| Photo: Hollywood Grind |
Oakland, California’s plan to license and regulate large-scale medical marijuana farms have taken another tentative step forward after several setbacks. Unfortunately, the news isn’t particularly good for smaller growers.
The city’s rules and laws about medicinal cannabis dispensaries have sometimes been controversial, but mostly successful, with four dispensaries in town servicing thousands of patients and enjoying about $28 million in annual sales, reports Sean Maher at the Oakland Tribune.
But City Council members including Desley Brooks have long argued that there is little local control over where those four dispensaries get their marijuana. They have proposed, instead, city-licensed, industrial-scale marijuana grow operations to supply the dispensaries.
| Photo: StoptheDrugWar.org |
| HopeNet smells like a marijuana dispensary. And its bathroom once stopped working for one day in 2008. Yeah, that’s the kind of “complaints” that S.F.’s dispensaries get. |
So much for all those police-generated myths about medical marijuana dispensaries spoiling the neighborhood.
Despite Nervous Nellies, most dispensaries are quiet, respectable, and hell, as close to boring as you can come when your shelves are full of weed.
That truth has been highlighted again as an SF Weekly investigation revealed a grand total of only 11 complaints on file from a five-year period, according to documents received from the paper’s public records request, reports Chris Roberts.
The Weekly asked the Department of Public Health, which oversees San Francisco’s dispensary program, for a summary of recent problems with the city’s pot collectives. And of the 11 complaints on record, most of them are distinctly of the trifling variety.
| Graphic: Desert Star Weekly |
Going into the documentary Hempsters: Plant The Seed, I was already aware of many of the facts surrounding the hemp plant and its many uses to humanity for food, fiber, pharma and fuel.
But as a good docu tends to do, this film doesn’t just engage your intellect; it touches your heart, too, and that emotional impact took me somewhat by surprise.
The lively documentary, directed by Michael Henning and produced by Diana Oliver, explores the reasons why the United States is the only developed country on Earth that bans the cultivation of industrial hemp.
Due to its relation to marijuana, it is illegal under federal law to grow hemp in the U.S. Hemp is considered a drug under the Controlled Substances Act even though it contains minimal levels — less than one percent — of marijuana’s chief psychoactive ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).
| Graphic: Squidoo |
Two different groups are moving ahead with plans to put medical marijuana before Ohio voters next year.
Cleveland billionaire Peter Lewis is organizing and funding a medical marijuana ballot issue, while another group has been quietly laying the groundwork for a constitutional amendment, reports Alan Johnson at The Columbus Dispatch.
If approved by voters, the Ohio Medical Cannabis Act of 2012 would establish a regulatory system modeled after the Ohio State Liquor Control system. (OK, that seems a little strange — why would a medicine be controlled by the liquor board?) There would be an Ohio Commission of Cannabis Control, plus a state division and superintendent to run it.
Marijuana purchases would require a doctor’s authorization and would be subject to state and local sales taxes.
| Photo: Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ |
A Seattle City Council panel on Wednesday unanimously passed a measure licensing and regulating medical marijuana dispensaries in the city.
The ordinance now moves to the full City Council for consideration on Monday, July 18, reports Chris Grygiel at the Seattle P.I. But prior to the vote by the Housing, Human Services, Health and Culture Committee, one attorney told the council members that the ordinance won’t stand up in court.
“I want to applaud the City Council for taking a look at this matter … unfortunately I must urge you to reconsider your proposal,” said activist/attorney Douglas Hiatt, who said he represents medical marijuana patients. “Go back to the drawing board. I do not believe there is any way you can pass your ordinance will stand under the law. The state’s controlled substances act pre-empts the field … Marijuana is still illegal … It’s illegal for all purposes, you cannot regulate an illegal business without a specific authority.”
| Graphic: Salem News |
The Anatomy of a Memo
By Jack Rikess
Toke of the Town
Northern California Correspondent
In a incredibly chicken-shit way, the Department of Justice did a news dump last Friday night after all the big news services had gone to bed, releasing a memo meant to “clarify” its position whether marijuana should remained classified as a Schedule I drug, which means that it has no medicinal benefit.
Big surprise! The DOJ said the scheduling remains the same. “Not so fast, partner, nothing changing as far as we’re concerned.” Marijuana is to remain classified as a Schedule I drug because of its “lack of medicinal benefits.”
My first question is could there be a conflict of interest with a agency like the Department of Justice that is home to the DEA, Bureau of Prisons, National Drug Intelligence Center, Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, Office for Immigration Review, U.S. Marshals Service, Interpol, FBI, and the ATF?
Are these really the guys we want deciding whether marijuana’s good for you or not?
Is it really a surprise then when they said, “No?”
| Photo: Real Missions, Real Life |
A legal, card-carrying medical marijuana caregiver who was growing cannabis in his backyard to treat his wife’s Stage 3 breast cancer will be sentenced on Thursday for “manufacturing marijuana.”
Gary Alan Katz, 59, pleaded guilty last month to the charge after officers with the Livingston and Washtenaw Narcotics Enforcement Team (LAWNET) raided his home on August 10, 2010, reports Lisa Roose-Church at the Livingston County Daily Press & Argus.
Both the defendant and his wife, Jeanne Katz — who wasn’t charged in the case — declined to comment.
“The fact you’re doing a good thing on the side doesn’t justify” illegal behavior, Prosecutor David Morse said when asked why Gary Katz was charged.
“We cut the guy some slack,” Morse claimed. “There were guns recovered. He could have been charged as a felon in possession of a firearm … I recognize he may have been doing some good things here, but there are other ways to help.” Yeah, like throwing the caregiver in prison?
| Graphic: BudGenius.com |
| If you have a dispensary in California and test five or more strains weekly with BudGenius.com, you can qualify for a free website. |
BudGenius.com, which is both a social networking website and medical marijuana testing laboratory, announced on Wednesday it is introducing a $250,000 program for the development of 25 websites to be built for qualifying medical marijuana dispensaries.
The company said it aims to show than an effective social web strategy will fully offset the cost of medical marijuana testing.
“We have a problem in the medical marijuana industry,” said Angel Stanz, cofounder and president of Santa Barbara-based BudGenius.com. “Many caregivers are distributing marijuana that is potentially contaminated with harmful mold and pesticides, while therapeutic dosing is rarely explained. Handling untested medicine without potency guidelines to patients is medically irresponsible.”
BudGenius says its internal study showed that less than one-third of all dispensaries surveyed in California test their marijuana for safety and potency. Of those currently testing, less than 25 percent maintain strict protocols to keep their catalog up to date.
| Graphic: San Diego ASA |
Good news! San Diego’s land use ordinance that activists say amounted to a ban on medical marijuana dispensaries has been effectively blocked, according to the group Citizens for Patients’ Rights (CPR).
The city of San Diego has verified the 31,029 signatures on the petition referendum from the CPR. The City Council now has 10 days to either rescind the ordinance or schedule an election.
In order to avoid the prohibitive costs of an election, the CPR, along with the Patient Care Association (PCA) of California and the California Cannabis Coalition, are urging the City Council to rescind the March 2011 land use ordinance.
If rescinded, the City Council has a second chance to not only create a new land use ordinance that respects the rights of patients to safe access, but also to work with the city’s medical cannabis collectives to provide clear guidance, 15 years after voters passed the Compassionate Use Act.