You've seen fire sales. They happen when goods or real estate are discounted sharply after fire damages a store or a building. But the term has new meaning in rural Calaveras County, where the devastating Butte Fire swept through thousands of acres last year, the seventh-worst wildfire in recorded California history. It's just possible that what's happening near towns like Mountain Ranch, Murphys and San Andreas could foretell at least one aspect of life in fertile parts of California if Proposition 64 passes this fall and legalizes recreational use of marijuana. [continues 660 words]
It surely looked like reefer madness was back the other day, when the state began advertising for a new medical marijuana czar. The timing of the listing, coming while a dozen proposed ballot initiatives to legalize recreational pot are pending, appeared to suggest an assumption by Gov. Jerry Brown and his administration that at least one will pass. The new pot czar, to be paid between $115,000 and $128,000 annually, would actually only be in charge of medical marijuana to start with. (Two more putative ballot measures now authorized to seek voter signatures would make refinements to the 1996 Proposition 215, which legalized medipot.) The wide presumption is that if and when recreational marijuana is legalized, it will be regulated by the same czar as medipot, working under the state's Department of Consumer Affairs. [continues 563 words]
As the state moves toward taxing marijuana growers for the first time, those same growers also are starting to face restrictions on water use, just like farmers of more conventional crops. One reason is that the water consumption of pot farms has caused serious depredations of salmon and trout runs in several Northern California streams, most notably the Eel River and its tributary streams in the so called "Emerald Triangle" of Mendocino, Humboldt and Trinity counties. Marijuana has long been the largest cash crop in that region. [continues 637 words]
The more time goes by since last fall's passage of the highminded Proposition 47, the more it begins to look like a well-intentioned mistake. This was the ballot measure that turned some "minor" felonies into misdemeanor crimes, thus easing the crowding in state prisons and many county jails. It has unquestionably helped some exfelons rebuild their lives. But as crime statistics for the first half of this year pour in from around the state, this measure looks worse and worse, on balance. The numbers are bearing out warnings Proposition 47 opponents made in their official ballot argument against the initiative before it passed by a whopping 60-40 percent margin. [continues 630 words]
Four potential ballot initiatives completely legalizing marijuana are in the works for California's next general election, with pot advocates yet to choose the variation that will get their concerted push. But one thing for sure: Whichever one they send out for signature gathering will say nothing about the detrimental effects of the mind-altering weed, wellknown a proven demotivating factor for heavy users. The eventual pot legalization initiative (its official name is yet to be determined) will likely tax pot producers and dealers just like other businesses. And it will contain rules against anyone under 21 obtaining it, like measures adopted in Colorado and Washington. [continues 605 words]
"The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft agley." Robert Burns in his 1785 poem "To a Mouse." Bobby Burns couldn't have known it, but as California approaches what many experts forecast to be the worst wildfire season on record, his description of how good intentions can go awry, not always turning out as planned, might come into play here soon. Nothing but good intentions was contained in last year's Proposition 47, which passed by an overwhelming 59-41 percent margin and has since seen the release of almost 4,000 inmates from state prisons and about the same number from county jails. They were paroled or otherwise freed because the initiative converted drug use and possession, plus some other previous felony crimes, into misdemeanors with much lighter sentences. [continues 541 words]
The muscular young man with greasy hair, tattered clothing and a menacing demeanor sauntered into a Los Angeles fast food emporium the other day, his breath reeking of liquor and his demands very frank. "Give me some money," he demanded of a customer waiting for a breakfast burrito. "Not on your life, smelling the way you do," replied his intended mark. "No way am I paying for you to buy more booze." "That's not what I want," the young man scoffed. "I need my medical marijuana." [continues 704 words]
The muscular young man with greasy hair, tattered clothing and a menacing demeanor sauntered into a Los Angeles fast food emporium the other day, his breath reeking of liquor and his demands very frank. "Give me some money," he demanded of a customer waiting for a breakfast burrito. "Not on your life, smelling the way you do," replied his intended mark. "No way am I paying for you to buy more booze." "That's not what I want," the young man scoffed. "I need my medical marijuana." [continues 698 words]
When the Proposition 19 marijuana legalization initiative qualified for the ballot with a yes-or-no due vote in the November election, its passage seemed almost a foregone conclusion. Tax the approximately $12 billion pot industry in this state and you could collect $1.4 billion toward solving the state's budget deficit, not to mention helping out cash-strapped local governments. You would also take hundreds, maybe thousands, of law enforcement officers off the drug beat and allow them to go after "real criminals," said supporters of legalization. [continues 750 words]
Maybe it's because growers of medical marijuana are sitting ducks, not nearly as hard to find or as nasty to deal with as the Mexican drug cartels that run many large marijuana farming operations deep in forests on federal- and state-owned land, in parks and forest reserves. Maybe it's because of the enduring contradictions between state and federal laws - about to become more severe if Californians next year pass a pending initiative to flat-out legalize marijuana. For despite his campaign statements, President Obama has not ended confusion on the medipot front, dashing some hopes of patients, growers and operators of the medical marijuana dispensaries that have proliferated in many California cities. (Sure, some of those patients and dispensaries are phonies out for nothing but a high or a profit, but there are also plenty of legitimate medical users.) [continues 691 words]
