Kharla Vezzetti

COVELO, Cal, Jul 7th 2010: The DEA flouted Mendocino County’s newly enacted medical marijuana cultivation ordinance by raiding the first collective that had applied to the sheriff’s cultivation permit program.

A multi-agency federal task force descended on the property of Joy Greenfield, 68, the first Mendo patient to pay the $1050 application fee under the ordinance, which allows collectives to grow up to 99 plants provided they comply with certain regulations. Ms Greenfield had applied in the name of her collective, “Light the Way,” which opened in San Diego earlier this year.…

SACRAMENTO, Jun 22 – The California Assembly Public Safety Committee approved Sen. Mark Leno’s bill SB 1449 to downgrade petty marijuana possession from a misdemeanor to an infraction. The bill passed with no discussion by a vote of 4-1, with Ammiano (D-SF), Beall (D-SJ), Hill (D-SanMateo) and Yamada (D-Davis) voting aye, and Portantino (D-Pasadena) nay. The two Republicans, Hagman and Gilmore, abstained.

SB 1449 now moves on to the Assembly floor for a final vote. Similar decriminalization bills have passed the Senate three times in past years, only to be defeated in the Assembly.…

California NORML Press Release
CONTACTS: Dale Gieringer (415) 563-5858; Edie Lerman (707) 937-1711

RED BLUFF, Jun 4th. In a lawsuit supported by California NORML, Tehama County patients filed suit today against a county ordinance that limits their right to grow marijuana at home.

The lawsuit, by the law firm of Edie Lerman and J David Nick of Ukiah, asks for a writ of mandate to strike down the Tehama ordinance.

The plaintiffs claim that the ordinance makes it impossible for them to legally exercise their Proposition 215 right to cultivate medical marijuana for themselves.…

June 4 – The California Assembly has passed a bill, AB 2650, that bans dispensaries within 600 feet of schools. Thanks to lobbying by MMJ advocates, the bill was greatly watered down from an earlier version which would have banned them within 1,000 feet of schools, parks, libraries, religious institutions, child care or youth centers, or other dispensaries.

Advocates also won a grandfather exemption for cities that already have conflicting ordinances. The original bill, which would have drastically restricted dispensaries statewide, was first drafted by AG candidate Alberto Torrico and introduced by Joan Buchanan at the behest of the the Peace Officers’ Research Association of Cal (PORAC).…

May 28th, 2010 – In a lawsuit sponsored by California NORML, Tehama County patients are challenging a local ordinance that would drastically limit their right to grow medical marijuana.

Tehama’s is the most restrictive of a rapidly growing number of anti-cultivation measures that have recently been proposed by local officials hostile to medical marijuana. The Tehama ordinance declares it a public nuisance to grow marijuana anywhere within 1,000 feet of a school, school bus stop, church, park, or youth-oriented facility; restricts gardens to no more than 12 mature or 24 total plants on parcels of 20 acres or less; requires outdoor gardens to be surrounded by an opaque fence at least six feet high and located 100 feet or more from the property boundaries; and requires every patient garden to be registered with the county health services agency for a fee to be determined.…

Cal NORML Release – May 5, 2010

The California Board of Equalization reports that the state is collecting $50 – $100 million
in sales taxes from medical marijuana, confirming the estimate previously published in an economic analysis by California NORML (also independently affirmed by Americans for Safe Access).

California NORML currently estimates the state’s retail market for medical marijuana at
over $1 billion per year in a total adult use market of $6 billion. An initiative to legalize
and tax marijuana for adult use will be on this November’s ballot (see http://www.taxcannabis2010.org).…

May 4, Ridgecrest, CA: A medical marijuana raid by the Naval Criminal Intelligence Service has led to the arrest of five defendants on federal charges. The defendants were charged for distributing marijuana for the R&C Collective next to the China Lake Naval Base. Read more.

Unlike the DEA, NCIS does not operate under the Justice Dept and therefore, it seems, is not upholding AG Holder’s memo to honor state MMJ laws.

Other federal agencies that are outside the DOJ do not seem to be bound by the AG’s directive.…

SACRAMENTO – Legislative committees considered a pair of marijuana bills last week, approving Mark Leno’s bill SB 1449 to make petty pot offenses an infraction, and narrowly passing a much watered-down version of Assemblywoman Buchanan’s bill AB 2650 to limit dispensary siting.

On April 20th (fittingly enough) the Senate Public Safety Commitee voted 5-2 to approve Mark Leno’s bill SB 1449 to downgrade possession of less than one ounce of marijuana from a misdemeanor to an infraction. Although it was supported by all the drug reform groups, what ensured the bill’s passage was support from the California DA’s association and the Judicial Council, which complained of the burden to the courts of processing misdemeanor cases for an offense whose maximal punishment is a $100 fine.…