A Recap of Successful and Failed Marijuana Bills at California's Capitol. California lawmakers' first legislative session since passing last year's historic medical-pot regulations wraps up this week. And, for the most part, they did good work when it comes to marijuana: Patients' rights were protected, legal bridges between the old system and the new were built, and a lot of bad ideas (and a few good ones) never made it to the governor's desk. First off: Medical-marijuana patients will not face increased statewide taxes at the dispensary, now that a taxation bill is dead for the year. The proposed tax was one of about dozen related laws that were introduced in Sacramento, but mostly died by Wednesday's end-of-session deadline. As of Tuesday morning, here's where the most viable bills stood: [continues 624 words]
A year after vallejo's mayor mulled shutting down dispensaries, marijuana offerings are better than ever. Vallejo's medical-marijuana industry has weathered yet another crackdown and is in full bloom this year. Thanks in part to state-level regulations, medical-marijuana patients throughout the north and east bays can obtain some of the best regionally grown cannabis flowers, and hence the world - all from a sleepy, bedroom community just across the Carquinez Bridge. Thirty minutes north of Berkeley by freeway, Vallejo Holistic Health Center had a line nine-people deep on a recent Tuesday afternoon. The huge, community center-like club was stocked with eighth ounces of elite cuts of trendy Wedding Cake, Alien OG, Sherbet and Gelato, as well as Bay Area staples such as Jack Herer and Grand Daddy Purple. VHHC has seven sales stations and a veritable Target aisle worth of starter marijuana plants, or clones; edibles such as Yummi Karma medicated sriracha potato chips; and hyper-potent extracts like "The Clear" vape pen cartridges. [continues 548 words]
The War on Drugs fueled the modern-day prison industrial complex for decades, and many politicians now agree that it was a misguided federal policy that resulted in the needless incarceration of millions of Americans - particularly Black and Latino folks. From 1990 to 2010, the amount of people in state prisons for drug offenses increased by 52 percent according to the American Civil Liberties Union. These arrests for non-violent crimes tore apart communities of color nationwide, separating families and saddling the loved ones of incarcerated individuals with financial burdens - from legal costs to drastic reductions to their household incomes. [continues 198 words]
Dream up your legal weed garden with Oakland's celebrity author latest tome. Legalization is in the wind. Can you smell it? With less than one-hundred days until a historic California vote on adult-use of marijuana, many are wondering what they'll do if Proposition 64 passes. Odds are fifty-fifty that, for the first time in more than a century, Californians ages 21 and over could be able to legally garden up to six cannabis plants. No doctor's note needed. Just be 21. [continues 705 words]
California's historic medical-marijuana regulations are reshaping the state's multibillion-dollar industry - but niche areas remain in a legal limbo. Consider the Chalice California hash and glass-art bash, which went down in the high desert of Southern California earlier this month. Wu-Tang Clan performed before thousands of attendees, and hundreds of vendors spent three days accepting "donations" for concentrated pot resins, which were many-times stronger than raw marijuana flowers. The event itself sprawled across dozens of acres of the San Bernardino County Fairgrounds, and free "dabs" - tiny hits of super-potent vaporized weed oil - were handed out like slushies in the 95-degree heat. All this despite the fact that California's marijuana-concentrates industry exists in an evolving grey area. [continues 673 words]
Our writer picks his favorite cannabis for stress, anxiety, and pain, sleepless nights, and even lingering PTSD. The average medical-cannabis patients' tastes have evolved from merely being satisfied with having some buds to understanding types of buds, such as indica and sativa. Still, patients can do better. Here are some of the leading strains of this summer, based on my notes from the beat, and adapted from your editor's debut book, The Medical Marijuana Guidebook, out this July on Whitman Publishing. [continues 758 words]
A Getaway to Weed's Heartland, Mendocino County - Which Still Lacks Licensed Dispensaries. About three hours north of the Bay Area, tucked behind curtains of redwoods, the rugged Lost Coast of Mendocino County is as primal as the north shores of Kauai. Time moves slower, and this region has yet to catch up to the cannabis movement it helped start. Despite a national boom in medical marijuana, America's pot-growing heartland of Mendocino, which is licensing mega-farms, has yet to license retail outlets for patients. [continues 775 words]
With all due respect to the mountain of "reefer madness"-style studies muddying up honest science, your point about cannabis use and safety is not best made by citing the guy who edits Journal of Cannabis Therapeutics. Carol Denney, Berkeley [end]
Personal pot possession in California was reduced from an arrest to an infraction in 2010, but systemic racism around pot enforcement continues, a new study finds. The American Civil Liberties Union of California, in conjunction with the Drug Policy Alliance, published a groundbreaking, heavily reported piece of research Monday that concludes that the Black community in California faces ticketing for pot at a rate four times as high as whites. Latinos have about double the rate of pot tickets as whites. [continues 1008 words]
What Five Years in Prison Taught California Former Dispensary Owner Dale Schafer, and Why He's Thinking About Getting Back into the Marijuana Biz A judge sentenced Dale Schafer to 60 months federal prison in 2008, but now the attorney and celebrity drug-war is out - and getting back into marijuana. The 62-year-old resident of Roseville, a suburb just east of Sacramento, and his wife, Dr. Marion "Mollie" Fry, became a poster couple for outrage over the federal crackdown on medical pot when federal prosecutors indicted them for operating a clinic in the Northern California foothills. [continues 786 words]
