San Francisco - A "Safe Space" for Drug Dealers

San Fran Deliberately Chooses

The Path of Insanity

And the Sheeple Leftist voters keep re-electing the certifiably insane.

(San Francisco Chronicle)  -  “There’s one,” the police sergeant said as we drove through the Tenderloin. “There’s one of them there. That guy, see him?”

And another. And another. Sgt. Kevin Healy was showing me known drug dealers, and they were everywhere — swarming the neighborhood, chatting and smiling. They didn’t seem to have a care in the world.

That’s because they don’t. Not in San Francisco.

“It’s almost impossible to get convicted in this city,” said Healy, who works in the Police Department’s narcotics division. “The message needs to be sent that it’s not OK to be selling drugs. It’s not allowed anywhere else. Where else can you walk up to someone you don’t know and purchase crack and heroin? Is there such a place?”

San Franciscans love to think their city is like nowhere else, but this distinguishing factor isn’t anything to brag about.

When Gov. Jerry Brown recently nixed San Francisco’s plan to test the country’s first safe injection site where drug users can legally shoot up, he wrote in his veto letter that the plan was “all carrot and no stick.”

While I thought his veto was wrongheaded, he has a point. This city doesn’t seem to know the definition of the word “stick,” let alone consequence or accountability. Unless, of course, you’ve parked your car at a meter for five minutes too long. Then you can expect an immediate stick in the form of a high-priced ticket.

As a safe injection site now appears at least a year off, city officials must come up with other ways to combat San Francisco’s dire drug crisis. Obviously, far more drug treatment services are needed. But one area officials barely mention is an obvious one: cracking down on the people supplying the devastating drugs. Police say drug dealers from the East Bay ride BART into San Francisco every day to prey on the addicts slumped on our sidewalks, and yet the city that claims to so desperately want to help those addicts often looks the other way.

---

You can walk through the Tenderloin, Civic Center, South of Market and the Mission and easily spot men handing over little plastic baggies with drugs in exchange for cash like it’s no big thing. In broad daylight. In front of pedestrians. Even in front of police.

Supervisor Rafael Mandelman said he’s recently gotten complaints from homeless people that they’re afraid to use the restrooms in Dolores Park because they’ve been taken over by drug dealers.

Lava Mae, the nonprofit that turns trailers and old Muni buses into showers and restrooms for homeless people, is stationed outside the Main Library every Tuesday. Staffers say they used to see one or two drug dealers milling around, but in just the past month, that’s risen to 10 to 15.

The dealers are so brazen, they plant themselves in Lava Mae’s chairs and deal beneath the nonprofit’s awning. The nonprofit has already canceled its Friday morning sessions outside the library because of the prolific dealers and is debating whether to continue on Tuesdays.

Read More . . . .

An entire California town dedicated to Pot

(Bloomberg)  -  American Green Inc., a maker of cannabis products, is taking an unusual step to attract new customers as it capitalizes on California legalizing marijuana: It’s buying an entire town.

The company has acquired the tiny burg of Nipton, California Nipton, for about $5 million and plans to invest as much as $2.5 million over the next 18 months to create a pot-friendly tourist destination. The purchase includes 120 acres of land with a general store, a hotel, a school building and mineral baths.

American Green, based in Tempe, Arizona, will use the existing structures and build new ones -- powered by renewable energy -- to revitalize the town, said project manager Stephen Shearin. Ideally, the outpost will spawn imitators, he said.

“We thought that showing that there was a viable means of having a cannabis-friendly municipality and further making it energy independent could be a way of really inspiring folks to say, ‘Why can’t we do that here?’” he said.

The move shows how far marijuana has moved out of the shadows despite an uncertain federal policy outlook. With pot now legalized for recreational and medical use in California, Nevada and six other states, one in five American adults can consume the formerly taboo plant as they please. That’s created an opportunity for companies to try to make cannabis a more mainstream product.

Read More . . . .

Nipton Hotel in the early 1930s.

