Cannabis Fantastic

The medical marijuana advocacy group, “Americans for Safe Access”  is trying to use the court system to stop the raids of dispensaries in the State of California. NORML Show Live has been covering the systematic threats, closures and harassment of dozens of dispensaries in California following letters sent out to landlords by California US attorneys [Read on . . .]

Out of the thousands of medical marijuana dispensaries in our country, most of them had to get some kind of business license to operate a store front. It has been an issue at the local level with many towns and municipalities, particularly in the states of California and Colorado, handing out general business licenses. Some [Read on . . .]

Two people are facing serious drug charges after they have been accused of openly selling marijuana pipes and bongs at a southwestern Pennsylvania county fair. A drug task force detective accuses thirty-three-year-old Stephen Krug and 24-year-old Maria Zelik, both from Freedom, PA, of selling the drug paraphernalia out in the open.

A handful of cannabis clubs that provide patients with marijuana for medical purposes have opened up in Arizona under a grey area in the law. The state allows most medical marijuana cardholders to grow their own cannabis and share it with each other, as long as there are no dispensaries near by. Since there are no dispensaries as-of-yet, cannabis clubs have opened to fill the void. Law enforcement officials see two areas of problems with the newly opened cannabis clubs. One is payment or compensation for the product, the other is local zoning of the clubs.

A small, unassuming house that has been converted to a business opened it’s doors last week, making it the first legal dispensary on the East Coast. Safe Alternatives is housed in Frenchville, Maine on Route 1 with no signage, but plenty of security cameras as required by state law. The facility looks like a typical house, but the business run by Leo Trudel has a secure growing facility locked up on the inside, and not many local supporters so far.

Some residents are wary of the business, because it doesn’t look like a business. The facility is located less than a mile from an elementary school, a point repeatedly mentioned in local media stories

The Mendocino Sheriff was able to reduce budget cuts to the department thanks to money seized from illegal marijuana farms. Fourteen jobs were slated to be cut, but last Tuesday that number was reduced to seven.

Following a contentious daylong debate last week, Mendocino, Californian County supervisors voted to reduce the number of proposed job cuts in the Sheriff’s Office budget, and in return Sheriff Tom Allman said he would spend an additional $257,000 of asset forfeiture funds — money collected primarily from marijuana busts — to offset his department’s $600,000 overtime budget.

The Oakland city council last week approved an application process for commercial-scale medical marijuana grow ops. That same night, the city council also approved a separate measure doubling the number of dispensaries allowed to be licensed to operate in the city from four to eight. The move makes Oakland the first city in the nation to approve marijuana cultivation on such a large scale.

City council members said it was designed to take medical marijuana cultivation out of the shadows.

The debate in states that are looking to start a medical marijuana program often includes the revenue that a program would add to the state’s budget. While medical marijuana’s revenue is open to debate, one industry that has been helped out by the medical marijuana movement is the weekly newspapers in medical marijuana states. Local newspapers that have been declining in popularity have led many new media outlets declaring the newspaper in it’s old fashioned print form version is a dying breed. Papers trying to cope with the recession and the flight of advertising dollars, especially classified listings that are now free on services online such as craigslist have been laying off workers, or worse yet, folding under the weight of new pressures from online media sources. But some communities that have embraced medical marijuana are seeing a boon to local newspapers that have been recently stuffed with marijuana ads