Search Results: san-jose (7)

The stigma is shrinking and the money is growing.

The following is excerpted from the newsletter WeedWeek. Get your free and confidential subscription at WeedWeek.net.

Private equity investment in weed is heating up. Canadian MED company Organigram raised $17.5M. Denver’s Baker Technologies, a software company which helps dispensaries win and retain customers, raised $1.6M. The industry’s average seed round is $1M according to investment firm Poseidon Asset Management.

Commodities investor Jim Rogers, who started Quantum Fund with George Soros, has invested in PharmaCielo, a Canadian company that won the first license to grow MED in Colombia.

CMH Brands, a company which processes Willie Nelson brand Willie’s Reserve, acquired Denver Relief’s grow and manufacturing facilities. The deal comes weeks after Denver Relief sold a store to Terrapin Station.

The Clinic’s new flagship store in Denver cost more than $1M. A JPMorgan analyst thinks Scotts Miracle-Gro’s push into the industry will benefit the stock. Bloomberg BusinessWeek interviewed Dixie CEO Tripp Keber.

Fast Company looks at what it’s like to work for social media app MassRoots.

San Jose, Calif., dispensary Medimarts promised a court fight against a ruling that it owes $767,000 in taxes and late fees.

787 drivers were involved in Colorado’s 546 driving fatalities last year. Of the drivers, 59, or 7.1% tested positive for cannabis but not other drugs. The total number of fatalities was down from 606 in 2005.

Researchers found that a Vermont Department of Health study was overly negative and did not account for the possibility of legalization alleviating the state’s opioid crisis. This year the state legislature failed to pass a REC bill that was widely expected to become law.

In the Des Moines Register, the founder of an addiction center writes that pot is still dangerous. “We see the faces of marijuana addicts first hand. And it’s not funny. We see people who struggle with simple tasks at school and work.  People incapable of perceiving or expressing emotion. People who suffer from higher incidence of mental health diagnoses, such as schizophrenia, paranoia and anxiety.”


In an era of 24-hour cable news, non-stop talk radio, and a never ending list of politically flavored blogs, it is easy to be overwhelmed by it all. Planes are going down over Russia, bombs are being dropped in Gaza, and back at home, Republicans and Democrats bide their time bickering over gay marriage and contraception coverage.
It’s enough to make people want to just tune out altogether, and unfortunately, they are in droves. This manufactured apathy for all things “political”, trickles down from global, to national, to state, and ultimately to local politics; and can have dire real-world consequences in the community.
The city of San Jose, in northern California’s Bay Area, is realizing this sad reality the hard way when it comes to medical marijuana. There, as in many Californian municipalities, the local City Council has turned a tuned-out public against its own best interests when it comes to weed.

Toke of the Town – Flickr/Keith Bacongco.


Live in San Jose, California? Want free weed? Then get off your butt and go vote. Like, now.
Several San Jose medical marijuana clubs have joined in to create the “Weed for Votes” program, which Silicon Valley Cannabis Coalition director John Lee isn’t geared at getting support any particular measure or official.

Photo: Pattaya Talk

By Jack Rikess

Toke of the Town

Northern California Correspondent
Americans love guns, sex and gambling.
Can you imagine anything getting in our way when it comes to the pursuit of the Big Three?
If it is our desire to have, hold or own any of the Holy Trio, God help the man or woman who tries to stop us. Because if you do…if you do…Try to stop us…We’re just going to have to look the other way. That’s just the way it is. 
That is the way it is with everything in Life in America. Everything.
Except marijuana.
Starting with guns: Full disclosure, I like guns. I shot my first handgun a couple of months ago and really enjoyed myself. I was in the country and where I was staying, there were bear sightings.
While the .38 wouldn’t have done much to the bear except piss it off, my host felt that because how deep we were in the woods everyone in attendance needed to be familiar with guns, in case anything happened. It seemed perfectly acceptable to be prepared at that moment.

Photo: Jeff Chiu/AP
San Jose’s medical marijuana dispensaries are required to pay a new tax starting tomorrow — even though haven’t been declared legal yet.

​Even though San Jose, California considers all of its 100 or so medical marijuana dispensaries to be unlawful, city officials are still welcoming the pot providers to City Hall on Monday to talk about a new program which greatly interests the cash-strapped city: a marijuana tax.

Starting Tuesday, March 1, San Jose will slap a seven percent tax on marijuana dispensaries under a measure city voters overwhelmingly approved in November, reports John Woolfolk at the Silicon Valley Mercury News.
Most dispensary owners always assumed taxation would also mean legal acceptance, but now it appears the beleaguered providers will be catching it from both sides: they’re still subject to police raids at the same time they are responsible for paying taxes.

Graphic: Naming And Treating

​​By Jack Rikess

Toke of the Town
Northern California Correspondent

Here are the stories, tidbits and bong-thoughts of 2010 that caught my attention. 

In July, the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs changed its stance from “attention” to “at ease” by allowing the use of medical marijuana for GI’s in the states where medicinal cannabis is legal.
Maybe one of the biggest underreported stories of the year was the acceptance by the U.S. federal government to allow marijuana as a possible medical treatment.

Graphic: San Jose Cannabis Clubs

​Medical marijuana patients and supporters are staging a protest this Thursday, October 14, as criminal court proceedings begin at the Terraine Courthouse in San Jose, California. The protests are responding to aggressive law enforcement actions over the past two weeks by several local police departments and the California Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement.

The so-called “investigation,” which resulted in the arrest of almost two dozen medical cannabis patients and providers in Santa Clara County on October 1 and 7, is cynically referred to by law enforcement as “Up In Smoke.”
A press conference will be held at 12:30 p.m., with some of the arrested patients, their attorneys, and patient advocates expressing staunch opposition to law enforcement’s heavy-handed tactics.