Democrats block deportation of illegals while pushing pot

Democrats Want to Keep You High

and Protect Illegals

(ABC News)  -  California lawmakers voted Thursday to set rules for the state's nascent marijuana industry and to quash the growth of federal immigration detention as part of a $125 billion state budget lawmakers approved for the next fiscal year.

Lawmakers sent Gov. Jerry Brown a measure merging the state's longstanding medical marijuana law with the much more permissive rules voters approved last year to legalize pot sales to people 21 and older. The state will develop standards for organic marijuana, allow pot samples at county fairs and permit home deliveries.

The Legislature also backed a measure to limit new beds for immigration detention, dealing a blow to the Trump administration's efforts to boost deportation. The measure prevents local governments from signing or expanding contracts with federal authorities for immigration detention facilities. It also calls for the state's attorney general to review conditions at the centers.

The marijuana and immigration provisions are pieces of a one-year budget plan that increases money for education and social services while imposing new financial restrictions on the University of California following a scathing audit. It cleared the Assembly and Senate mostly along party lines with only a handful of Republicans in support.

Brown, a Democrat, has called the budget "balanced and progressive." Legislative Democrats said it would help alleviate poverty while building up savings for a future economic downturn.

Read More . . . .

California Approves Recreational Marijuana Ballot Measure

Druggies are Losers

• That being said, it is way past time to take organized crime out of drugs and end the insane drug war. If someone wants to lay around in their own filth and stay stoned so be it.

(Reuters) - Californians are set to decide whether to make recreational marijuana use legal, as other Western states have done, after the California Secretary of State’s office said on Tuesday the issue could be put to voters in the November ballot.

The proposed so-called “Adult Use of Marijuana Act,” which is supported by Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom among others, would allow people aged 21 and older to possess as much as an ounce of marijuana for private recreational use and permit personal cultivation of as many as six marijuana plants.

“Today marks a fresh start for California, as we prepare to replace the costly, harmful and ineffective system of prohibition with a safe, legal and responsible adult-use marijuana system that gets it right and completely pays for itself,” initiative spokesman Jason Kinney said in a statement.

The measure would also establish a system to license, regulate and tax sales of marijuana, while allowing city governments to exercise local control over or disallow commercial distribution within their borders.

The initiative required just over 402,000 valid signatures to qualify for the ballot and exceeded that number on Tuesday, the Secretary of State’s office said. Secretary Alex Padilla is slated to certify the initiative on June 30.

Opinion polls show attitudes have shifted more in favor of liberalized marijuana laws since California voters defeated a recreational cannabis initiative in 2010.

Sales of both recreational pot and medical marijuana initially would be subject to a 15 percent excise tax.

Read More . . . .

Nuns fight to keep their marijuana-based business

MERCED, Calif. -- (ABC News)  - 

The "Sisters of the Valley" have been producing salves and tonics made with cannabis. While their products won't make anyone high, they are fighting to keep the city council from putting them out of business.

The new year marks the first anniversary of a marijuana-based business in Merced. The sisters are not members of a religious order but they say they are on a spiritual quest to heal the sick with their cannabis cures.

Sister Kate and Sister Darcey are tending their small crop of marijuana plants in the garage of
the home they share in Merced. They consider themselves nuns, but are not Catholic, or traditionally religious.

They produce a variety of products made from the cannabinoids or CBD's found in the marijuana
plant. Their plants do not contain THC, the substance that creates the marijuana high. They believe creating these healing substances is a spiritual quest.

"We spend no time on bended knee, but when we make our medicine it's a prayerful environment it's a prayerful time," said Sister Kate, medical marijuana grower.

Videos of their operation, set to music have become popular on the Internet. It's Sister Kate's business -- Sister Darcey is her apprentice.

"It's more for me about the sisterhood and the feminist movement... to live an work with other women and to do a positive thing for the community -- and obviously for the world since we ship it everywhere," said Sister Darcey, apprentice.

They sell their product online at Etsy, a web market known for handmade, handcrafted items. They claim their substances offer a treatment for a lot of problems.

