BREAKING: Los Angeles sued over new medical marijuana law
A lawsuit filed Tuesday challenges Los Angeles' crackdown on medical marijuana dispensaries, claiming it would force nearly all of them to close.
The suit by the nation's largest medical marijuana advocacy group accuses the city of violating the state constitutional rights of pot clinic operators and claims the city ordinance "deprives the seriously ill of the medicine promised them by the electorate and the Legislature of California."
It wants a judge to permanently prevent the new law from being enforced and to award damages.
City attorney's spokesman Frank Mateljan had no immediate comment.
California voters passed a law in 1996 that legalized marijuana use for medical reasons, but it didn't say anything about distribution. So some cities have permitted dispensaries to flourish while others, such as Costa Mesa and Fresno, have effectively banned them and arrested owners.
Los Angeles has been struggling for years with the issue of controlling dispensaries. The ordinance that the mayor signed last month caps the number of dispensaries in the city at 70.
City officials have estimated there could be as many as 1,000 outlets in the city and that some sell pot as a business. Last month, the city filed lawsuits and eviction notices against 21 dispensaries and arrested one owner.
Double Toke! Ammiano Reintroduces Bill to Legalize, Tax Marijuana
Assemblyman Tom Ammiano has reintroduced his pioneering bill seeking to legalize and tax pot in California.
In a statement released this afternoon, Ammiano's office said the San Francisco Democrat hopes the new legislation will build on support garnered by AB 390, his first pot-legalization measure, which passed out of committee in Sacramento but overran its deadline for consideration by the rest of the Legislature.
The bill's expiration last month appeared more or less in line with the grand strategy of Ammiano, who said he wanted to take plenty of time to build consensus on the issue. Now AB 2254, the latest incarnation of the Marijuana Control, Regulation, and Education Act, will get a second shot.
"We're even more optimistic about the fate of this bill than we were about AB 390," Aaron Smith, California director for the Marijuana Policy Project, told SF Weekly.
Iowa pharmacy board to discuss medical marijuana
Iowa likely won't be the 15th state to legalize medical marijuana any time soon, but there has been plenty of talk about the idea with two bills in the Legislature and a possible recommendation on legalization Wednesday by the state pharmacy board.
Although both legislative measures are considered dead for the session, backers said support is growing and some expect the Iowa Board of Pharmacy to add to the momentum when it discusses the issue and considers recommending whether marijuana should be allowed for medical use.
"We're supposedly the drug experts and so, I would hope that the Legislature would consider the recommendation valuable to them," said Lloyd Jessen, executive director of the Iowa Board of Pharmacy.
Medical marijuana initially came before the pharmacy board in 2008 when the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa and others petitioned the board to remove marijuana from the Legislature's Schedule I classification. To be classified as Schedule I, a drug must have a high potential for abuse and no safe medical use.
AUDIO: Will Legalizing Pot Solve California’s Budget Woes?
By at least one estimate, California's largest cash crop is not milk, cheese, or oranges, it's marijuana. Some advocates say legalizing pot — and taxing it — could be a way out of the state's financial woes, and they recently secured enough signatures for a ballot initiative to do just that. But how much revenue a legal pot industry generates would depend on how prices are set.
And it isnt just Los Angeles having budget trouble, the whole state is in the throes of a full-blown fiscal crisis. But it looks like Californians may get the chance to vote on a novel way to help balance the books. The proposal? Legalized pot, then tax it. So, how much money would that raise? Well, that depends on complicated economic questions like what would a joint sell for on the open market?
Heres NPRs David Kestenbaum with our Planet Money team.
DAVID KESTENBAUM: Right now, the price of marijuana varies a lot. The government actually studies these things. Researchers go into holding cells or if people have been arrested and asked questions like what do you pay for marijuana?
Despite Obama admin’s promise, DEA continues raids on medical marijuana growers
On Thursday, a Denver news station interviewed Chris Bartkowicz about his medical-marijuana operation in the basement of his home. Bartkowicz, confident of his compliance with state laws, boasted of its size and profitability.
"I'm definitely living the dream now," he told 9News.
The following day, the dream was over.
Drug-enforcement agents raided his home, placed him under arrest, and carried off dozens of black bags of marijuana plants and growing lights.
The Obama administration promised in October that the federal government would respect state laws allowing the growing and selling of marijuana for medicinal use, but the Drug Enforcement Agency sent a loud message with the arrest of Bartkowicz.
iGrow: Walmart of weed opens in Oakland
Zeta Ceti constructs a display at the iGrow warehouse in Oakland, a one-stop shop for medicinal marijuana cultivation. Credit: Michael Macor / The Chronicle
Call it the Walmart of weed.
In a 15,000-square-foot warehouse just down the road from the Oakland Airport, an entrepreneur is opening a one-stop shop for medicinal marijuana cultivation that's believed to be the largest in the state.
Don't know the first thing about growing pot? The folks at iGrow have a doctor on site to get you a cannabis card and sell you all the necessary equipment for indoor, hydroponic cultivation - from pumps, nutrients and tubing to lights and fans.
Don't know how to set it up? For a fee, on-site technicians will show you how to build it in your home and even maintain it weekly.
