Former South Lake Tahoe medical marijuana dispensary owner Gennaro "Gino" DiMatteo was arrested on federal charges prior to a court hearing in Placerville Friday.

As DiMatteo entered the El Dorado County Superior Court's Department 7 courtroom during a recess about 2 p.m., a District Attorney's investigator told him they had to talk, took his arm and shuffled him over to a corner of the courtroom between the audience and where arguments are heard.

He then asked DiMatteo to put his arms behind his back because he was being arrested on a federal warrant.

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Dunsmuir, Calif. -- Dunsmuir residents will decide whether or not to remove some restrictions of the city's marijuana ordinance when they vote on Measure S in the Nov. 6 General Election.

The current ordinance was passed in May 2011.

The city council sent the issue to the voters in July after Barbara Marden and Leslie Wilde circulated a petition to remove some of the restrictive language of their ordinance.

If approved on Tuesday, Measure S would revert cultivation laws, for the most part, back to cultivation standards practiced in Dunsmuir from 1996 to 2011. Approval of Measure S would make the following changes to the city's current medical marijuana ordinance:

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Costs to Live Oak for defending a legal challenge to the city's ban on growing medical marijuana total $13,464 - a figure the mayor says is part of the price of protecting citizens, but the resident who filed the suit calls the cost "unreal."

"We don't need to be spending money on this," resident James Maral, 39, said.

Maral said if Live Oak allowed six to 12 plants at each house, the city wouldn't hear from him.

"I would go away," said Maral.

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TACOMA, Wash. - If you believe the polls, and many people here are wary even when they're favorable, then Washington voters are poised to legalize two things Californians haven't: same-sex marriage and marijuana.

With ballot measures on both issues before Washington voters Tuesday, the lessons learned from California's Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in 2008, and Proposition 19, which would have made marijuana legal but was shot down in 2010, have been echoing across Washington for months.

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Federal authorities are maintaining their silence about a criminal investigation that led to a raid at the Potter Valley family property where a high-ranking member of Mendocino County law enforcement resides.

The investigation into possible marijuana cultivation has ensnared sheriff's Capt. Randy Johnson, who now is the subject of an internal Sheriff's Office probe to determine if he knew of any illegal activities on the family property. The probe is being conducted by the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office.

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Advice Offered on How to Keep Children Healthy and Away From Drugs

Parents today have more to worry about than just alcohol and cigarettes, although those vices remain areas of deep concern. Now parents also have to agonize over new "designer drugs," such as bath salts, which are starting to show up in Butte County.

In an effort to educate parents about how to keep kids healthy and safe, Partners4Health presented the two-hour symposium "Kids Living Shorter Lives?!" last Saturday (Oct. 27) at Chico's Enloe Conference Center. Partners4Health is made up of representatives from the Butte County Tobacco Prevention Coalition, Center for Nutrition and Activity Promotion and Butte Youth Now Coalition.

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Lawsuit Filed Against Shasta County

A woman who alleged earlier this year that deputies destroyed more than 200 legally grown marijuana plants on her Round Mountain property is now suing Shasta County.

Esmeralda Sanchez Garcia alleges her civil rights were violated between August and October 2011 when deputies with the Shasta County Sheriff's Office and other county employees searched her property without warrants and then destroyed 203 plants, as well as unprocessed and processed marijuana, that she said were for medical use for her and several other patients.

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I have heard that the longer you let your marijuana plants grow, the more cannabinol they will contain, and CBN is what makes us sleepy. Is it true? If I have insomnia, should I let my buds mature a little longer?

- -Drowsy Dose

Yes. CBN is created when THC is oxidized, usually through exposure to heat or sunlight. Where THC makes you feel high, CBN makes you feel stoned and will most likely put you right to sleep. You can leave your plants out for an extra week or two, although you should have probably harvested them by now, as the rainy weather is coming and mold will be a problem. You could also just leave a few buds on a sunny windowsill for a while, and see if that works for you.

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A moratorium on medical marijuana dispensaries in Santa Monica originally set for 45 days will now be extended for a complete calendar year, as the City Council approved last Tuesday a 10 month 15 day extension to place into a holding pattern the issuing of business licenses, entitlements, or permits to companies seeking to issue the substance for medicinal purposes.

The 320-day extension comes exactly three weeks after council members unanimously approved the 45-day moratorium on medical marijuana dispensaries coming into Santa Monica.

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LODI - A Tokay High School graduate turned medical marijuana advocate said she will implore Lodi to start a commission or panel to meet monthly to hear complaints and deal with issues that arise with the cultivation of cannabis within city limits.

Angel Raich, 46, is a medical marijuana patient who has a terminal brain tumor. She has been a longtime advocate who helped write Proposition 215, the compassionate-use act passed by California voters in 1996. She lobbied at the state level for patient rights in recent years.

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To the Editor:

I am 26 years old, born and raised in the north county and currently live in Redwood Valley. I work two local jobs while attending school in Santa Rosa. Someday I hope to be a health care professional. I have read with great interest the article about the recent raid on the property of the family of a Mendocino County Sheriff's captain in Potter Valley. This is the last straw for me, and I feel I must speak out. This is the first letter of any kind I have ever written to a newspaper, but who knows, maybe it will inspire me to write again, or, heaven forbid, become a reporter or run for office.

