If Successful, It Would Allow Only Personal-Use Cultivation Proponents of banning commercial marijuana production in Calaveras County on Monday gathered signatures at grocery stores and other locations in hopes of placing its proposal on the ballot in November. Bill McManus, a volunteer with the campaign, said he got about 25 signatures during two hours parked near Vista Del Lago Drive and Highway 26 near Valley Springs. In late morning he moved to the MarVal grocery parking lot at the Valley Oaks Center in Valley Springs, where his first signature came from Hershall Roberts, 66, of Valley Springs. [continues 762 words]
Proponent Says Group Will File Correct Paperwork Soon Calaveras County Clerk-Recorder Rebecca Turner has rejected the initial paperwork filed by a group proposing a ballot initiative to ban commercial marijuana cultivation in the county. Turner said in a letter dated Tuesday that the notice of intent to circulate petition filed a day earlier didn't meet election code requirements because it failed to include the language of the proposed initiative. Bill McManus, a member of the still-unnamed group advocating for the initiative, said Wednesday morning that group members expect soon to refile the notice with the initiative language. [continues 271 words]
Leaders Hope to Have It on the November Ballot Anti-marijuana activists on Monday filed notice that they plan to circulate a petition that would place on the ballot in Calaveras County a measure that would ban marijuana cultivation, manufacturing, processing, storage and transportation. "We are looking to have this on the ballot for November for the general election," said Bill McManus of the Calaveras Project. "The process is moving forward. We've filed the notice of intention to circulate or start the petition effort." [continues 188 words]
SAN ANDREAS - Just in time for the holidays, Calaveras County has a record five medical marijuana dispensaries in operation, enough different stores so that some are carving out market niches. The Little Trees Wellness Collective in Arnold is proclaiming itself the high-end shop, stocking a wide selection of smokeables and edibles, including organic vegan chocolate. Relative newcomer Green Gold Cultivators in San Andreas is the discount outlet offering prices low enough to lure customers from Stockton. But medical marijuana patients shouldn't wait until January for after-Christmas sales. At least some of the shops could be out of business by then because of a crackdown on those that don't comply with county codes. [continues 537 words]
Dispensaries Spur Lode Economy, but Officials May Alter Ordinance SAN ANDREAS - Calaveras County now has four medical marijuana dispensaries, twice as many as Stockton, a city with more than six times as many residents. Part of the reason: Dispensaries here operate pretty much in the open, while the businesses are restricted or even banned in many nearby communities, such as Stockton. Calaveras County's medical marijuana ordinance allows the dispensaries, although only one of the four storefronts is in full compliance with all county zoning and permitting rules. [continues 1096 words]
ARNOLD - A third medical marijuana dispensary has opened in Calaveras County, according to a medical marijuana advocate familiar with the business. The latest dispensary, Little Trees Wellness Collective, opened on June 5 or 6 in the Oakridge Center on Highway 4 in Arnold, said Thomas Liberty of Collective Patient Resources, a group that assists terminally-ill medical marijuana patients. Attempts to reach dispensary operator Jeremy Carlson on Monday afternoon were unsuccessful. The business is closed Mondays and Tuesdays, according to its website, and it's storefront at 2641 Highway 4 is a new location. [continues 216 words]
JACKSON - Amador County medical-marijuana patients will be able to grow their medicine in outdoor gardens this year, although those plots will be smaller than they had hoped. The Amador County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to lift a 4-month-old ban on medical pot gardens and allow any single garden to be used to grow as many as 12 plants per patient for as many as two patients for a maximum of 24 plants. That is only a third of the capacity recommended in February by the county's Planning Commission. [continues 316 words]
JACKSON - Outdoor cultivation of medical marijuana has been temporarily banned in Amador County while land-use planners draft regulations aimed at addressing crime, odor and sanitation problems. The Sept. 27 killing of He Ting Fu during the attempted robbery of a medical pot garden he was tending on Carbondale Road near Ione riveted attention to the dangers in growing such a high-value crop. Five men from the Sacramento area are in jail facing murder charges in the killing. But Amador County officials said they already were getting complaints about the proliferation of marijuana growers in the county months before Fu died in the high-profile gun battle. And they were already working on proposed regulations. [continues 413 words]
Medical Marijuana Advocates Claim Victory; Hospital Denies Connection SAN ANDREAS - Feliciano Jiron, the president and chief executive officer of Mark Twain St. Joseph Hospital in San Andreas for more than four years, has resigned and moved out of state to accept another job, the hospital announced Wednesday. Jiron came to the hospital in May 2007 and immediately began work to improve the hospital's image with young families. The relationship with families had been strained in 2006 when Mark Twain officials stopped offering maternity services, something that's often a money-loser for hospitals in impoverished rural counties. [continues 387 words]
