L.A. county just says no to medical weed.Pot-patients rights advocates are up in arms over L.A. County's ban of medical marijuana dispensaries. Ahead of a final vote on the matter Tuesday morning cannabis supporters will be outside the county Board of Supervisors meeting to try to get the bo ... More >>
Dispensary owners now have a bud in Washington.Tobacco has a lobby. Alcohol has a lobby. Now medical marijuana has its own lobbying group in Washington, D.C. The National Cannabis Industry Association officially unveiled itself Tuesday as "the first national trade group representing the inte ... More >>
Arizona says yes to medical pot.While California couldn't muster the votes to pass full legalization of pot, our friends to the east in Arizona got word over the weekend that its medical marijuana effort, Prop. 203, passed by the thinnest of margins. That would make Arizona the 15th state in ... More >>
Americans for Safe AccessWould Steve Cooley as A.G. spell the end of the pot shop?Here's a scenario: Prop. 19, the marijuana legalization initiative, loses. Steve Cooley, the Los Angeles District Attorney who wants to become Attorney General, wins. Cooley has been no friend of the L.A. pot ... More >>
Americans For Safe AccessAn anti-Cooley poster​With Prop. 19 way down in the polls, some pro-marijuana groups are turning their attention to the dead-even race for attorney general.Americans For Safe Access, which supports medical marijuana, has launched a "Not Cooley" campaign. The group is telli ... More >>
Los Angeles County Sheriff's DepartmentIt doesn't look anything like the real thing Just when you thought Halloween was safe for children again, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department issued a new health warning: your kids could be ingesting (gulp!) marijuana-laced goodies! This morning ... More >>
​Counterintuitive news of the day: The California Cannabis Association is opposing the Proposition 19 pot legalization initiative on the November ballot. It's not as crazy as you think. This trade group of sorts represents medicinal marijuana dispensaries, and they fear Prop. 19 will make life h ... More >>
Do you have a medical marijuana card? Are you voting for Prop. 19, or are you, as our comment of the day suggests, smugly satisfied with the status quo because you're already set as far as your cannabis supply goes? In a post about how the dispensary group California Cannabis Association opp ... More >>
Just this week marijuana dispensary backers were whining to the Los Angeles City Council about its tough pot-shop law (even though it's not even being enforced). They're lucky they're not in Las Vegas, L.A.'s own Jersey Shore in the desert, where the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration this ... More >>
After a California court of appeal rejected the city of Anaheim's argument that marijuana's federal outlaw status allowed the municipality to ban medical pot dispensaries, a pro-cannabis group is urging all cities in California that ban pot shops to change course. "It's long past time for lo ... More >>
You would think that Prop. 19, the November ballot initiative that would fully legalize marijuana possession, would find some of its most ardent backers among the medical-pot trade, which relies on people coming to dispensaries and possessing weed, sometimes at their own peril when it comes t ... More >>
While our much more liberal neighbors up in Oakland have embraced industrial-size marijuana growing operations, Los Angeles medical marijuana dispensaries have been bombarded with city ordinances and regulations, at least according to one blog's point of view. According to CNBC and the Marij ... More >>
Medical marijuana advocates have seized the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs' new marijuana-friendly policy to challenge federal law that deems there is no legitimate medical benefit for marijuana. The group Americans for Safe Access (ASA) this week filed a legal brief in its own longstan ... More >>
Updated after the jump with reaction from the temple. Originally posted at 7:05 a.m. Leaders of a Rastafarian temple/alleged pot shop in Hollywood sued the city this week following its crackdown on medical marijuana retailers: The suit claims that the temple leaders were wrongfully arrested ... More >>
Leonhart with Attorney General Eric Holder.Despite an Obama administration directive meant to put a halt to federal raids of pot shops in states where medical marijuana has been legalized, recent dispensary busts, including one in Southern California, have prompted a group of cannabis advocat ... More >>
A 39-year-old Los Angeles man accused of supplying local pot shops with pounds of cannabis pleaded guilty to 24 felony counts, "including cultivating marijuana, money laundering and other criminal charges," the District Attorney's office announced Monday. Authorities said they linked Lawrenc ... More >>
Fearing an influx of pot shops from municipalities, like the city of Los Angeles, that have cracked down on their very existence, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors will consider a proposal to ban medical marijuana dispensaries in its unincorporated areas, which include communities s ... More >>
Two weeks after the "ban," dispensaries are waiting to hear from their lawyers
VA's West Los Angeles Healthcare Center.Former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey, along with Drug Policy Alliance board member Jason Flom, castigated the U.S. Veterans Health Administration this week for recently telling its doctors they could not recommend medical marijuana to patients who had served ... More >>
Fifteen members of congress, including a few from Southern California, recently wrote a letter to U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner requesting that he tell banks to lay off the accounts of medical marijuana dispensaries that operate in states where the drug is legal, the group American ... More >>
Bad news for supporters of Los Angeles pot shops, most of which have recently been outlawed by a city law: A judge in Orange County Wednesday upheld the city of Lake Forest's right to prohibit marijuana dispensaries. The attorney representing Lake Forest, Jeffrey Dunn, praised the ruling: "S ... More >>
In City Attorney's office letters that will go out today, Los Angeles medical marijuana dispensaries that opened after November 13, 2007 or that don't comply with new rules regarding how close they can be to schools, churches, parks and other public places were told to shut down immediately o ... More >>
A bid by four medical marijuana patients to prevent a pair of Orange County cities from closing down medical pot shops was denied by a federal judge in Santa Ana Monday, according to the Orange County Register. The foursome had argued that the Americans with Disabilities Act protected their ... More >>
Google Maps606 E. Fourth St. downtown.The robbery of a Skid Row medical marijuana dispensary this week was one of five such crimes downtown in the last 18 months, police told blogdowntown. "I know of 14 clinics just in downtown Los Angeles, and five were robbed in the last 18 months," Lt. P ... More >>
L.A.'s famous K.F.C. collective in Palms.The Los Angeles City Council on Friday approved the final piece of is medical marijuana ordinance, a move that will put most of L.A.'s pot shops out of business beginning in June.
