The Fresno Planning Commission voted 4-2 on Wednesday to recommend passage of a permanent ban on growing medical marijuana outdoors anywhere in the city of Fresno.
I was one of three people to speak against the ban — many thanks to Dustin and Diane — and also submitted detailed written comments regarding the proposed ban and some of the underlying legal issues. The hyperlinked version of those comments appears below:
California voters approved Proposition 215 in 1996, giving “seriously ill Californians … the right to obtain and use marijuana for medical purposes” as recommended by a physician. The practical implementation of Prop. 215 has been messy, contradictory and confusing, and it conflicts with federal law. Subsequent state regulations on the issue have tempered one problem while creating others. And local governments [...]
A new medical marijuana dispensary is open in Fresno, but police say they plan to move quickly to shut it down. The California Herbal Relief Center near Ashlan and Willow avenues doesn’t have a sign and relies on a doorman to allow entrance to the business, Jim Guy reports in the Fresno Bee. Once inside, workers are quick to ask visitors [...]
Brian Doyle recently tossed out a Dumpster’s worth of marijuana plants for fear of being raided by the Fresno County sheriff. He calls it a loss of good medicine. Now he worries about losing his investment of tens of thousands of dollars in grow lights, a security system and a lease on a Malaga warehouse where he intended to run the [...]
Americans for Safe Access sponsors its Unity Conference next weekend in Sacramento. Here’s the latest: Dear Friend, I am happy to announce that the price of the California Unity Conference in Sacramento May 19-21 has just gone down! Thanks to our friends at UFCW Local 8 and the Sacramento Central Labor Council, we have been able to cut the cost of [...]
UPDATE: Starting this Wednesday, May 16, patient-growers who live inside the Fresno city limits will have a chance — however slight — to ease the ban on outdoor cultivation of medical marijuana. More important, they’ll have the right to ask the police to stand down from their effort to open a new front in the Drug War. MEDICAL MARIJUANA IS ON [...]
MODESTO – The husband and father of a former Stanislaus County sheriff’s detective appeared in court Friday for the first time since the men were arrested last month on suspicion of conspiring to forcibly enter homes and cultivating marijuana. A filed criminal complaint alleges Kari Abbey’s husband, Bennie Taylor, and her father, James Abbey, unlawfully entered rental homes owned by Abbey [...]