More patients claim hospital in Lode pressured them to sign form SAN ANDREAS - Additional medical-marijuana patients have come forward to say they were told they were unwelcome at clinics operated by Mark Twain St. Joseph's Hospital. New allegations surfaced after hospital officials in early July said they have no policy barring medical-marijuana patients from receiving care and that, in fact, some Mark Twain physicians have even written recommendations for patients to use medical marijuana. Sam Slayter, a disabled veteran living near Valley Springs, was the first to go public with his account. Slayter said he had been told by Dr. Rafael Rosado that he couldn't receive care at a Mark Twain clinic in Valley Springs unless he promised to discontinue his use of medical marijuana. [continues 526 words]
SAN ANDREAS - Several dozen medical marijuana patients and caregivers gathered on a recent week night for a two-hour seminar at Forgotten Knowledge Collective in Valley Springs. After giving them an overview of the biology and science behind medical pot, biochemist Samantha Miller turned to one of the biggest questions facing the medical marijuana movement: to smoke or not to smoke. Miller urges medical marijuana patients to cast off their butane lighters. "When you are smoking, you are losing some of your active ingredient to combustion," Miller said. [continues 465 words]
SAN ANDREAS - Two of the major compounds in marijuana - THC and CBD - have cancer-fighting properties, according to scientists researching them. While THC and the biological mechanisms it uses are well documented, there are still mysteries surrounding the lesser-known chemical CBD. Clinical trials prove that it eases pain and inflammation. Sean McAllister, a scientist at California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute in San Francisco, and his research associates have used the compound to shrink tumors. But it does not fit well in the already discovered human receptors that fit THC, and scientists have not yet traced the mechanisms that allow it to modulate some of the same systems, McAllister said. [continues 143 words]
Medical research has done little to quell the larger social, legal and political controversies over legalizing marijuana. California and a number of other states have legalized pot for medical purposes, while the federal government still classifies marijuana as a dangerous narcotic same as heroin. In 2006, the Food and Drug Administration declared that marijuana has a high potential for abuse, no accepted medical use and is unsafe. The federal agency also said, "There are alternative FDA-approved medications in existence for treatment of many of the proposed uses of smoked marijuana." Critics, including some in Congress, attacked that statement, pointing out its lack of research. The FDA was further accused of protecting pharmaceutical companies with government-approved products that compete with marijuana. [continues 358 words]
Man Sold Pot to Card Holder SAN ANDREAS - Prosecutors have dropped drug dealing, cultivation and possession charges against a medical marijuana advocate in a case in which a Calaveras County sheriff's deputy used a legitimate medical marijuana card to induce the man to sell the drug. Court records show that Jay R. Smith, 37, pleaded no contest Friday to a single charge of aiding and abetting another person to commit a felony. Smith was sentenced to pay a $160 fine and serve 90 days in jail but will not be subject to probation. The plea bargain means he will be able to continue his work advocating for medical marijuana patients, Smith said. [continues 318 words]
SAN ANDREAS - The Calaveras County Board of Supervisors has decided to just say no to a proposal for new regulations on medical marijuana providers. County planning staff and the Sheriff's Department had collaborated to produce a revised ordinance intended to bring the medical marijuana code in line with state law and to address concerns Sheriff's Department officials had with security at retail outlets, including one that opened this year in Valley Springs and one proposed for San Andreas. But after learning Tuesday that the ordinance aimed at storefronts could also close down collectives that privately grow medical marijuana for friends and relatives, supervisors told planning staff to try again. [continues 283 words]
Supervisors Told Medical Pot Being Targeted SAN ANDREAS - Jay Smith says Calaveras County is waging a war against medical marijuana and is doing so using unethical means. Smith operates K Care Collective, a medical marijuana vendor. He and several others involved in medical marijuana pleaded for help this week from the Calaveras County Board of Supervisors. Smith was arrested Jan. 4 on drug transportation and sales charges in the Valley Oaks Center parking lot in Valley Springs. He told supervisors he was tricked by a deputy who stole the identity of Robert Shaffer, a medical marijuana user from Ione. [continues 739 words]
Mokelumne Hill Residents Say It's Causing Crime Spike MOKELUMNE HILL - Many of the buildings here date to the 1850s, '60s and '70s, but the crime is pure 2007, locals say. More than 100 residents crowded into the Mokelumne Town Hall (built in 1875) this week to discuss what they say is a plague of methamphetamine use and dealing. One after another, neighbors told of finding homes and cars burglarized. "There have been lots of minor thefts from my yard," said Pamela Hill, a well known quilt maker who lives here. "The window of my Dodge Caravan was shot out." [continues 644 words]
