Global Ganja Report

Oakland's City Council July 20 approved regulations permitting what the San Francisco Chronicle called "industrial-scale" cannabis farms—over the protests of small growers who fear they will be squeezed out of the industry they helped build. To address such concerns, the council pledged to create regulations for small and medium-size grow operations later this year.

In a setback for the corporatization of cannabis, the US Patent Office has shelved consideration of  trademarks for medical marijuana products, according to a July 19 report in the Wall Street Journal:

California's medicinal cannabis growers see a downside to the normalization of their profession: the "Wal-Marting" of weed. The Oakland City Council this week will consider licensing four cannabis production facilities to service the medical market. Winning applicants would have to pay $211,000 in annual permit fees, carry $2 million worth of liability insurance and pay up to 8% of gross sales in taxes. This has raised fears that such measures could drive "mom and pop" growers out of business.

A multi-agency federal task force on July 7 descended on the property of Joy Greenfield of Covelo, the first Mendocino County patient to pay the $1,050 application fee under the county medical marijuana ordinance, which allows collectives to grow up to 99 plants provided they comply with regulations. Greenfield had applied in the name of her collective, Light The Way, which opened in San Diego earlier this year.

A proposed ordinance going before Oakland City Council’s Public Safety Committee next week aims to curtail indoor cannabis growers in the city by regularizing major producers for the medical market. Councilmembers Rebecca Kaplan and Larry Reid propose permitting four large, industrial-scale cultivators, who would then supply Oakland’s six dispensaries (the ordinance would add two dispensaries to the currently permitted four) with the 6,000 pounds of cannabis the dispensaries sell a year.

California attorney general and gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown has come out strongly against Proposition 19, the voter initiative that would effectively legalize in the state if passed this November. Speaking before the California District Attorneys Association Conference in Monterey, Brown said legalizing would open the flood gates for the ruthless and deadly Mexican drug cartels: "Every year we get more and more marijuana and every year we find more guys with AK-47's coming out of Mexico going into forests and growing more and more dangerous and losing control." (KSBW, June 29)

Noting that prohibition takes a disproportionate toll on African American youth, leaders of the NAACP's California chapter announced June 28 that they are backing passage of the marijuana legalization initiative on the November ballot. Alice Huffman, president of the NAACP's state conference, said the war on drugs is a failure.

The first ever High Times Medical Cannabis Cup was held this week in San Francisco. For two days hundreds of guests shelled out $60 a head to pack the Terra Gallery on Harrison Street, where an "all-star" panel of High Times cultivation writers and California medical marijuana experts picked the best product from dispensaries around the Bay Area.