There is silence now where once loud huzzahs erupted from medical marijuana advocates in California after U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder signaled this spring that federal authorities will no longer raid or interfere with medipot dispensaries in states where it is legal, so long as users abide by state law. That's because no big change has occurred since then in this state, whose voters via the 1996 Proposition 215 became the first in the nation to pass a state law legalizing medical use of marijuana. [continues 635 words]
There is silence now where once loud huzzahs erupted from medical marijuana advocates in California after U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder signaled this spring that federal authorities will no longer raid or interfere with medipot dispensaries in states where it is legal, so long as users abide by state law. That's because no big change has occurred since then in this state, whose voters via the 1996 Proposition 215 became the first in the nation to pass a state law legalizing medical use of marijuana. [continues 704 words]
There is silence now where once loud huzzahs erupted from medical marijuana advocates in California after U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder signaled this spring that federal authorities will no longer raid or interfere with medipot dispensaries in states where it is legal, so long as users abide by state law. That's because no big change has occurred since then in this state, whose voters via the 1996 Proposition 215 became the first in the nation to pass a state law legalizing medical use of marijuana. [continues 703 words]
It is almost certain that the 56 percent of California voters who approved Proposition 215 in an attempt to legalize medical use of marijuana did not intend for employers to discriminate against persons who take advantage of the law they passed. As it has evolved since passage, the 1996 initiative lets cities and counties issue medipot usage cards to users who smoke the weed to ward off pain caused by ailments from migraine headaches to a wide variety of cancers. Where they exist, the cards can only be obtained with a doctor's recommendation. [continues 746 words]
It is almost certain that the 56 percent of California voters who approved Proposition 215 in an attempt to legalize medical use of marijuana did not intend for employers to discriminate against persons who take advantage of the law they passed. As it has evolved since passage, the 1996 initiative lets cities and counties issue medipot usage cards to users who smoke the weed to ward off pain caused by ailments from migraine headaches to a wide variety of cancers. Where they exist, the cards can only be obtained with a doctor's recommendation. [continues 745 words]
Another state budget writing season is over, and another deficit budget adopted (even though Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger won't admit it), with the usual lip service to fixing the so-called "structural deficit," but nothing serious done in that direction. Meanwhile, from deep in the Emerald Triangle of Northern California, long reputed to be the national capital of in-ground marijuana growing, comes a simple idea that could both solve the budget deficit and end the greatest American hypocrisy since Prohibition. Too bad it has virtually no chance of passage in this decade or, very likely, the next one either. [continues 716 words]
There was bound to be a backlash against the spate of actions by the Bush administration against the will of California's voting majority, ranging from challenges to the state's ability to set its own smog standard to a steady undermining of the 1996 Proposition 215, which aimed to legalize medical marijuana. The reaction has begun. Predictably, the first moves against Bush policies come from two areas that have long been among the state's most freewheeling and left-leaning, Santa Cruz County and the city of Arcata on the north coast. [continues 838 words]
San Francisco - Ed Rosenthal, known as the "guru of ganja," will go to prison later this year for growing marijuana for medical use, although he was authorized to do so by the city of Oakland, unless an appeals court intervenes. But some medipot supporters say his conviction last week is already giving their cause a major boost. Publicity about the case, in which several jurors later apologized to Rosenthal for their verdict, "has done more for medical marijuana and jury nullification than all our efforts of the past 10 years," said Steven Kubby, founder of the American Medical Marijuana Association, who says marijuana is the only reason he is alive 26 years after being diagnosed with a rare form of adrenal cancer. [continues 523 words]
It's not exactly an underground railroad even if it ends in Canada, which was also the northern terminus of the pre-Civil War Underground Railroad that assisted runaway slaves. Today's exodus of medical marijuana patients driven from their American homeland is not underground at all, but quite public, as the federal government simply won't allow them to use pot for alleviating pain or other symptoms of diseases like AIDS and cancer -- no matter what the majority of voters in their home states may say. [continues 716 words]
Vancouver, British Columbia - American medical marijuana activists have been heading to Canada in the past year, joining a fast-growing expatriate community reminiscent of the draft dodgers of the 1960s and '70s. Most of the medipot users have come since July 30, when Canada instituted new regulations that allow users of medipot to grow and smoke a specified amount of marijuana after they demonstrate a medical necessity and get permits from local authorities. The amount each is allowed to use varies from case to case. [continues 527 words]