Construction plant: “Some devotees think it’s the answer to everything,” says Pete Walker of hemp
Ian Pritchett, chairman of Lime Technology, in a field of industrial hemp Credit: Ben Stansall
The director of the UK’S Building Research Establishment Centre for Innovative Construction Materials at the University of Bath recently started a £740,000 project, funded by the UK government and the construction industry, to study and develop the material’s use in building. The research builds on foundations laid more than a thousand years ago. Archaeologists in France have discovered a sixth-century bridge where the stones are held together with hemp mortar.
Cultivated for thousands of years for its fibres, which are used to make ropes and textiles, hemp, otherwise known as Cannabis sativa, was so important to the economy during King Henry VIII’s reign that farmers had to grow at least a quarter of an acre or risk a fine. In the latter decades of the 20th century production slumped as cotton cloth and man-made fabrics became prominent but in the 21st century hemp’s reputation is being rebuilt, partly thanks to properties that make it an ideal building fabric for homes.
‘Cannabis crown’ coming to Aspen: Medical marijuana conference slated for weekend in April
A version of Amsterdam's “Cannabis Cup” is coming to Aspen, in which medical marijuana growers, providers, patients and others in the industry will convene over one weekend in April.
The First Annual Western Slope Cannabis Crown, organized by Glenwood Springs resident Bobby Scurlock and the owners of High Country Caregivers, will be held April 17-18 at The Gant.
The conference is open to the public and will include speakers, live music, information booths, and most notably, a competition among providers that showcases their best strains. Growers and providers will vie for the “cannabis crown.”
Scurlock said he hopes to draw about 50 dispensaries from around Colorado and their strains will be tested by Denver-based Full Spectrum Laboratories. The marijuana strains will be diagnostically tested for their THC levels and how it matches up with patients' ailments.
There also will be a “people's choice” award for those who are on the state registry for medical marijuana and have received a “golden ticket” from one of the organizers. The people's choice will narrow down the field for the crown but the ultimate winner will be based on the diagnostic test, Scurlock said.
Los Angeles City Council Votes to Close 800 Marijuana Dispensaries
The Los Angeles City Council voted Tuesday to close roughly 800 medical marijuana dispensaries in the city by passing the first reading of an ordinance which would also require 75% of remaining dispensaries to relocate. The vote, to be confirmed in a second reading of the ordinance next Tuesday, will radically change the landscape of medical marijuana distribution in Los Angeles, which has been largely unregulated since dispensaries were first authorized by state law in 1996.
If the ordinance takes effect later this spring, medical marijuana dispensaries will have to find locations more than 1000 feet from various 'sensitive uses' -- including churches, public parks, schools, rehab centers, and other dispensaries. They will also be required to grow all their cannabis on-site, test it for pesticides, provide written notice of their existence to all neighbors within 1000 feet, maintain 24-hour complaint hotlines, hire unarmed security guards to patrol a two-block radius, keep 90 days of security footage and fulfill a number of other registration requirements with the city.
POLL: High Support for Medical Marijuana around the United States
High Support for Medical Marijuana ABC News/Washington Post Poll: 81 Percent Support Legalizing Marijuana for Medical Use Credit: Getty Images
Eight in 10 Americans support legalizing marijuana for medical use and nearly half favor decriminalizing the drug more generally, both far higher than a decade ago.
With New Jersey this week poised to become the 14th state to legalize medical marijuana, 81 percent in this national ABC News/Washington Post poll support the idea, up from an already substantial 69 percent in 1997. Indeed the main complaint is with restrictions on access, as in the New Jersey law.
Fifty-six percent say that if it's allowed, doctors should be able to prescribe medical marijuana to anyone they think it can help. New Jersey's measure, which is more restrictive than most, limits prescriptions to people with severe illnesses. State health officials can add to the list.
DECRIMINALIZE? – Apart from medical marijuana, there have been recent efforts to decriminalize marijuana more broadly in some states. A preliminary vote on one such measure is to be held in the Washington state Legislature this week. In California organizers say they've collected enough signatures to hold a statewide referendum on the issue next fall. And a separate proposal in California to legalize and tax the drug cleared a legislative committee last week. A Field poll there in April found 56 percent support for the idea, which its backers say would raise $1.3 billion a year.
Hawaii will take aim at reforming laws for cannabis
State Sen. J. Kalani English will probably grab a few headlines when he introduces two bills in the legislative session this week: one to legalize medical marijuana dispensaries and the other to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana.
His marijuana reformation bills are modeled after laws already in place in other states. On Friday, the Democrat who represents Upcountry, East Maui, Lanai and Molokai said his motives are at once pragmatic, moralistic and economic.
The measures would free up law enforcement to focus on hard drug traffickers and help the state deal with Hawaii's fiscal year 2011 $1.2 billion budget shortfall on a number of fronts, English pointed out. He said he wasn't certain how much new revenue or costs savings, including for courts and jails, the proposals would make, but he was sure it would be significant.
On Friday, English said that he intends to follow California's lead by legalizing - and taxing - medical marijuana dispensaries to generate revenue. A dispensary is a private, secure facility where people with medical marijuana cards, which have been legal and available in Hawaii for almost a decade, can purchase marijuana for medicinal purposes.
Proponents say the dispensaries provide a safe environment to sell a legal product that provides real relief for those suffering from pain and nausea caused by diseases such as HIV/AIDS, cancer and multiple sclerosis.
