The legal marijuana industry urged Los Angeles City Hall on Monday to get tougher with illegal shops that are gouging their businesses in open sight. Illegal pot shops are widespread throughout Los Angeles and typically look like the real thing. And they’re thriving — they sell cheaper products than their legal rivals because they don’t […]
California
Oakland decriminalizes ‘magic mushrooms’ and other natural psychedelics
Oakland’s city council unanimously passed a resolution Tuesday that decriminalizes the use of entheogenic plants, a category that includes flora such as “magic mushrooms,” cactuses, and iboga that can induce a psychedelic experience. Oakland is the second city in the country, after Denver, to decriminalize these substances. However, magic mushrooms still remain illegal under federal […]
Why does California’s public health department treat CBD like poison?
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — the nation’s second most powerful Republican — and California’s Democratic state legislators completely agree on one thing: Marijuana’s cousin hemp should be fully legalized. As the late U.S. House Speaker Tip O’Neill famously said: “All politics is local.” In McConnell’s home state of Kentucky, tobacco farming is dying […]
Merlot versus marijuana: California’s Wine Country feuds over measure to grow pot
The Napa Valley has become synonymous with wine, as grapevines cover the flatlands and creep up the hillsides. Now some entrepreneurs hope a new crop will take root: marijuana. Last week, a group called the Napa Valley Cannabis Association submitted what they believe are enough signatures to put the question of cannabis cultivation on the […]
Oakland’s groundbreaking cannabis equity program showing modest results so far
Alphonso Blunt stood outside a warehouse near 66th Avenue and San Leandro Street in Oakland and gazed with satisfaction at the Coliseum across the street. Behind him, a steady stream of customers walked through the glass doors of the warehouse and into his marijuana dispensary. Nearly a year earlier, he had received his license to […]
Plan to create special cannabis-friendly banks moves forward in California
Shut out of the traditional banking system by federal laws, the country’s largest legal marijuana market — in California — could benefit if the state approves a measure creating a special class of banks to handle pot money. The state Senate voted 35 to 1 on Tuesday to pass a bill that would allow people […]
Some California cities would be forced to allow marijuana sales under bill to triple pot shops in state
Escalating a feud with cities over marijuana, state lawmakers are pushing to require municipalities to lift bans on cannabis stores if voters there supported Proposition 64, the 2016 initiative that legalized sale of the drug for recreational use in California. A bill moving through the Legislature would require those cities to permit at least one […]
BREAKING NEWS: California Opens Up for Commercial Hemp Cultivation
By Griffin Thorne, Attorney at Harris Bricken We have been closely following California’s commercial hemp cultivation licensing law since it was proposed last year as Senate Bill 1409 (see here, here, and here). In March, I wrote about some of the roadblocks to implementing SB-1409’s commercial hemp cultivation programs, and the lengthy review process of the California Department of Food and Agriculture […]
Amid ‘GreenRush’ Of Legal Cannabis, California Strives to Control Adverse Effects On Water
WESTERN WATER IN-DEPTH: STATE CRAFTS WATER RIGHT AND NEW RULES UNIQUE TO MARIJUANA FARMS, BUT WILL GROWERS ACCUSTOMED TO THE SHADOWS COMPLY? For decades, cannabis has been grown in California – hidden away in forested groves or surreptitiously harvested under the glare of high-intensity indoor lamps in suburban tract homes. In the past 20 years, […]
$350,000 in cash? California marijuana taxes still make growers – and tax collectors – nervous
On tax days, it’s not hard to spot marijuana growers waiting to exhale in downtown Eureka. They haul cash in grocery bags and boxes, making their way to a state office where they can pay their taxes. One grower “holds his breath as he walks into the building,” said Terra Carver, executive director of the […]
25 cities suing California over marijuana policy that allows unrestricted delivery statewide
Because pot remains illegal on the federal level, it cannot be sent through the mail. But people can get it delivered to their doors in California. LOS ANGELES — California has entered a potentially landmark legal fight against some of its own cities over one of the most basic questions in the nation’s largest legal […]
Los Angeles Set to Reduce or Expunge 50,000 Marijuana Convictions
Nearly 50,000 people who have been convicted of marijuana-related offenses will have their convictions erased or reduced, according to a statement on Monday from the district attorney of Los Angeles County. In partnership with Code for America, a nonprofit tech organization, Los Angeles County will identify decades-old court cases that it would otherwise have been unable […]
Tribes at odds with Calif. officials over the right to sell marijuana
The legalization of recreational marijuana in California left Native Americans out in the cold. Proposition 64, which voters approved in 2016, lets local governments decide whether to allow cannabis dispensaries to operate within their jurisdictions. But it made no provisions for tribes. As far as the state is concerned, tribes can do whatever they want […]
SF district attorney to wipe out 9,000-plus pot cases going back to 1975
San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón announced Monday that his office will wipe out more than 9,000 marijuana-related convictions in an unprecedented step following California’s cannabis legalization more than two years ago. Gascón last year teamed up with Code for America — a nonprofit focused on using open-source technology to improve government — to find […]
Looking Beyond Tax and Banking Bills to Establish Sustainable Solutions for California’s Complex Regulatory Challenges
By Dr. John Oram Op-Ed More than a year after California became the sixth state to legalize adult-use marijuana, the legal cannabis industry has yet to live up to the high expectations envisioned by supporters of Proposition 64. The number of retail licenses issued is thousands less than state officials originally estimated and state revenue […]
The California Bureau of Cannabis Control’s Final Regulations Immigration Impact on Foreign “Owners”
By Griffen Thorne & Akshat Divatia, Attorneys at Harris Bricken On January 16, 2019, each of the three California cannabis agencies dropped a final set of regulations. In many senses, the Bureau of Cannabis Control’s (“BCC”) regulations were the most comprehensive and expansive (we summarized some of the highlights here, and summarized the highlights of […]
California’s retail marijuana industry is struggling. Will tax breaks and banks help?
Unfriendly banks, high taxes and black-market competitors are some of the obstacles that licensed cannabis companies say hold them back as they try to cultivate a new industry in California. Some California lawmakers want to give them a hand, and they’re considering a set of bills that would in ways great and small fine tune […]
Now you can get cannabis delivered to you anywhere in California, even in cities that ban pot
Until now, companies trying to deliver weed to doorsteps around the state – the companies trying to follow the letter of the law, anyway – have faced a daunting patchwork of local regulations. Buying cannabis is legal in California, but cities and counties can still choose to regulate or ban the trade as they please. […]