The California Assembly Committee on Public Health is scheduled to consider a bill Tuesday that would impose Los Angeles-like limits on how close medical marijuana dispensaries can be from schools, churches, parks libraries and other dispensaries. Medical marijuana proponents are concerned that the ... More >>
You read that right. And we suspect that even some of you conservatives are whispering to yourselves, "Holy Obama-care, I should have supported the health-care bill." Unfortunately, the Big Brother chronic in question is not USDA-grade, but rather Canadian. The patient, Sally Campbell, 61, ... More >>
Last week we told you how some Southern California California juries were letting medical marijuana dispensary operators off the hook in recent pot possession and trafficking cases. Now it looks like some juries up north are also letting medical pot sellers and users walk away after they've b ... More >>
If San Diego serves as an example, the Los Angeles District and City attorneys' crackdowns on medical marijuana dispensaries in recent weeks could all be for nothing: Juries in our neighbor to the south are two for two in acquitting pot-shop owners prosecuted for selling weed. In both cities ... More >>
Two Los Angeles City Council committees approved nearly $1,600 in fees for medical marijuana dispensaries, marking the beginning of the end for hundreds of pop shops that will be wiped out by a city ordinance that severely limits where they can operate. The fees will fund criminal background ... More >>
A man who ran six medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles County was sentenced Monday to six years in federal prison for selling the drug. Virgil Edward Grant III, 42, was nabbed on federal charges of conspiring to possess and distribute marijuana. He pleaded guilty last June and was a ... More >>
A pro-medical-marijuana group on Tuesday vowed to fight back against the City Attorney's legal actions against 21 pot dispensaries in Los Angeles. The office seeks to shut down the pot shops as nuisances and cites their over-the-counter sales of marijuana, which it argues are not allowed unde ... More >>
The owner of a medical marijuana dispensary in L.A.'s Del Rey neighborhood has been charged with 24 counts, including money laundering, following last week's actions against 21 pot shops in the city of Los Angeles. The complaint against Jeffrey Joseph was filed Monday in Los Angeles, accordin ... More >>
The owner of a Los Angeles medical marijuana dispensary pleaded not guilty Monday after he was charged with 24 drug-related felony counts by the District Attorney's office following an August raid of what authorities called an "illegal drug-dealing operation." Jeffrey Keith Joseph, 41, owner ... More >>
Authorities targeted 21 medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles for various, alleged legal violations Thursday, including three that were accused by the City Attorney's office of being public nuisances. Search warrants were served at Organica Inc. on Washington Boulevard near Lincoln B ... More >>
As part of today's moves against 21 medical marijuana dispensaries, the owner of a pot shop near Culver City was arrested for selling weed, the City Attorney's office confirmed. Jeffrey Joseph, owner of Organica Inc. on Washington Boulevard in L.A.'s Del Rey community, was arrested this morni ... More >>
State Sen. Mark Leno, co-author of the state's medical marijuana clarification act (SB 420), has joined a court challenge that will help decide whether cities can ban medical marijuana dispensaries in a state that approves them. The San Francisco Democrat filed a legal brief in Qualified Pat ... More >>
A man whose unruly behavior aboard a jet bound for Los Angeles over the weekend caused the flight to be diverted says he was flying high on medical marijuana. The plane from Philadelphia to L.A. landed in Pittsburgh after he had to be subdued by flight-crew members as a result of his alleged ... More >>
FoxCity Councilman Jose Huizar has called on the state legislature to clarify California's medical marijuana rules, arguing that the city's own ordinance could only go so far with out clearer guidelines on such issues as what constitutes a sale, whether over-the-counter dispensaries were legi ... More >>
Michele M. Leonhart.The administration of President Obama has told federal law enforcement to stand down when it comes to raiding legitimate pot dispensaries in states where medical marijuana is legal. But last week the president quietly nominated Bush-era Drug Enforcement Administration offi ... More >>
Publications reap windfall from pot ads
The California Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a law limiting medical marijuana patients to having eight ounces of pot at one time. The court stated that the law was drawn up by the legislature, and only the people have the right to amend voter-approved propositions such as the one in q ... More >>
The Los Angeles City Council will take another shot at enacting a law to rein in medical marijuana stores in the city Wednesday but, as history attests, just because the matter is on the body's docket doesn't mean it will act. This time around the city has before it a law that would cut the ... More >>
With the City Council poised to vote on a medical marijuana ordinance, Los Angeles Police Department Chief Charlie Beck has drastically changed his line on how much crime medical marijuana shops causing crime in L.A. Why? We don't know. But in an interview with the Los Angeles Daily News over ... More >>
Eight in 10 Americans believe medical marijuana should be legal, a jump from just more than half of Americans in 1997, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll. The wave of support comes as the East Coast starts to catch up with California and other Western states in approving medical marijuana. ... More >>
Marijuana's steady march toward legalization nationwide
While some Los Angeles streets have several medical marijuana dispensaries to choose from for your, er, medical needs (and we're guessing here that, as New Year's Eve approaches, there's going to be a spike in such needs), some cities ban them. Anaheim is just such a place, but a state appea ... More >>
No surprise: At a raucous meeting today, the Los Angeles City Council decided to hold off on voting on a controversial medical marijuana ordinance that would severely reduce the 545 pot shops in Los Angeles. The postponement came after the city's Planning Department presented hurriedly crea ... More >>
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