Global Ganja Report

We have noted before that the cannabis industry has a huge carbon footprint—something of a dirty little secret for the legalization movement. David Downs in the July 13 issue of East Bay Express has a fascinating cover-story, "How Green Is Your Pot?" Traveling to backwoods Humboldt County, Downs finds: "A new collective is trying to sell sustainable, organically grown marijuana, but patients are hooked on indoor weed that wastes energy and pollutes the planet."

Federal, state and local officials in a Northern California counter-terrorism drill  last week played out a scenario in which local cannabis growers set off bombs and took over the Shasta Dam, the nation’s second largest, to free an imprisoned comrade. A local news report said that in the mock-terror scenario, a cannabis growers' "red cell" set off bus and car bombs as distractions, took over the dam with three hostages, and then "threatened to flood the Sacramento River by rolling open the drum gates atop the dam."

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.

Humboldt County's Civil Liberties Monitoring Project will host a forum June 19 in Garberville, entitled "Cannabis Health and Safety: The Chemistry, the Economics and the Politics," featuring experts from California and Montana who have taken a "transparent" business approach to cultivating and dispensing marijuana. The Garberville Veterans Association is co-sponsoring this presentation, which will start 7 PM at Veterans Hall.

Police in the Humboldt County town of Arcata are warning LSD users to beware after responding to a rash of incidents apparently connected to bad acid trips. Police said the problems began last month when officers responded to a home where paramedics found a 31-year-old man who had castrated himself.

A crowd of over 150 assembled May 14 at the Little Lake Grange in Willits, Calif., for the Mendocino Medical Marijuana Advisory Board's community forum. The event, entitled, "Medical Cannabis: State of Our Laws, Now and in the Future" featured County Supervisor John Pinches and Sheriff Tom Allman, as well as physicians, attorneys and activists. MMMAB advisory panel member Pebbles Trippet responded to audience questions fielded by supervisorial candidate and moderator Dan Hamburg. Following the forum, the three candidates for District Attorney answered questions.

Mayor Peter Arth of Dunsmuir, Calif., has propsoed planintg a large medical marijuana garden in the small city's historic business district. Arth, himself a medicinal user, this week asked the city council for a permit that would allow him to lease three commercial lots he owns to a cannabis collective to build greenhouses. Arth says the prime location would help "bring medical cannabis out of the darkness of an underground market and into the legal light."

The Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010 will appear on California's November ballot, state election officials announced March 24. Secretary of State Debra Bowen certified that the petitions had hundreds of thousands more signatures than the 433,971 minimum needed to qualify. Supporters turned in 694,248 signatures, collecting them in every county except Alpine. County election officials estimated that 523,531 were valid.