High Times Editor and Writer David Bienenstock Brings His Book Tour to Oakland Efforts to legalize cannabis are encountering some unexpected headwinds this year. As income inequality reaches Gilded Age levels, and the corporate plutocracy further destroys the American Dream, many progressives worry legalization's spoils will simply enrich the powerful instead of prohibition's victims. High Times editor and VICE correspondent David Bienenstock keenly capitalizes on that fear in his new book, How To Smoke Pot (Properly), which has great reviews from Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Slate and the Los Angeles Times. This highbrow guide to getting stoned contains more than just joint-rolling tips. It's about how to "win the peace" of legalization. [continues 762 words]
Feds Quit Assault on Harborside, Oakland Passes (Contentious) New Pot Rules, and It'll Be Marijuana and Trump Together on California's November Ballot. Oaklanders are in the middle of one of their biggest marijuana moments in city history. Last week, its city council approved a vast, but controversial, expansion of Oakland's medical-pot industry. The vote came the same day as Mayor Libby Schaaf's announcement that Oakland's biggest dispensary, Harborside Health Center, had prevailed in its federal-forfeiture court case. Also last week, a coalition of activists dubbed Let's Get It Right, California announced all of the Golden State would be voting on legalization of adult-use marijuana in the November 8 election. [continues 1441 words]
Fresh off a ban on all medical cannabis cultivation, it's now one of the first local governments to awaken to new state laws and the industry's revenue potential. California's counties are sleeping giants when it comes to medical marijuana, but Alameda County is beginning to stir. One of California's most populous, large, centrally located and progressive counties is moving to modernize its pot-shop rules. Alameda plans to allow the sale of extracts and marijuana-infused products such as edibles, as well as legalize deliveries within and from outside the county, in addition to adding one to three new dispensaries. [continues 741 words]
Legalizing cannabis could reduce sentences and clear criminal records for millions. Here's something to toast to on the week of 4/20: Millions of Californians with an old pot crime conviction besmirching their records could see the scarlet letters vanish if voters legalize marijuana on November 8. And those in prison for cannabis offenses that are no longer considered crimes could petition for a reduced sentence. "If we have victory here, it will set the new standard for what can be done," said Tamar Todd, director of legal affairs at the Drug Policy Alliance, an international group helping to fund and direct the pot legalization effort in California. [continues 798 words]
Impressive article. Impressive organizing by Supernova and others. There should be no barriers to ownership or licensure in any business based on prior convictions for drug crimes. That goes for medical marijuana and the adult use of recreational marijuana, should it become legal. California and the nation have permanently disenfranchised people for selling a small amount of a commodity that another adult wanted. It's wrong and it's racist. Glenn Backes, Sacramento [end]
Great in-depth article. The cannabis industry really has a chance now to make a positive social impact on Oakland, rather than blindly focusing on the almighty dollar. Michael Manning, Oakland [end]
It Appears That Only One Flavor of Legalization Will Make the Ballot This November, and It Might Have a Strange Ally. For those wondering what's going to happen with the crowded field of proposals to legalize cannabis in California this year, look no further than an independent source of information with boots on the ground: paid signature-gatherers. Thousands of these mercenaries have fanned out across the Golden State this April, earning an estimated $2.50 per signature to help place pot legalization on the ballot. [continues 774 words]
Both East Bay Cities Are Ending Their Long-Standing Prohibitions on Medical Pot and Embracing the Fast Growing Industry. During a special study session on March 15, Emeryville city councilmembers called for an urgency ordinance to immediately legalize the delivery of medical marijuana into Emeryville by existing regional providers. "I have heard from people who are in pain," said Councilmember Nora Davis, referring to Emeryville patients who have had trouble obtaining cannabis because of the city's twenty-year ban on medical marijuana. [continues 1465 words]
In the Wake of the War on Drugs, State Laws and Industry Culture Are Preventing Black and Latino Folks From Entering Oakland's Burgeoning, Hugely Profitable Cannabis Market. On a Tuesday evening in January, people gathered at SoleSpace in downtown Oakland for a panel titled, "Shades of Green: The State of Cannabis in California for People of Color." Supernova Women -- a recently formed organization led by female entrepreneurs of color working in cannabis -- organized the event, and it brought out an avid, intergenerational crowd of mostly Black and brown folks with varying levels of interest and experience working in the industry. [continues 5362 words]
Why Maya Lapid of the East Bay company Om Edibles is the name to watch in US medical cannabis foods in 2016. Unlike the new crop of cannabis carnival barkers, real power players in the industry tend to be discrete. And few in the weed game have been as discrete, or have built up as much momentum as Maya Lapid, founder of the award-winning East Bay company Om Edibles. Lapid is a prescient, college-educated Bay Area native, and a plugged-in, insider of fourteen years in the local medical cannabis industry who foresaw the edibles-as-superfoods trend eight years early and can no longer hide from the limelight. Still, Lapid is hesitant to fully spill the beans, particularly when it comes to her budding business relationship with superstar celebrity Whoopi Goldberg. [continues 652 words]
