
Rikess: (laughs) I know and still…you don’t write and you don’t call…
Sheriff: (laughs) Okay…
Rikess: So last time I was here, you said something that was incredibly right on. You said that there was going to be very little difference between George Bush’s administration and Obama’s, when it came to medical marijuana. You said that someone big in the attorney general’s office sat in the chair I’m sitting in and said, and I’m paraphrasing, “He guaranteed me that it was going to be the same under Obama as it was with George Bush. In the end, Eric Holder will handle medical marijuana the same way [the]George Bush [Administration] did.” 
Sheriff: It wasn’t Eric Holder. It was a U.S. attorney. The chronological order was, the U.S. attorney came up here and said, (this is definitely under George W.), saying, “ummm, the U.S. government will not get involved with any marijuana cultivation, distribution, what-ever-you-want-to-call-it, that falls within the boundaries of California’s medical marijuana.” 
Okay, thank you very much. And, you know, he took his dog and pony show and went somewhere else. 
Then the presidential election happened, okay. Then in the primary or maybe it was before the general election, Obama just mentioned something about medical marijuana. 
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County Tax Official Caught Growing Marijuana In North Carolina

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By on Growing, News

Photo: Asheville Citizen-Times
Chris Maney, 46, was charged with possession and felony “manufacturing” of marijuana after officers claimed they found eight plants during a raid

​A tax administrator in Madison County, North Carolina was arrested after police raided his property and accused him of growing marijuana.

Chris Maney, 46, was charged with felony possession and manufacturing of marijuana after the raid by State Bureau of Investigation agents and the Madison County Sheriff’s Office, reports Melissa Dean at the Asheville Citizen-Times.

Law enforcement had gotten a tip that Maney was growing pot next to his home, according to Sheriff Buddy Harwood. Detectives claimed they seized about 5.5 pounds of marijuana.
Eight marijuana plants in separate buckets were found in a field near the home, according to State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) spokeswoman Noelle Talley, reports North Carolina News Network. Cannabis seeds and “drug paraphernalia, including a scale,” were found inside the home, according to the cops.
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Northern California Pot Wars: 632,058 Marijuana Plants Seized

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By on Culture, Growing, News

Photo: California Department of Justice
Local, state and federal personnel were involved in the three-week Operation Full Court Press, which wasted taxpayer money across six Northern California counties.

​Operation Full Court Press, an incredibly expensive, mind-numbingly futile, and ultimately quixotic multi-agency anti-marijuana operation in Northern California, has wound up its three weeks of fun this year, claiming the seizure of 632,058 marijuana plants.

The operation, which covered Colusa, Glenn, Lake, Mendocino, Tehama and Trinity counties, targeted large-scale illegal marijuana grows in and around the Mendocino National Forest. It involved more than 300 personnel from 25 local, state and federal agencies, according to the U.S. Forest Service.
The conclusion of this phase of Full Court Press, in addition to the plants, resulted in the seizure of 1,986 pounds of processed marijuana; $28,031 in U.S. currency; 38 weapons and 20 vehicles.
Arrested were 132 individuals, 118 of whom were booked on various federal and state charges including marijuana, firearm, and immigration violations. Fourteen of those arrested were foreign nationals and were detained on administrative immigration violations. They will be processed for removal from the United States.
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Wild Hemp Grows Everywhere In Nebraska [Photos]

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By on Growing

All photographs courtesy of Diana Sunshine Wulf
These hardy fiber strains of cannabis sativa have a proud and storied history reaching back to the Midwestern hemp farmers of yesteryear

​Back in the days before America got Reefer Madness, the good old U.S.A. was a worldwide center of hemp production. Verdant fields of the incredibly useful fiber crop were cultivated all over the country. Once cannabis was outlawed in 1937 due to Harry J. Anslinger’s scare campaign against marijuana, the economic incentive to cultivate hemp was gone.