"We make CBD oil which takes away seizures, and a million other things," said Sister Kate. "And we make a salve, that's a multi purpose salve... and we found out that it cures migraines, hangovers, earaches, diaper rash tooth aches."

But their production is threatened. The Merced City Council is considering a proposed ban on all marijuana cultivation.

"Yes it's frustrating to me because there are all of these people with negative attitudes about something that is truly God's gift," said Sister Darcey.

The city council will consider banning all marijuana growing in Merced next week. The sisters and their supporters are hoping to keep what they do legal. "Embrace, regulate and tax, that's all we want them to do," said Sister Kate.

The Planning Commission recently voted to continue allowing medical marijuana distribution in Merced, but the city council is under pressure to put a ban in place before more lenient state regulations take effect in March.

Read More . . . .

Tech Tycoon Spearheads Pot Legalization Bid in California

A State of Drugged out Potheads

• I mostly come down on the side of controlled legalization in order to end the insane drug "war".  But the idea of directly or indirectly encouraging people to turn their brains into quivering bowl of drugged out jello does make me pause. 

(ABC News)  -  The push to put California among the states where marijuana can be sold to and legally used by adults for recreation took a major step forward on Monday as ballot language backed by Napster co-founder Sean Parker, other wealthy entrepreneurs who support pot legalization and leading advocacy groups was filed with the state.

The proposed legalization initiative is one of more than a dozen that has been submitted in California for the November 2016 election. Because of the deep pockets, political connections and professional credibility of its supporters, however, observers think the so-called Adult Use of Marijuana Act is the vehicle with the greatest chance of success.

Sean Parker

"We believe this effort has the support and resources to mount a successful campaign for responsible adult-use," California Cannabis Industry Association Executive Director Nate Bradley, whose organization is endorsing the measure, said. "This is the one to watch. This is the one."

The measure would allow adults 21 and over to buy an ounce of marijuana and marijuana-infused products at licensed retail outlets and also to grow up to six pot plants for personal recreational use. Both the new recreational market and the state's existing medical marijuana industry would be regulated through the California Department of Consumer Affairs and authorize the state to impose the same 15 percent excise tax on both medical and recreational marijuana.

Four people who worked on the initiative independently told The Associated Press that the drafting process and early work to enlist sponsors and build a campaign team was spearheaded by Parker, the billionaire technology investor who upended the music business as a teenager by co-founding the file sharing site Napster and served as Facebook's first president.

Those people requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss Parker's involvement or to name the other wealthy entrepreneurs expected to fund the effort until an official campaign committee starts raising money and becomes subject to state disclosure laws.

But Parker himself issued a statement on Monday afternoon expressing optimism about the initiative without acknowledging his role in getting it drafted.

"I've been following this issue with great interest for some time. It's very encouraging to see a vibrant community of activists, many of whom have dedicated their lives to this issue, coming together around a sensible reform based measure," he said.

Other potential donors who have expressed interest in bankrolling the work to qualify the measure for the ballot and to mount a multi-million dollar election campaign include a political action committee founded by the family of the late Progressive Insurance executive Peter Lewis; some members of the Chicago family that owns the Hyatt hotel chain; and Justin Hartfield, chief executive of online marijuana directory WeedMaps, the sources said.

Lewis, who died almost two years ago, gave $218,505 in 2010 to support what became an unsuccessful attempt to legalize recreational marijuana in California. Parker gave $100,000.

The Parker-backed initiative also has lined up support from the Drug Policy Alliance and the Marijuana Policy Project, two leading marijuana reform advocacy groups that led the earlier campaigns to pass pot legalization measures in Colorado, Washington, Oregon and Alaska.

"This is the most incredibly broad coalition that could have been brought together, everything from the drug policy reform movement to the environmental movement to the industry actors to the medical field, as well as the lineup of all of the most likely funders for something like this," said Lynne Lyman, California director for the Drug Policy Alliance.

Read More . . . .

