When the Fresno Police Department decided that patients growing medical cannabis outdoors was a threat to public health and safety, the City Council signed off on an outdoor cultivation ban. What the FPD didn’t tell the City Council was that indoor cannabis cultivation can create equal or greater threats to public health and safety, including marijuana house fires caused by overloaded [...]
Fresno’s ban on outdoor cannabis gardens faces a new legal challenge, this time on environmental grounds. In December 2011, the Fresno City Council passed a so-called urgency ordinance prohibiting outdoor cannabis gardens anywhere in the city. The ordinance passed after police cited concerns about a handful of large-scale gardens, some of them within residential neighborhoods. A 2010 shooting death during an [...]
The deal is done and the ink has dried on Fresno’s permanent ban on growing marijuana outdoors. Technically speaking, it doesn’t take effect until Aug. 3, but there’s a temporary ban that’s still in place. Mayor Ashley Swearengin signed off on the law July 3, which followed approval June 28 by the Fresno City Council. Outdoor marijuana cultivation ban – City [...]
The Fresno City Council voted Thursday to approve a permanent ban on growing medical marijuana outdoors. The measure now goes to Mayor Ashley Swearengin for her signature, and it takes effect 30 days after that. The permanent ordinance allows no outdoor marijuana cultivation of any kind within the city limits, just like the temporary bans that were passed in December and [...]
The Fresno Planning Commission voted 4-2 on May 16 to recommend passage of a permanent ban on growing medical marijuana outdoors anywhere in the city of Fresno. The marijuana ordinance is set for hearing and adoption by the Fresno City Council at 9:30 a.m. this Thursday, June 21. I was one of three people to speak against the ban — many [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
