Oct 25, 2012 | MMJ News
By Dave Rice
At the San Diego Reader
A California appeals court yesterday reversed the 2010 conviction of medical marijuana dispensary manager Jovan Jackson, who was sentenced to six months in jail in 2010 for possessing and selling cannabis for profit.
The Reader first reported on Jackson’s intent to appeal last November.
The appeals court overruled Judge Howard Shore, who refused to allow Jackson to mount a defense based on state medical marijuana law, referring to cannabis as “dope” and state law as “a scam” during the trial.
San Diego Superior Court now has the option to re-try the case, unless the state Supreme Court chooses to intervene.
“This landmark decision not only recognizes the right of dispensaries to exist and provide medical marijuana to their patient members, it also grants a defense for those providers in state court,” said Joe Elford, chief counsel for Americans for Safe Access, who represented Jackson in court.
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Oct 23, 2012 | MMJ News
Check out the link to Americans For Safe Access for the full story
http://safeaccessnow.org/blog/blog/2012/10/23/honoring-medical-cannabis-warriors/#more-3284
Bill Britt at the American’s for Safe Access award ceremony (Washington, DC October 16, 2012).
Congratulations Bill!
Oct 12, 2012 | MMJ News
By MALIA WOLLAN
at the NY Times
SAN FRANCISCO — The City of Oakland has filed a lawsuit in federal court to prevent the Department of Justice from seizing property leased to the largest medical marijuana dispensary in the country.
“This lawsuit is about protecting the rights of legitimate medical patients,” City Attorney Barbara Parker said in a statement on Wednesday, when the suit was filed. “I am deeply dismayed that the federal government would seek to deny these rights and deprive thousands of seriously ill Californians of access to safe, affordable and effective medicine.”
The civil lawsuit, which the City Council approved, seeks to “restrain and declare unlawful” the forfeiture proceedings against the landlords of the dispensary, Harborside Health Center, stating that Oakland will “suffer irreparable harm if the dispensaries are shuttered.”
“It is heartening to see the city stand up and support us,” said Steve DeAngelo, Harborside’s executive director. At its Oakland location, the nonprofit dispensary employs 100 people and serves some 112,000 more, seeing 600 to 800 customers a day. Last year, the group paid $3.5 million in taxes, including $1.1 million to the city.
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Oct 2, 2012 | MMJ News
By Alex Dobuzinskis
Reuters
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The Los Angeles City Council voted to rescind a newly enacted ban on storefront medical marijuana shops on Tuesday, allowing the city to avoid a referendum next year that some officials said would likely succeed in reversing the prohibition.
The council, in a blow to an industry that operates in violation of federal law, voted in July to ban pot dispensaries and replace them with a system that would allow up to three patients to collectively grow marijuana.
But medical marijuana advocates collected in August the necessary 27,425 valid signatures to put the decision to a March 2013 referendum. Under city rules, that number of signatures – 10 percent of the total number of votes cast in the city’s last mayoral election – put the ban on hold until the vote.
The backtracking comes a week after federal authorities moved to close about 70 such dispensaries in the city in a renewed effort to crack down on the operations through the use of asset-forfeiture lawsuits and warning letters.
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Oct 1, 2012 | MMJ News
By: Kenny Goldberg
at KPBS
Medical marijuana has been legal in California since 1996. But today in San Diego County, many patients are having trouble getting their hands on the drug.
That’s because all of the openly operating storefronts that sell marijuana have been shut down.
In response, activists in four local cities have placed measures to authorize medical marijuana dispensaries on the November ballot.
But even if the measures win, patients might ultimately lose.
Vey Linville has severe emphysema. He needs bottled oxygen to survive.
When Linville was first diagnosed, doctors told him without a double lung transplant, he’d soon be dead.
Linville got his affairs in order.
Then one day when he was searching on the Internet, he discovered a treatment for breathing problems that used to be widely prescribed in the 1800s, Tincture of cannabis. Linville found a recipe for it, and decided to make it himself.
“And I went out and joined one of the clubs, one of the dispensaries, and was able to buy a quarter pound of concentrates, that I put in a small amount of alcohol, and consumed over about 10 weeks,” Linville recalled. “And instead of dying as expected, here I am, six years later, doing better and better.”
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Sep 25, 2012 | MMJ News
By Dan Whitcomb
at Reuters (via Yahoo)
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Federal authorities moved to close down 71 medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles and a neighboring community on Tuesday, marking the latest broadside in an ongoing war over California‘s cannabis trade.
The move also comes on the heels of a municipal ban on storefront pot shops in Los Angeles that was put on hold after activists challenged it in court and by referendum.
The number of medical marijuana stores in Los Angeles, estimated to number between 472 and nearly 1,000, has made it a hub for America’s medicinal cannabis trade and put the city at the center of legal and political battles over the issue.
“Over the past several years, we have seen an explosion of commercial marijuana stores, an explosion that is being driven by the massive profits associated with marijuana distribution,” U.S. Attorney André Birotte Jr. said in a written statement.
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