California Farmers Market Sells Marijuana

Step Right Up

And get your celery, pot, beets and arugula.

(Mother Jones)  -  In the fruit and veggie cornucopia that is California, local farmers markets sell everything from brandywine tomatoes and lemon cucumbers to hedgehog mushrooms and fresh medjool dates. But no farmers market can match the selection of the one in the Mendocino County town of Laytonville, which offers, among other things, an ample supply of heirloom cannabis.

Admittedly, this is not a typical farmers market. It takes place just once a year, at a hippie enclave replete with UFO murals and Ganesh shrines, and only certified medical marijuana patients may enter (though there's a doctor on site to help with that). But it does offer the spectacle of actual farmers selling their own produce and pot side by side.

Emily Hobelmann of the Lost Coast Outpost visited last year and was wowed by the selection:

All told, I saw squash and apples and pears and peppers and world-class cannabis flowers. I saw leeks and tomatoes, peaches and dab rigs. I saw picked beans and marijuana clones, carrots and cold water hash.

If you happen to be up that way, you can stop by between 11 a.m. and 4:20 p.m. next Saturday.

Read More . . . .

Mendocino County

California: A state-run bank for marijuana industry?

Follow The Money

• It is refreshing to see Republicans and Democrats join arm-in-arm to help new businesses in the state . . . in order to collect MORE TAXES naturally.
• I am against a state run bank.  We have lots of private banks, but they are under the Big Brother thumb of the Feds.

(Sacramento Bee)  -  With legalized recreational marijuana possibly on the horizon in California, tax board officials signaled their interest Friday in forming a state-run bank that would allow pot-industry operators to transition from what has traditionally been a cash business.

Access to financial institutions is difficult given the federal prohibition on the drug.

Democrat Fiona Ma, of the state Board of Equalization, said that under the state’s nearly two-decade-old medical marijuana program, growers and dispensary operators typically pay their state taxes in cash, creating concerns about public safety.

With state initiatives to legitimize recreational pot aiming for next year’s ballot, and with federal lawmakers taking up legislative solutions, Ma said the time is right for officials here to begin assessing the details of what a state-run bank might look like.

“We’re a big state, and we have very creative minds,” Ma said at a meeting on the topic she called Friday with fellow board member George Runner. “We lead in many first-in-the-nation initiatives, and I believe we could create some sort of state depository that could handle cash deposits and also be available for the industry to make electronic transfers to make their payments.”

Laws designed to combat drug trafficking and money laundering have long restricted bank access. However, Obama administration officials have begun adjusting certain rules to extend banking services to state-approved marijuana companies.

Last week, the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee passed an amendment allowing banks to serve marijuana sellers in states where the drug is legal. At the same time, the Federal Reserve Board this month denied an application by a Colorado credit union seeking to provide banking for the pot industry.

In California, the lack of access to banking has hampered the state’s ability to collect taxes. A recent study of Ma’s San Francisco-based district that stretches across 23 counties found just 35 percent of the medical marijuana dispensaries paid sales taxes, totaling about $27 million last year.

Board of Equalization Chairman Jerome E. Horton this month said he supports an “Eliot Ness Plan” that enforces collection of taxes on cannabis. A Horton-supported bill by Assemblyman Mike Gipson, D-Carson, would create a state tax amnesty program for pot operators.

Storefront businesses that are paying taxes often carry the money in large sacks to field offices that state officials say are not equipped with money counters or other tools and safety measures associated with banks. Many do not have access to credit and use cash to obtain marijuana, pay employees and make transactions.

Runner said a recent tax delivery to his district office in Sacramento involved about $200,000 in cash.

A conservative Republican and former state senator from the Antelope Valley, Runner said he didn’t envision dedicating so much energy to marijuana. He has traveled to pot-rich Humboldt County to study the issue, and met with officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

“If a couple of years ago somebody would have told me we would be coming and spending this much time on cannabis ... I’d say ‘you must be smoking something,’” Runner said. But it’s clear “this is an industry that we’ve got to figure out how to deal with; how to make it legitimate, and try to help them in that process.”

