Republican Gubernatorial Candidate Steve Hilton and State Treasurer/Lt. Gov. candidate Fiona Ma spoke at the IgniteIt cannabis conference in Los Angeles on October 7, both strongly stating that California’s cannabis law needs fixing.

A big part of the problem, Ma said, is that taxes are “definitely too high” for the legal industry to compete with unlicensed operators. Ma, who Cal NORML has endorsed for the state’s Lieutenant Governor, said she wants to “help spearhead trying to get something back on the ballot to change what is happening” in cannabis.…

Prop. 215 activists were honored at the California State Fair on Saturday, in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the passage of the landmark Compassionate Use Act.

“Thirty years ago, this whole wonderful event here was inconceivable. it was a mandatory felony to grow or sell any marijuana, anywhere in the US,” Cal NORML director Dale Gieringer, a co-author of the Compassionate Use Act, said in a speech at Saturday’s event. “But a growing number of people were discovering that marijuana was useful for AIDS, cancer, glaucoma, chronic pain, and many other conditions.…

Although the number of people arrested for cannabis crimes in California has dramatically declined since the voters legalized adult use and sales of cannabis in 2016, people of Latino descent are more than twice as likely as Whites to be arrested for cannabis crimes in California, and Blacks are more than five times more likely. These racial disparities have worsened since legalization.

According to the 2025 Crime in California report released by California’s Attorney General Rob Bonta on July 1, the felony marijuana arrest rate decreased 13.3% in 2025 (440 in 2024 to 399 in 2025).…

UPDATE 5/19/26 : The DCC has issued a Notice of Rulemaking to allow for existing licensees who hold a license with both a medicinal and Adult-Use designation to be issued separate Medicinal and Adult-Use licenses.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has signed an order immediately placing both “FDA-approved drug products containing marijuana, and medicinal marijuana products subject to a qualifying state-issued license” in Schedule III. The action is taken “under his authority to reschedule drugs to carry out the United States’ obligations under the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs,” according to a press release from DOJ.…