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Controversial Store in San Bernardino Is Closed; Operators Arrested

Federal Drug Enforcement Agency officers descended in force on the A.S.P.C marijuana shop at Palm and Highland avenues Tuesday morning, making arrests and confiscating evidence from the store.

Highland Mayor Pro Tem Penny Lilburn said the city of Highland should get a lot of credit for the raid, since the city has been complaining about the drug sales and its clientele, even though it is in the city of San Bernardino at Highland's northern boundary.

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A Florida Case Involving the Use of a Police Dog Will Test the Limits of the 4th Amendment.

The Supreme Court has said that at the "very core of the 4th Amendment stands the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion." The court's commitment to the sanctity of the home will be tested Wednesday by a case featuring as familiar a symbol of domestic life as the family home itself - a dog. Only in this case, the dog was not the householder's best friend but the police officer's.

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The 2012 election is, without a doubt, shaping up to be the most important yet for Americans who want to legalize and decriminalize marijuana.

Three states -- Colorado (Amendment 64), Oregon (Measure 80) and Washington (Initiative 502) -- will vote to legalize marijuana on Nov 6.

Massachusetts has a medical marijuana initiative, as does Arkansas. Local initiatives on the ballot in Michigan are: Detroit (Proposal M), Grand Rapids (Proposal 2), and Ypsilanti (LLEP).

"At a time when polls show that a majority of Americans support legalizing marijuana and mega-majorities support allowing medical marijuana or at least decriminalizing possession, it makes no sense whatsoever that so many national politicians look at this issue as some kind of dangerous third rail of politics," said Tom Angell, founder and chairman of Marijuana Majority.

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To the Editor:

I haven't lived in Mendocino County long, but I have lived here long enough to know that we are in the season of "The Harvest." The gathering for the Pumpkinfest, the familiar sounds of black helicopters, the smells of our youths clothing inundated with the dust and sap of local greenery being processed, and the smoke which dreams are made of begins rising in the air. You don't pay taxes on your crops, and even though many of you claim to be "Humanists" (and so was Jesus and Buddha, by the way), in truth you're probably too paranoid to belong to any church, so chances are you don't pay tithing either.

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CITY AFFAIRS: Local officials should act quickly to resolve concern in South Berkeley over a medical marijuana outfit that may be illegal.

South Berkeley residents have waited too long for the city to resolve their concerns about a potentially illegal medical marijuana operation.

The allegations residents made against Perfect Plants Patients' Group, also known as 3PG, are serious. Recently, the city has been looking into whether the facility, located on Sacramento Street, is within a legal distance from Longfellow Middle School. In addition, residents claim that other illicit activities are occurring nearby, such as alleged street sales and underage youth smoking marijuana. City officials must determine the validity of these assertions as soon as possible.

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I was quoted in an article in The Bee last Sunday, "Medical marijuana: Pot farms hurting habitat," that could leave readers with serious misunderstandings about the environmental impacts of the Emerald Triangle's new "green rush."

Humboldt County is world-famous for producing high-quality cannabis. There are thousands of cannabis farms here. These farms exemplify a diverse spectrum of agriculture, ranging from industrial-scale grows to small cottage-industry farms.

Cultivation has increased since Proposition 215 gave a defense to patients who use medical cannabis and to growers who provide it. However, no one suggests that the enormous backcountry plantations, which are the source of many of the worst environmental harms, have anything to do with medical cannabis.

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John Melvin "Pops" Walker Is Accused of Illegally Selling Pot

Federal agents arrested 13 people on Thursday as part of a drug-trafficking investigation that targeted a chain of marijuana dispensaries and an Orange County man known as "Pops" who is accused of running it.

The storefront dispensaries have distributed more than a ton of marijuana and generated tens of millions of dollars in income, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. Most shut down after raids in 2010 and 2011, but at least one Garden Grove Alternative Care remains open.

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In November, voters in Del Mar and Solana Beach face initiatives seeking to locate marijuana dispensaries within their city limits, despite numerous public-safety concerns.

Despite everything we know about the negative results of marijuana smoking - a known carcinogen that attacks the respiratory system - we still see a concerted effort to normalize its use.

Back in 1999, the California Healthy Kids Survey first uncovered a troubling trend that young, otherwise healthy North County teens use marijuana far more than cigarettes.

Health concerns aside, selling marijuana from storefronts - medical or otherwise - continues to be illegal under federal law.

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Federal authorities closed a number of medical marijuana dispensaries throughout Downtown Los Angeles in September as part of an effort to cut down on the sale and use of the drug, which is legal in California for medical purposes but still considered illegal by the federal government.

This month, the Drug Enforcement Administration followed up by sending warning letters and revisiting several dispensaries. This series of shutdowns was not only unnecessary, but it was also a violation of state rights and an indication of broken promises on the part of President Barack Obama. As marijuana regulation is becoming a hot button issue in the presidential race, such an infringement on an individual state's rights is unacceptable.

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