Tax board members have yet to commit a plan to writing but say it would likely take the form of state legislation to be introduced in the next session.    Read More . . . .

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article29685532.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article29685532.html#storylink=cpyRead More . . . . 

Obama's DOJ continues their war on California Medical Marijuana

A failure but the "war" goes on

• The Statists who worship an all-powerful Federal Government just cannot stop themselves from trying to control everything you do, eat, drink, smoke or think.

(East Bay Express)  -  California’s multi-billion medical cannabis industry will remain in the crosshairs of federal prosecutors, despite direction from Congress to cease interfering with state medical pot systems.

In December, the US Congress passed and the president signed a historic amendment that de-funded the Department of Justice’s war on medical pot. Medical marijuana is legal in 23 states, yet the Obama Administration had spent an estimated $300 million enforcing the marijuana provisions of federal Controlled Substances Act.

After three months reviewing the amendment, the DOJ told the Los Angeles Times this week that “it did not believe the amendment applies to cases against individuals or organizations.”

The amendment states no DOJ funds may be used to: "prevent [medical marijuana] States from implementing their own State laws that authorize the use, distribution, pos- session, or cultivation of medical marijuana."

The Justice Department spokesperson said the department won’t arrest state regulators, but will continue to arrest, imprison, and seize the property of citizens and organizations involved in lawful state medical marijuana activity.

But the amendment’s author, Congressmember Dana Rohrabacher, said in February in San Francisco that prosecutors who waste time targeting legitimate dispensaries are breaking the law. 

“If any of you is being attacked, that federal prosecutor is breaking the law — that breaks the letter and the spirit of the law that passed the House with great debate,” he said. "Make sure your lawyers know [U.S. prosecutors] are breaking the law by being there. Their paycheck cannot be used to prosecute."

Federal appeals court judges have already begun to question prosecutors on the amendment's applicability to pending cases.

Northern California’s US Attorney Melinda Haag has targeted several of the Bay Area’s most legal, regulated dispensaries for property forfeiture including Harborside Health Center, and Berkeley Patients Group. These cases are mired in appeals motions over the cities of Oakland and Berkeley’s rights to have standing in the cases.

Harborside attorney Henry Wykowski told the Times the amendment is vague and open to interpretation in upcoming court hearings. 

The amendment could be read broadly to cover the California cannabis industry, the regulation of which includes some state laws, as well as a California Supreme Court ruling vesting regulatory authority with local jurisdictions. 

Many cities have banned cannabis dispensaries, while others tax and regulate collectives operating out of retail storefronts as well as cultivation. The federal government has a history of threatening California city councilmembers, county supervisors, and government staffers with drug trafficking charges if they seek to regulate medical cannabis cultivation or distribution. Federal prosecutors have shut down cultivation regulation programs in Humboldt County and Oakland. 

Update 4/3 3:20 p.m.: 

Congressmember Rohrabacher's office responded to the DOJ's statement via email, calling the DOJ's reading of his law incorrect. Rohrabacher’s Communications Director Ken Grubbs stated: “Rohrabacher believes the DOJ's self-referential interpretation to be emphatically wrong. The legislation's explicit language speaks for itself.”

(East Bay Express)

California Indian tribe to farm marijuana

Now "Racist" Marijuana Farms

• Only the Indian racial group is allowed to own a casino in the People's Republic of California.  All other races can be sent to jail for gambling.
• Now the Indian racial group will be given special government protection to grow pot while members of other races face stiff jail time.

(San Luis Obispo Tribune) — A tribe in Mendocino County plans to be the first tribe in the state to grow and distribute a large amount of medical marijuana.

The Santa Rosa Press Democrat reported the announcement late last week by the 250-member Pinoleville Pomo Nation. The deal authorizes a Colorado-based investor, United Cannabis, and Kansas-based FoxBarry Farms to grow and distribute products from thousands of marijuana plants at the tribe's rancheria north of Ukiah.