After a brief return in the “Hemp For Victory” days of World War II — when the Japanese takeover of our fiber source, the Philippines, made it necessary to once again provide our own rope — hemp faded into American history as a crop of bygone days.
But that didn’t mean it was any less useful, it just meant it was no longer politically acceptable. And it also didn’t mean that hemp would no longer grow in Nebraska (and throughout much of the Midwest), it just meant it was no longer actively cultivated.
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Day Laborers Tricked Into Harvesting Pot; Get Prison Time

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By on Growing, News

Photo: 10tv.com

​Federal prosecutors are wrapping up a weak case against 11 men charged with cultivating thousands of marijuana plants in Ohio. The state’s former top cop claimed it’s an example of cartel-sponsored drug production, but defense attorneys point out that many of the defendants were day laborers who were tricked into harvesting the illegal crop.

All 11 have pleaded guilty, and seven have received prison sentences ranging from a year to 18 months, reports Fox News Latino. U.S. District Judge Thomas Rose was scheduled to sentence three more of the defendants on Friday, with a final sentencing date set for August 17.
When the grow bust was ballyhooed in a self-promotional news release, Attorney General Richard Cordray claimed the seizures and arrests were more evidence of what he claimed was “cartel-sponsored mega-marijuana farms taking root in Ohio.”
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Another Washington Town Allows Collective Marijuana Gardens

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By on Dispensaries, Growing, Legislation

Photo: Brian Grimmer
Patient activist Brian Grimmer: “Once the dispensary/co-op situation is figured out at the state level, we will work with the city council to begin the process of opening a dispensary in Ellensburg”

​Ellensburg, Washington has joined the short, but growing, list of cities in the Evergreen State which have decided to allow medical marijuana collective gardens.

On Monday night, the city council unanimously adopted an emergency ordinance on the issue to allow patients to grow cannabis collectively for medical use, reports Aaron Hilf at KNDO.
However, the same emergency ordinance which allows collective marijuana gardens also places a six-month moratorium on medical cannabis dispensaries.
The collective marijuana gardens must be indoors and at least 300 feet from schools, along with other zoning regulations.

“We really wanted to be able to move quickly so that if someone did want to come forward there was a framework within the city, an application process within the city, and zoning within the city that allowed them to become a collective,” said Mayor Bruce Tabb.
For an eminently reasonable $25 permit fee, along with a doctor’s medical marijuana authorization, patients in Ellensburg can now get together and grow cannabis for medicinal use.
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Washington Town Approves Collective Marijuana Gardens

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By on Dispensaries, Growing, Legislation, Medical

Photo: Washington Highways
The collectives will be limited to a strip along State Route 525 in Mukilteo

​On a 5-2 vote Monday night, the Mukilteo City Council approved an ordinance allowing collective medical marijuana gardens in the Snohomish County, Washington city.

The move is significant, according to patient activist Philip Dawdy of the Washington Cannabis Association and 4 Evergreen Group, because it makes the city the first in Snohomish County to allow for collective gardens. Other cities in the county, including Everett, Lake Stevens and Marysville, have banned them.
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N.J. MS Patient Loses Appeal; Prison For Medical Marijuana

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By on Growing, Legislation, Medical

Photo: Robert Sciarrino/The Star-Ledger
Multiple sclerosis patient John Ray Wilson is handcuffed after being sentenced to five years in prison for “manufacturing and drug possession”

​A New Jersey multiple sclerosis patient appears to be headed to prison for growing 17 marijuana plants behind his home.

John Ray Wilson said the plants were for medicinal use, and New Jersey — since Wilson’s arrest — has legalized medical marijuana. But patients in the Garden State still aren’t allowed to grow their own medicine.
Wilson was acquitted of maintaining or operating a “drug-production facility,” which could have gotten him 20 years behind bars, but was found guilty of manufacturing and possessing marijuana and sentenced to five years in prison.
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10 Years Prison Upheld In Eddy Lepp Medical Marijuana Case

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By on Growing, Legislation, News

Photo: Salem-News
Eddy Lepp walked his last mile to federal prison as a free man.

​A federal appeals court on Wednesday upheld the conviction and 10-year prison sentence of Charles “Eddy” Lepp, who grew 32,000 marijuana plants for patients and fellow Rastafarians on his land in Lake County, California.

The federal judge who sent Lepp to prison in 2009 criticized the federal law which required a 10-year prison term for growing more than 1,000 cannabis plants, reports Bob Egelko at the San Francisco Chronicle. But U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel of San Francisco said she had no choice under the law, and the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed.
“The statutory minimum sentence is not cruel and unusual punishment,” the three-judge panel ruled.
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