California is on track to post a record $3.1 billion in licensed cannabis sales this year, solidifying its status as the largest legal marijuana market in the world, according to a study released Thursday by financial analysts who advise the industry. Legal sales are up significantly from an approximate $2.5 billion in 2018, the first […]
California Marijuana
Marijuana industry wants L.A. to crack down on illegal pot shops
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 […]
How Legal Weed Is Killing America’s Most Famous Marijuana Farmers
On a sunny day in the spring, Thomas Mulder walked through his greenhouse, down a narrow path between two long, knee-high, wooden planters. In a few weeks, the greenhouse would be full of marijuana plants a foot or two high—indica-sativa hybrid strain Sour G, or White Tahoe Cookies with its characteristic golden hairs around the […]
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 […]
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 […]
$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 […]
Illegal marijuana growers poison forests—these people fight back
Deep inside Northern California’s Shasta-Trinity National Forest, wildlife ecologist Mourad Gabriel is dressed in camouflage, waiting for the raid. He’s accompanied by more than a dozen armed officers with the U.S. Forest Service, local sheriff’s office, and other agencies on a hot August afternoon. Their plan: to seize and dismantle a nearby illegal marijuana grow site, hundreds […]
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 […]
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. […]
California collecting far less than expected in marijuana taxes
Deep in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s new budget is a figure that says a lot about California’s shaky legal marijuana market: The state is expecting a lot less cash from cannabis taxes. The Democrat’s proposed spending plan, released Thursday, projects the state will bank $355 million in marijuana excise taxes by the end of June. That’s […]
Now for the Hard Part: Getting Californians to Buy Legal Weed
A billion dollars of tax revenue, the taming of the black market, the convenience of retail cannabis stores throughout the state — these were some of the promises made by proponents of marijuana legalization in California. One year after the start of recreational sales, they are still just promises. California’s experiment in legalization is mired […]
Will California’s Section 5032 Disrupt the Cannabis Market?
By Ian Stewart On December 7, 2018, California’s three cannabis licensing authorities submitted final versions of the state cannabis regulations scheduled to be approved by January 16, 2019. California’s Bureau of Cannabis Control (Bureau) submitted a final version of Section 5032 of the regulations that substantially limits commercial cannabis activity between licensed and unlicensed entities. […]
Older Americans Are Flocking to Medical Marijuana
Shari Horne broke her toes a decade ago, and after surgery, “I have plates and pins and screws in my feet, and they get achy at times,” she said. So Ms. Horne, 66, applies a salve containing cannabidiol, derived from the cannabis, or marijuana, plant. It eases the pain. The salve didn’t help when she developed […]
The ‘Green Dimension’: Inside the Lives of California’s Marijuana Trimmers
Tucked into the forests of Mendocino County, accessible by a two-lane road that winds through hills of golden grass abundant with rattlesnakes is the small town of Covelo, where hundreds of seasonal workers converge every year, eager to help harvest the region’s most lucrative cash crop — marijuana. These workers, known as “trimmigrants,” patiently cut […]
Marijuana delivery draws gig workers with steady pay, more zen customers
Jennifer Rodriguez works two jobs to afford living in the Bay Area. After dropping off her three children at school, she spends most mornings shuttling Uber passengers. Then the Hayward mother starts a shift delivering marijuana. Unlike her Uber work, where she’s considered an independent contractor and has to pay all of her own costs, […]
