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Photo: Laurie Avocado, Wikimedia Commons

​A San Diego task force has released its recommendations for the city council regarding medical marijuana dispensaries.

The task force said, among other things, that dispensaries should go through a permitting process, limit hours of operation, abide by zoning restrictions, and should be more than 1,000 feet from schools, libraries, or playgrounds. Dispensaries would also be restricted from bring less than 500 feet away from each other.
Some local marijuana supporters are on board with the proposed regulations. “I think it’s balanced and pretty fair,” Craig Beresh told the local NBC affiliate. “I think it’s going to work for both the medical marijuana community and the city of San Diego.”

Photo: Michael W. deBenutzer, Wikimedia Commons
Hitting all the high notes?

​A New Zealand woman who played classical musical to her 20 cannabis plants “to encourage them to grow” has been sentenced to community work, according to Kiwi website TVNZ.

Zarah Murphy of New Plymouth, N.Z. cultivated the plants in a room with photos on the wall of healthy palnts as “role models” and played them “nice classical music,” her lawyer told New Plymouth District Court on Monday.
The lawyer, Pamela Jensen, said Murphy was growing the plants for her own medical use, to treat her post-traumatic stress disorder, the Taranaki Daily News reported.
She was undergoing psychotherapy for her condition and could possibly attend drug counseling in the future, according to Jensen.
Judge Allan Roberts, while granting the elaborate grow room was a “pretty good effort,” still sentenced music lover Murphy to 250 hours of community work and $1,235 in unpaid fines.

Image by Cooljuno411, Wikimedia Commons
Will California be the first state to legalize?

​Richard Lee, founder of an effort to qualify a marijuana legalization initiative for the November 2010 election in California, says the campaign is on track to make the ballot.

Lee, who runs cannabis training institute Oaksterdam University in Oakland, said more than half a million signatures have already been collected. According to Lee, the target of 650,000 signatures will be met by early December.
Ken Masterson, partner in a petition management firm in San Francisco, confirmed Monday that the original plan to complete signature-gathering for “Tax Cannabis 2010” by Christmas is ahead of schedule, according to the Ventura County Star.
To qualify for the ballot, 433,971 valid signatures will be required. Masterson said he checked a random sample of 50,000 signatures and discovered a validity rate of more than 70 percent. At that rate, the goal of 650,000 total signatures would be enough to qualify.

Photo by Laurie Avocado, Wikimedia Commons
We got a thousand of ’em! Medical marijuana dispensary on Ventura Boulevard in L.A.

​How many medical marijuana dispensaries are needed in a city with 4 million people?

That’s the question the Los Angeles City Council will be grappling with Tuesday as they decide how to deal with an explosion of the pot shops. Two years ago, when the number reached 186 registered dispensaries, a moratorium was put in place, but a boilerplate “hardship” exemption was included that proved to be a big enough loophole for hundreds more to slip through.
Current dispensary estimates run between 800 and 1,000, and the truism that “L.A. has more marijuana shops than Starbucks” has already captured the public imagination.
Councilman Jose Huizar has suggested a cap of 70 dispensaries; “I’d rather start with a low number,” he told the Los Angeles Times, calling 70 “a reasonable number” since that would be two for each of L.A.’s designated communities. Huizar’s proposal is one of more than three dozen changes the council will consider as it resumes debate on L.A.’s proposed medical marijuana ordinance.
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