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A lobbying day on Capitol Hill preceded the international Drug Policy Alliance conference in Washington DC yesterday, buoyed by the fact that HR 3713, the Sentencing Reform Act, passed the House Judiciary Committee unanimously that morning. Cal NORML deputy director and others from Northern California met with aides to Rep. John Garamendi, Mark DeSaulnier, and got a sit-down with Rep. Doris Matsui (pictured).

At a luncheon for attendees, Rep. Earl Blumenauer (OR) further charged up attendees when he said, “Obama famously has said he has bigger fish to fry.…

San Francisco, Oct 20 – In a victory for marijuana patients’ rights, the SF Municipal Transportation Agency voted to amend a new drug testing program for taxi drivers so as to excuse positive test results for marijuana given a physician’s recommendation or approval

The SFMTA was under pressure to approve a $4 million, multi-year drug testing program in order to conform with a 1996 state law that requires taxi drivers to be tested under federal DOT drug testing guidelines. San Frandisco has been the only city not in compliance with state law, having previously rejected a drug testing program some years ago when taxis were regulated by the Board of Supervisors instead of SFMTA.…

September 2015 – California recorded 19,711 marijuana arrests in 2014, down slightly from 20,346 in 2013. This included 13,300 felonies and 6,411 misdemeanors. (An unknown additional number of Californians were cited for non-criminal possession infractions.)

Arrests have been steadily declining since 2008 and are now at their lowest level since 1966.

Latinos led the state with 43% of arrests, followed by whites at 31% and blacks at 16%. Latinos slightly outnumber whites in California, while blacks are strongly overrepresented among arrestees, as they account for just 7% of the state’s population.…

Also see: Summary of Expected Emergency MAUCRSA Regulations and Temporary License Application

September 29, 2017 – California’s three cannabis licensing authorities have announced the official withdrawal of the draft medical cannabis regulations that were proposed in late spring. The three cannabis licensing authorities will develop emergency regulations based new laws that passed this year, and will incorporate the robust and valuable public comment received on the proposed medical cannabis regulations.

A summary of public comments, as well as the responses to those comments, received by each agency – either in writing or in person at one of the public comment forums hosted by the three agencies – can be viewed by clicking the links below:

Bureau of Cannabis Control (MCRSA)

Bureau of Cannabis Control (Laboratories)

CA Department of Food and Ag (Cultivation) 

CA Department of Public Health (Manufacturing)

The licensing authorities will use the emergency rulemaking process for the new regulations.…

UPDATE: SB 643 passes CA Assembly by vote of 54-11 after 15 mins. debate (mostly on the 600-sq. ft. buffer, which locals can override.)

If signed by the Governor, the act would give the Department of Consumer Affairs the sole authority to create, issue, renew, discipline, suspend, or revoke licenses for the transportation and storage, (unrelated to manufacturing) of medical marijuana, and would authorize the department to collect fees for its regulatory activities and impose specified duties on this department in this regard.…

SACRAMENTO August 28, 2015 – The newly amended AB 266 proposed by the Governor’s Office appears to be an improvement on its predecessor. In particular, it allows deliveries everywhere except where specifically banned; the previous version required the government of the receiving locaity to authorize deliveries beforehand. While the new bill still has some problems, it may offer a workable first step towards legal regulation of medical cannabis in California (at least until we can pass a ballot measure in November 2016).…

Large plants of the type grown by Humboldt farmers	The types of plants eradicated on public lands

UPDATE June 2026 – Cannabis rarely the top water user in Northern California watersheds, UC Berkeley study finds

Cannabis cultivation accounts for a fraction of total water demand in northern California’s rural watersheds, drawing far less than either residential users or non-cannabis agriculture, according to a peer-reviewed study published April 22 in PLOS Water.

UPDATE April 2021 – Legal Cannabis Cultivation’s Footprint Sinks Common Assumptions About Comparative Water Use

A report from New Frontier Data in partnership with Resource Innovation Institute and the University of California, Berkeley concluded that “while the state’s orchards use nearly 7 million acre-feet of water, and rice fields use nearly 5 million acre-feet, the state’s lucrative cannabis industry only uses 3,000 acre-feet, making it the most water-economical crop among the state’s top revenue crops.”…

July 28 – About 40 protesters turned up this morning for a press conference and rally to protest the Sacramento Board of Supervisors’ recent move to declare all marijuana cultivation outside of their nine-plant indoor limit a waste of water.

Under an amendment to the county’s state-mandated water conservation ordinance, Supervisor Roberta MacGlashan introduced a “friendly” amendment at the July 14 meeting to include those breaking the county’s outdoor ban and restrictive indoor limits as water wasters, subjecting them to fines of up to $500 a day in addition to the same fines under the marijuana codes, plus a misdemeanor charge.…

October 2, 2015 – The Central Valley Water Board has issued a general order about marijuana cultivation in the Central district. The North Coast region issued their order and best practices in August.

On Friday, July 17, a Marijuana Working Group meeting was convened by a “joint” committee of the California Water Board and Fish and Wildlife at which a draft pilot program for regulating marijuana farms in the region was distributed.

The North Coast Region is ahead of the Central Valley; they expect to adopt their pilot program in August.…

July 6, 2015 – California Governor Jerry Brown has signed Assembly Bill 258 (Levine), to end discrimination against medical marijuana patients who need organ transplants. The bill was sponsored by Americans for Safe Access, and also endorsed by California NORML, which gathered signatures on a petition to Governor Brown at the Grateful Dead Santa Clara shows (see photo) and elsewhere in the state.

While most are scrambling to regulate and tax medical marijuana establishments, the human rights of medical marijuana patients are not always being addressed.…