FoxBarry president Barry Brautman says the operation will sell marijuana only for authorized medical users and dispensaries, in line with state law. The business will include a 2.5-acre indoor growing facility, due to be completed in February, the tribe said.

Many expect Californian voters to legalize recreational use of marijuana next year, joining at least four other states.

"The tribes are just getting out ahead of the game," Mendocino County Supervisor Dan Hamburg said.

The U.S. Justice Department said last month that Indian tribes can grow and sell marijuana on their lands as long as they follow the same federal conditions set for states that have legalized the drug. Mendocino County officials say the Pomo pot operation will be exempt from most state and all local regulations, since it is on tribal land.

Mendocino County officials said they were surprised by the tribe's announcement Thursday of the planned marijuana business. Hamburg, the county supervisor, said he was concerned about the size of the operation, and said indoor facilities like the one planned by the tribe have a bigger environmental impact than outdoor marijuana plots do.

"From an ecological perspective, that does not sit well with me," Hamburg said.

United Cannabis and FoxBarry say they plan to launch two more similar operations in California. They have not disclosed the intended locations.

Read more here: http://www.sanluisobispo.com/2015/01/10/3435781/northern-california-tribe-plans.html#storylink=cpy

Bankrupt San Bernardino eyes marijuana for revenue

Taxing Pot as a Legal Business

Taking the "crime" out of business and cutting

the power of the drug cartels.

The bankrupt California city of San Bernardino has a new idea for raising revenue – legalize medical marijuana, and tax the pot.

Ironically, the plan was spurred by concerns about not having enough resources to crack down on the illegal medical marijuana dealers springing up all over town.

So the city is now looking at legalizing the sellers, and using the proceeds to enforce the regulations.

It’s not quite “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” but like many municipalities in California today, San Bernardino is recognizing that it could be bringing millions of dollars into its foundering coffers each year if it opened its doors to regulated medical marijuana dispensaries. And it would be able to have a say in who operates these places, as well as how and where reports Fox News.

“This is a no-brainer,” said Karen O’Keefe, director of state policies at the Marijuana Policy Project in California. “More and more people are realizing that you’d really have to be in the Stone Age to oppose this.”

But San Bernardino is not exactly there, yet. According to City Attorney Gary Saenz, a legislative review panel has been formed by the City Council to study the idea. This panel is collecting data, talking to the city police department and examining laws in other jurisdictions before bringing a proposal to the full committee. It plans on holding at least two more public meetings on the subject through August.

“We are in the exploratory phase,” Saenz told FoxNews.com, insisting that “my primary objective is to close down the seedy shops.”

Police have reported as many as 20 illegal storefronts in town at any given time, he said. Legalizing and regulating this now-unwieldy industry, he feels, is one of the tools available to the city to start taking control.

“We have in this city a proliferation – and a lot of cities in California are experiencing it – of illegal medical marijuana dispensaries. These people are defiant and they are opening up these things right and left.

“We are a city of limited resources,” he added, noting to shut a business down requires civil enforcement, including protracted legal proceedings, and often the police. Even when they do go after the violators aggressively, often they pop up elsewhere and another comes to town in its place.

“We can’t close them down to the satisfaction of our citizens,” said Saenz, so “this city attorney’s office is presenting our council with options. And the idea is essentially, primarily, to close down illegal shops” and using the new money from the legal ones to do it.

City Council member James Mulvihill said he was on board with the idea early on after hearing it cost the city $10,000 every time it went after an illegal dealer. He, as well as the mayor’s chief of staff, Michael McKinney, say any funds gleaned from the regulation and tax of marijuana dispensaries would be used exclusively for enforcement.

He said he is supporting a plan to permit less than a half a dozen dispensaries. He said they could charge upward of $60,000 a year in fees, plus something in the order of 10 percent a year in taxes, much like nearby Palm Springs, which he says regulates in order to pay for enforcement too.

