Dec 26, 2012 | MMJ News
By Josh Richman
At Oakland Tribune
Many marijuana activists always thought California would be the first state to legalize the drug for recreational use, but their dreams faded in 2010 when the state’s voters rejected Proposition 19.
Yet the legalization measure’s poor timing, lackluster funding and vague regulatory plan offered vital lessons that allowed activists in Colorado and Washington state to succeed last month where California had failed. Now activists in the Golden State are, in turn, scrutinizing those states’ successful campaigns to prepare themselves for another California measure down the road.
“This isn’t over until we say it’s over, and we won’t say it’s over until we win,” said Dale Sky Jones, chairwoman of the Coalition for Cannabis Policy Reform.
Jones, executive chancellor of Oakland’s Oaksterdam University (a cannabis industry training school), said California’s next effort is already under way. Proposition 19’s backers hosted a summit meeting Dec. 7 at Oaksterdam with the people behind five other legalization measures that failed to make it onto the ballot in the past two years. The groups agreed to work together to avoid competing measures.
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Dec 23, 2012 | MMJ News
By Aaron Claverie
At North County Times
A lawsuit challenging the city of Temecula’s ban on medical marijuana operations is headed to the state’s Supreme Court.
The court announced last week that it is taking up the appeal of a ruling in the case that backed the city’s ability to block medical marijuana operations via zoning laws.
In the meantime, the operation that challenged the ban, Cooperative Patients’ Services, will not be allowed to distribute medical marijuana within the city’s borders, according to court documents.
According to City Attorney Peter Thorson, the court will postpone action on the Temecula case until it decides a case in the city of Riverside involving medical marijuana dispensaries.
“Based on the length of time it is taking the California Supreme Court to decide cases these days, we do not expect a ruling in the Riverside case until at least December 2013 and perhaps not until March 2014,” Thorson said in an email to The Californian.
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Dec 17, 2012 | MMJ News
By PAUL ELIAS
At The Huffington Post
SAN FRANCISCO — President Barack Obama says he won’t go after pot users in Colorado and Washington, two states that just legalized the drug for recreational use. But advocates argue the president said the same thing about medical marijuana – and yet U.S. attorneys continue to force the closure of dispensaries across the U.S.
Welcome to the confusing and often conflicting policy on pot in the U.S., where medical marijuana is legal in many states, but it is increasingly difficult to grow, distribute or sell it. And at the federal level, at least officially, it is still an illegal drug everywhere.
Obama’s statement Friday provided little clarity in a world where marijuana is inching ever so carefully toward legitimacy.
That conflict is perhaps the greatest in California, where the state’s four U.S. Attorneys criminally prosecuted large growers and launched a coordinated crackdown on the state’s medical marijuana industry last year by threatening landlords with property forfeiture actions. Hundreds of pot shops went out of business.
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Dec 12, 2012 | MMJ News
By RYAN McCARTHY
at ChicoER.com
MARYSVILLE — A medical marijuana cultivation measure called the most progressive in California won approval from the Yuba County Board of Supervisors Tuesday by a 4-1 vote.
“We’ve made history,” said Sam McConnell, president of the Yuba County Growers Association.
He said every other county in the state can now follow the ordinance that follows a measure booed in April at a Board of Supervisors meeting as too restrictive for medical marijuana growers.
“Everybody is able to do what they need to,” McConnell said of the new measure.
Attorney Jeff Lake, representing growers, said the new ordinance moves away from square-footage limits for growing marijuana and instead uses a plant count. A total of 18 plants can be grown on less than an acre while up to 99 plants are allowed on more than 20 acres, he said.
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Dec 10, 2012 | MMJ News
By Michael Gryboski
at Christian Post Reporter
A medical marijuana dispensary in California expresses evangelical Christian views and is known to hand out Bibles along with the controversial drug.
Canna Care of Sacramento, a family owned dispensary known for supplying medical marijuana and advocating for decriminalization, evangelizes and prays with its customers. Canna Care oversees group prayers in a typical day around 6:00 p.m. and has handed out an estimated 3,000 Bibles to those who come for their services.
Kris Hermes, spokesperson for the nationwide pro-marijuana legalization group Americans for Safe Access, told The Christian Post about its ties to Canna Care.
