Council Requests Ordinance Draft Before Next Meeting; Mayor Says Public Welcome to Comment on It The Colusa City Council voted 4-1 on March 18 to pursue an outright ban for the cultivation of medical marijuana within the city limits - both indoor and outdoor. The lone "nay" was cast by Councilwoman Marilyn Acree. City attorney Kristen Hicks was directed by the council to draft a total-ban ordinance to be reviewed and discussed at a later meeting - making Colusa the fourth city to do so since Maral v. City of Live Oak was decided by the 3rd District Court of Appeals. [continues 598 words]
Informal interest in opening a medical marijuana dispensary in Orland has prompted city officials to consider an ordinance that would permanently ban such facilities. The city's temporary emergency ordinance expired in the fall, and the City Council wants to re-activate it until a permanent ban is approved. Interim City Manager Gail Wingard sought direction on the policy Tuesday because other cities are struggling with the opening and closing of such facilities. Orland enacted its temporary ban of dispensaries, collectives and collaboratives two years ago while it waited to see how court cases in other communities were decided. [continues 533 words]
A new effort to legalize marijuana for recreational use in California is working its way toward the 2012 ballot, and organizers of the proposed initiative are hoping for the support of farmers. "Farmers in the Central Valley could benefit the most," said Steve Kubby, manager of the "Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Wine 2012." In fact, Kubby is adamant that his organization is not seeking to legalize, but to regulate marijuana. "It is not a legalization initiative, it is not a de-criminalization initiative," Kubby said Monday. "It would treat marijuana like wine and be regulated exactly the same way we treat alcohol." [continues 653 words]
The next time police knock at your door, be careful what you do next. Any sound you make inside could grant police the authority to search your home without a warrant. That's the result of last week's misguided Supreme Court decision expanding the definition of an exigent circumstance under which police can conduct a warrantless search. In an 8-1 ruling, the court created a new precedent that grants law enforcement the power to bypass a warrant based on arbitrary standards, which could be as minimal as "hearing" evidence being destroyed. We strongly disagree with the court because, in the words of dissenting Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, it "arms the police with a way routinely to dishonor the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement." [continues 303 words]
Colusa officials have temporarily banned marijuana dispensaries from opening anywhere in the city. The Colusa City Council decided Tuesday to wait until its staff can study any possible threat to public safety before it considers the often controversial business. The council also wants to wait until the Planing Commission completes a new zoning ordinance that complies with the 2005 general plan. A planning committee has worked several months on new zoning policies and intends to address medical marijuana dispensaries in the new ordinance, city officials said. [continues 336 words]
Chief Stark Says Allowing Them Bad for Colusa The Colusa City Council will consider an urgency ordinance Tuesday that bans the establishment and operation of medical marijuana dispensaries. The urgency ordinance would establish a temporary moratorium until city staff can consider the safety impacts on the public. The action comes shortly after the city was contacted about the possibility of establishing a medical marijuana dispensary in town. Interim police Chief Ross Stark said Friday he was unaware of the agenda item, but agrees a medical marijuana dispensary is not a good mix for Colusa. [continues 355 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]
If voters in November pass Proposition 19 to legalize marijuana, Californians will be inhaling a new tax and regulatory environment as well. Voters are weighing it closely: A Reuters/Ipsos poll taken in late June found that Prop. 19 was opposed by Californians, 50 percent to 48 percent. A key element of the "Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010" is taxation, coming at a time when the state has difficulty balancing its budget every year. The deficit for the still-unpassed budget for fiscal year 2010-11, which began July 1, is pegged at $19 billion. [continues 357 words]
If there is power in numbers, area pot growers have filed a powerful lawsuit against Tehama County. The lawsuit was filed recently by local medical marijuana patients against Tehama County's marijuana cultivation ordinance, which regulates where and how much marijuana a patient or caregiver can grow in the county. The plaintiffs claim that the ordinance makes it impossible for them to legally exercise their Proposition 215 right to cultivate medical marijuana for themselves, according to a statement released by the law firm of E.D. Lerman and J. David Nick, which filed the suit in Tehama County Superior Court. [continues 468 words]
Bits of evidence keep turning up suggesting that the country is ready - - more ready than most politicians are yet - to rethink outright prohibition as the only way to deal with certain drugs or substances. Some elements of the government seem ready to take baby steps in the direction of a more sensible approach. On Monday the U.S. Supreme Court said it would not take up a challenge by San Diego and San Bernardino county governments to California's landmark medical marijuana law, passed by the voters in 1996. Last week Gil Kerlikowske, President Obama's pick to head the Office of National Drug Control Policy (the position colloquially referred to as "drug czar") said it was time for the government to abandon the "war on drugs" metaphor. [continues 413 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 will be no solution to the drug cartel violence in Mexico so long as the United States maintains a brain-dead drug prohibition policy that has failed for more than 90 years. It is time to relearn the lesson of alcohol prohibition - namely that it is impossible to prevent people from using drugs that they like. The results of alcohol prohibition were violent bootlegger activity, corruption of police and public officials and a breakdown in law and order while utterly failing to reduce alcohol use one iota. They had more speakeasies at the end of alcohol prohibition than there had been saloons when they began. [continues 63 words]
The campaign to frighten California voters into approving their second significant tax increase in only three months ratcheted up this week as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and other initiative supporters claimed thousands of firefighters and police jobs will be eliminated unless voters approve propositions on the May 19 special election ballot. "I don't like to use scare tactics," the governor said unconvincingly Tuesday. Notice he didn't say he is opposed to using scare tactics to push voters into a $16 billion increase in income, sales and car taxes, the largest increase in state history even larger than the $12.9 billion for the same taxes he and the Legislature imposed in February. [continues 423 words]
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has received a minor flurry of criticism this week for acknowledging that the United States - or at least some people in the United States - bears some responsibility for the explosion of drug-law-related violence in Mexico that has left more than 7,000 Mexicans dead since January 2008. The trouble is that she doesn't seem to be prepared to follow her comments to anything close to their logical implications. Clearly what we've been doing has not worked," Clinton told reporters on her plane at the start of a two-day visit to Mexico. "Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade. Our inability to prevent weapons from being smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the deaths of police, of soldiers and civilians." She added that "neither interdiction [of drugs] nor reducing demand have been successful." [continues 444 words]
I am very disappointed in Michael Phelps. I thought he was better than that. I really can't believe he apologized for exercising his God-given natural right to fly Mexican airlines, to fire it up, to get a gage up, to smoke the love weed, to take a hit of Mary Jane. When Phelps inhaled marijuana from that bong at a party in November at the University of South Carolina, he was simply exercising his right as a free human being. [continues 654 words]