The Real Breaking Bad:

• How the Drug War Creates Collateral Damage. 
• Californians 88-year-old Bob Wallace, and his 85-year-old girlfriend, Marjorie Ottenberg were put out of business by the Big Brother Government Drug War.

End the endless and insane drug war.

Sacramento County tries to ban pot farms as medical weed business thrives

Democrat Police State Insanity

• Medical pot is a legal business, but Sacramento Democrats are "cracking down" on people who dare to try and self-medicate and grow their medicine on private property.
• Personally gin is my drug of choice.  God Bless it.  But if someone wants to smoke a joint in the privacy of their home who cares.  Send the cops after the gangbangers and crooked politicians, not those who self medicate.

(Reuters News)  -  Citing marijuana fields springing up next to high schools and in abandoned barns, Democrat run Sacramento County's supervisors are set to declare pot gardens a public nuisance in the latest move by a local government to rein in California's cannabis industry.

U.S. states are increasingly moving to drop curbs on marijuana following landmark voter initiatives in Colorado and Washington state in 2012 that legalized the drug for recreational use.

But in California, where medical marijuana is legal but recreational use is not, state laws are hazy on who is allowed to grow and sell the drug, leading to a chaotic and largely unregulated marketplace of street-corner pot dispensaries, illegal cannabis farms and inappropriate prescribing by unethical doctors.

Cities and counties have struggled to impose order on an piecemeal basis as the state wrestles with developing a regulatory framework for the thriving if messy medical marijuana
industry.

"A huge number of complaints were received last year from residents with regard to outdoor marijuana cultivation," said Sacramento County Supervisor Roberta MacGlashan, who introduced the measure to ban marijuana gardens as a public nuisance. "Many were close to schools, group homes and other sensitive uses."

The fields can also be dangerous, as owners use weapons and dogs to guard their investments. Ten slayings currently under prosecution in the county have been linked to attempted marijuana theft, she said.

On Tuesday, the board unanimously signaled its intent to approve MacGlashan's ordinance, which will be up for a final vote on May 13.

The board postponed a decision on banning indoor cultivation of marijuana to study whether an all-out prohibition would infringe on the rights of medical cannabis patients to grow plants for their own use.

Sacramento County's plan would apply to unincorporated areas outside of the city of Sacramento, many of which have large lots and a semi-rural feel.

Two state bills to regulate the cultivation, selling and prescribing of medical pot are working their way through the legislature, but differences remain on whether health officials or the alcoholic beverage control department should oversee rules on cultivating and distributing the drug.

Follow the Money Trail
The giant pharmaceutical industry gives the politicians hundreds of millions in cold, hard campaign cash.  In return they are allowed to advertise on TV and "legally" distribute highly addictive drugs through neighborhood pharmacies.
.
But if you dare to try and grow your own drug on your property and medicate yourself the entire police state machine goosesteps into action. 

Democrats: "No profit allowed for medicinal marijuana"

Socialism

Democrat bill says "Thou shalt not make a profit on pot."

The pansy picking loon Communist state legislature attacks those "evil"

businessmen who dare to open a business and make a profit.

The People's Republic of California would take steps to regulate the sale of medical marijuana under a bill approved Monday by the state Senate, restricting cannabis dispensaries that Comrade Obama's Federal prosecutors say have grown out of control.

California voters first supported legalizing marijuana to treat illness in 1996, but Comrade Obama's Federal prosecutors recently cracked down and attacking the private property of the landlords of pot stores.

 

The industry has dared to grow enormously profitable by providing a service that people willingly want and need..

The Senate sent the bill to the Assembly on a 22-12 vote and without any Republican support.

 

The legislation makes it clear that dispensaries cannot operate at a profit, but that the owners can receive reasonable compensation and reimbursement for expenses reports The Signal - Associated Press.

"This bill is not about the legalization of marijuana," said Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento. "It does seek to assure that patients who need medical cannabis have access to it. It is intended to assure that drug cartels and other criminals do not benefit from the lack of regulation."