“Canna Care has been a supporter of Americans for Safe Access as have scores of dispensaries across the country,” said Hermes. “We have also worked with the operators of Canna Care on a number of political campaigns over the years, given their active involvement in advancing medical marijuana policy.”
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Dec 6, 2012 | MMJ News
BY RICHARD K. De ATLEY
at The Press Enterprise
The lawyer for the medical marijuana dispensary at the center of the latest court action over Riverside’s ordinance banning the clinics said Wednesday, Dec. 5 that local governments are trying to outrun the California Supreme Court on the issue.
“Nobody really wants to wait for the Supreme Court to tell us what the law is, huh? God forbid we should have a country of due process and laws,” Redlands lawyer James DeAguilera said in a phone interview.
I put in a call in Monday to DeAguilera when I did a story on an appellate court order that restored Riverside’s injunction against Closet Patient Care dispensary on Elizabeth Street. De Aguilera got back to me the morning of Wednesday, Dec. 5.
The Nov. 29 order from the Fourth Appellate District Court, Division Two, gave Riverside a green light to resume procedures to close the remaining 10 to 12 dispensaries in the city. The appellate order reversed a judge who had blocked action to shut down Closet Patient Care in August. That action had put on hold Riverside’s cease-and-desist actions against clinics.
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Dec 3, 2012 | MMJ News
BY RICHARD K. De ATLEY The Press EnterpriseBY RICHARD K. De ATLEYat The Press Enterprise
Riverside will resume its efforts to shut down the medical marijuana dispensaries still operating within its boundaries now that a state appellate court order has upheld the city’s ban on such storefronts.
About 10 to 12 medical marijuana outlets remain open, City Attorney Greg Priamos said Monday, Dec. 3, as he commented on a Fourth District Court of Appeal order issued Nov. 29. Priamos said 45 dispensaries in the city have closed since a ban was put in place nearly a year ago.
The order from the court’s Division Two, based in Riverside, overturns an August ruling by Superior Court Judge John Vineyard. He said a local government cannot ban medical marijuana stores if they are operating legally under the state laws that authorize them. While Vineyard’s ruling addressed only one store, it affected city’s efforts to complete its ban on all of them. (more…)
Dec 3, 2012 | MMJ News
By LANow
Los Angeles Times
The nation’s largest medical marijuana dispensary, which is battling to keep two Bay Area sites operating, has won a victory in state court.
Last summer, federal prosecutors filed civil forfeiture actions against Harborside Health Center’s landlords in Oakland and San Jose — a move aimed at pressuring the buildings’ owners to evict. And the landlords moved to do just that.
But Harborside challenged the evictions in state court, noting that its leases explicitly stated how the premises would be used.
In a ruling last week, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Evelio Grillo tossed out the Oakland eviction, noting that landlord Ana Chretien could not seek relief in state court for Harborside’s alleged violations of federal drug law.
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Nov 27, 2012 | MMJ News
By Talia Ralph
At GlobalPost.com
Humbolt State University in Humbolt, California, has dedicated an institute to the research of marijuana.
Humbolt may be the first to launch an institute purely for the study of pot. And according to economist Erick Eschker, the institute’s co-chair, who studies the link between marijuana production and employment in the county, it makes perfect sense.
”If anyone is going to have a marijuana institute, it really should be Humboldt State,” Eschker told the Eureka Times-Standard. “It has the potential to be a world-class institute, and we’re just getting going.”
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Nov 15, 2012 | MMJ News
By Judith Scherr
At Whittier Daily News
contracostatimes
BERKELEY — There was unmitigated praise for the benefits of medical marijuana at the Tuesday night City Council meeting. But there was also unanimous consent that the Perfect Plants Patient Group was operating illegally and would have to shut its doors.
“Medical marijuana is not before this council,” said Councilman Darryl Moore. “We enforce zoning regulations like we do for every business in Berkeley.”
The city attorney will draft a resolution that will detail specific code violations and the council will vote on it Nov. 27.
Before the public hearing, code enforcement officer Gregory Daniel enumerated the various charges leveled at the Perfect Plant Patients Group, better known as 3PG: Its location near Sacramento and Oregon streets violates zoning rules requiring a minimal 600-foot distance between schools and medical marijuana distribution sites, he said.
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