A staff shortage in the Mendocino County District Attorney's Office has led DA Meredith Lintott to advise her attorneys to limit the marijuana cases they file. In an internal memo leaked to the Daily Journal, Lintott gives the following "charging directions": "Cases submitted for prosecution where the total plant count is under 200 plants and/or the total amount of processed marijuana involved is less than 20 pounds shall be rejected." Factors to consider, according to the memo, separate from the plant count, are whether weapons were involved, whether any children were on scene, whether the marijuana was clearly intended for sale, whether the arrestee has a criminal history and whether there were workers on scene and if they had workers compensation insurance. [continues 620 words]
A Ukiah cannabis club with a branch in LA and some 20,000 customers has closed its doors after it said it got a warning that federal drug agents may be coming to close it down. Scott Feil, who runs the United Medical Caregiver Clinic on North State Street, said Thursday that he believed the DEA would come to Ukiah to shut them down. A second cannabis club on North State Street -- Compassionate Caregivers of Ukiah -- appeared to have shut down as well. [continues 809 words]
Mendocino County's new state-approved medical marijuana ID card is now available. The Board of Supervisors Tuesday approved fees for the program at $50 for each ID card and $50 for each caregiver ID card with discounts for MediCal patients. Mendocino County is one of a handful of state counties chosen to pilot the new statewide ID card system, which will put the county Health Department fully in charge and remove the county Sheriff's Department from the equation. "I strongly support this statewide ID program so everyone's on the same page," said Sheriff Tony Craver at the meeting. He stressed that medical marijuana ID cards, which he pioneered with DA Norm Vroman several years ago in this county, save lots of money in investigative time for deputies and detainment time for legitimate medical marijuana users. He called the benefits "immeasurable." [continues 250 words]
After a somewhat contentious public hearing in which council members were accused of being less than compassionate and medical marijuana growers were called greedy, the Ukiah City Council took the unprecedented step of deciding to regulate medical marijuana growing in the city limits. The vote was unanimous. It may be the strictest regulation by a city in the state where medical marijuana use and cultivation was made legal by the voters in 1996. The urgency ordinance lasts 45 days and council members said they believed it was necessary to act immediately even as the city's Planning Commission continues to work on a permanent growing scheme of some kind. [continues 675 words]
Young people in Mendocino County have little trouble getting hold of marijuana and alcohol, and as they progress from middle school to high school there's less stigma attached to the use of drugs and alcohol among their peers. That's according to the 2005 Status Report on Children and Youth, released Tuesday to the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors. "Staggering" is the word used by Supervisor Jim Wattenburger when he saw a statistic in the report that indicates that between 1992 and 2003, the rate of arrest of young people between 12 and 17 for marijuana violations increased 323 percent. [continues 693 words]