 

100% Bullshit.  If you did not make the business illegal then cartels would not be involved.  Alcohol cartels vanished the day prohibition ended in the 1930s.

He said his SB439, along with pending legislation by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, is "intended to come to some sort of an understanding with the federal government."

The bill's language is still being negotiated with law enforcement groups and is likely to be amended in the Assembly, Steinberg said.

It would not affect local regulations or prohibitions on dispensaries, authority that the state Supreme Court upheld earlier this month.

The bill would adopt guidelines issued by Gov. Jerry Brown when he was the state's attorney general in 2008, making it clear that the dispensaries cannot operate at a profit. Those operating within the guidelines could not face state prosecution.

Under Brown's 2008 guidelines, cooperatives registered under the state's Food and Agricultural Code or organized as less formal "collectives" (Communist) are legal under California law, while for-profit dispensaries are not.

But there is lingering confusion over what is permitted in California, as indicated by the three competing medicinal marijuana measures that Los Angeles voters will consider on Tuesday's municipal ballot. The measures would either limit the number of dispensaries or allow new ones to open.

Some 200 cities have outlawed or restricted dispensaries.

 

 

 

Obama acts to seize private property in California drug war

Marxist Obama attacks Berkeley medical marijuana dispensary

• Obama and Democrats at the Federal level try to steal the private property of legal businesses in California in the insane "war" on drugs.

BERKELEY -- Comrade Obama's Federal government filed a lawsuit targeting the city's largest medical marijuana outlet and is aiming to seize the property from its landlord.

The suit, filed May 2 in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, says Nahla Droubi of Moraga, who is the landlord for Berkeley Patients Group, is breaking federal drug laws by allowing the sale of marijuana and therefore is subject to seizure of her property.

The suit comes after Berkeley Patients Group was forced to close its previous location down the street on San Pablo Avenue last May when the landlord there received a letter threatening seizure for the same reason. The letter also cited the fact that it was too close to two nearby schools reports the Contra Costa Times.

It then moved down the street and reopened in December.

Sean Luse, chief operations officer for Berkeley Patients Group, which has been doing business in the city since 1999, said he was surprised at the suit because he did everything asked of him when he was forced to leave the last location.

"We moved our previous location and moved 1,000 feet from any school, so we're very surprised," Luse said.

The lawsuit against the Berkeley Patients Group landlord, in addition to citing federal drug laws, also mentions the proximity of two preschools in the neighborhood near the new location.


The War on Drugs with John Stossel 

Luse said Berkeley Patients Group will join the lawsuit as a defendant and stay in business as the saga unfolds.

"We look forward to our day in court," he said.

Last August, Droubi said she was not worried about having her property seized when Berkeley Patients Group announced it would become her new tenant.

"Our property is not close to any school," she said at the time. "The previous landlord had a very good experience with this group. He said they were very organized and most important thing is they had no violations and great security."

Droubi did not respond to calls seeking comment Tuesday afternoon, nor did a spokesman for the U. S. attorney in San Francisco.

The lawsuit is similar to one filed last year against Harborside Health Center in Oakland, the nation's largest medical marijuana dispensary. That lawsuit has not yet been resolved.

Kris Hermes, spokesman for Americans for Safe Access which advocates for medical marijuana with 50,000 members nationwide, said there have been about 20 dispensaries targeted in a similar fashion across California in the last couple of years, but he did not know how many of the suits have been successful.

He said the U.S. attorney's office has sent hundreds of letters to landlords threatening forfeiture "and hundreds have shut down as a result."

More recently he said a new round of threatening letters has recently gone to landlords of dispensaries in San Francisco and San Jose.

"The Obama Administration has so far gotten away with claiming that they are only targeting those in violation of state law," Hermes said. "Berkeley Patients Group stands in direct contrast to that contention. It's patently false."

“No power on earth has a right to take our property from us without our consent.”
John Jay
Founding Father of the United States

“Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First a right to life, secondly to liberty, and thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can.”
Samuel Adams