You would think, after our new president's ups and downs on what is ultimately the road to wholesale legalization, that calling off the pot bullies would be, by all accounts, A Good Thing. Hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of Americans have used the approved stuff, after all, whether as therapeutic medicine or therapeutic something else.

Trouble is, all this common sense seems to have fried the brains of the law-enforcement leaders in the City of Los Angeles. They've suddenly come up with a bizarre new interpretation of the law — that the requirement for pot dispensaries to be "nonprofit" actually means that they can't accept cash.

Yes, you read that right. This is how Deputy City Attorney David Berger put it: "We can still use state law to enforce, and we still believe that the only legal way to do that is to enforce against the selling of marijuana, as opposed to giving it away as a collective."

This has to be the first time in American history that the government is ordering its citizens to start collectivizing our farms.

The backwards logic was codified in the fourth version of a draft ordinance that City Attorney Carmen Trutanich submitted last Tuesday to the Los Angeles city council. Apparently a hard-core member of the Marxist-Leninist wing of the Republican party, Trutanich even argued that dispensary owners shouldn't use cash to pay for labor or fertilizer — that the voters of California actually intended for marijuana to be produced and dispensed, unlike all other drugs in the known universe, on a pure barter system. (This from the man who made Michael Jackson's funeral look like it switched from the Staples Center to Tammany Hall.)

Naturally, the government's marijuana bait-and-switch over the past eight days has producers and dispensers very upset. When I spoke with her late last week, Yamileth Bolanos, owner of a shop called PureLife Alternatives and president of an influential medical-marijuana trade group, summed up the general sentiment:

"They expect people who are sick and on chemotherapy to get up and farm their own crop? If you're not directly involved in growing the crop, you can't have any of it?"

Imagine the unintended consequences, Bolanos said. "They say there's between 250,000 and 300,000 medical marijuana patients in the city of Los Angeles, and we don't have wide-open spaces here where we can grow. That means every building in Los Angeles will be a grow site."

The draft ordinance is city's latest attempt to bring some kind of order to the explosion of pot stores, all of which have so far failed. Bolanos insists that she and the marijuana community want to be partners in this, helping to clean up the shady cannabis clubs that don't pay taxes or check prescriptions. "We've been screaming for regulation," she told me. "I've gone to the city council and said, 'Show us the rules. Tell us what to do, so we can provide for patients in a safe manner.' [But] the city let the situation get out of hand — they wouldn't give us regulations, so we made up our own regulations, we started accrediting clubs. We follow the rules very strictly, but what they're asking us to do now is impossible."

For example, the draft ordinance includes a clause saying you can't have a shop across an alley from a residential area. "That alone wipes us all out," Bolanos says. "Who doesn't have an alley behind a commercial property in Los Angeles? That's how the blocks were built — the outer block is commercial and there's residential behind it."

A true believer in medical marijuana, Bolanos began smoking when she was diagnosed with liver cancer. "I use cannabis every day — I have a new liver, I don't want to put any medicine in my body that will tax my liver. What are people supposed to do, go back to the streets? That's what they're doing: they're sending sick people out on the street to get their medication."

As a result, she has no sympathy for the argument that the government should just stop the charade and legalize pot altogether. "No, no, I am not for full legalization — this is medicine to me. There are real patients here. It's very sad that because of a few people who are abusing the system, the real patients have to suffer. What is the old line? Non-sinners pay for what sinners do?"

Despite all that, nobody really thinks this fight is about medicine. It's about the virtual legalization of drugs that is slowly but surely happening in California. Here's are some of the online reviews for a club in Reseda called Nature's Natural Collective Care, for example:

"They have a nice little smoke room where you can try your samples and they have a few water pipes, glass pipes, papers in there for you to use. I was asking about a certain strain and the guy busted out the Cannibible and gave me the low down on that strain. I like that type of service."

"They have over 60 strains at times all capped at $50 an 1/8th and no more than $400 an oz on the highest quality. With ounces ranging from like $180-$400. They even let you have free samples."

"Full O's are all sub $400 for great shit and the service here from the budtenders is beyond fantastic. Their knowledge and ability to work with you is amazing."

As the right-wingers warned from the beginning, medical marijuana is turning out to be the genie you can't stuff back in the bottle. Even if the L.A. city council's rushed vote comes down in favor of the Trutanich ordinance, it seems likely that the regulations will be overturned in the courts — which is exactly what happened with Trutanich's last attempt to shut down the clubs. The state attorney general has already gone on record saying — and reiterated to Esquire.com when we asked him for comment — that the law allows sales. In the end, this case of bureaucratic bullying — and others across the country as states come to terms with a (relatively) sane White House pot policy — will be just another pointless and expensive skirmish on the inevitable road to marijuana legalization.

But for now, the fight is on: One day after Trutanich submitted the draft ordinance, the LAPD raided Nature's Natural.

"We expect more," Bolanos says. "They told us there are going to be more. We are in the fight for our lives."

Note: The administration has officially put a stop to crackdowns on the medical-marijuana business, but to hear the dispensers tell it, nothing's stopping Los Angeles from finding every last ridiculous loophole.

Source: Esquire (US)
Author: John H. Richardson
Published: October 27, 2009
Copyright: 2009 Hearst Communications, Inc.
Contact: editor@esquire.com
Website: http://www.esquire.com/
URL: http://drugsense.org/url/33grm4Cj

"It's always easy to the one that doesn't have to do it."

Of course, I can't argue with that. It's true.

First of all, I think we can agree that the current monetary value of cannabis is greatly affected by all the nuances of prohibition, and that when common sense finally makes its way to the 'top' and prohibition is ended, then the price is most suredly going to drop.

However, I do know the kind of energy it takes to have a good crop. And believe it or not, just as in growing other kinds of crops (in terms of quality vs quantity) a 'green thumb' is a necessary ingredient.

To think that medical grade cannabis could be grown in fields, in rows, and harvested with some kind of John Deer mutant machine, with about the same care and attention as a Monsanto corn field, is a pretty sickening thought -to me anyway.

I disagree however that the best Bud is all grown indoors. In this case, there is the element of taste and preference; flavor and potency, as well as type. While it is true that indoor bud can be a more controlled environment, I must point out that though it is an indoor, controlled environment, that the best results area technological simulation of the best of all natural worlds; lots of light (sun), air circulation (wind), water -indoors it must be cycled and filtered so it doesn't toxify the growing medium -(but outdoors the natural percolation of the soil, with enough water, accomplishes this), and food -nitrogen and phosphates. All quite simplified in that description, but involving a lot of peripheral technologies to accomplish the end goal.

I submit that all of those conditions can be met in a seasonal manner just as well, and that the result IMO, is just as high quality (or better) as can be produced indoors.

It certainly is not as simple as just having the right seed or strain. The care and feeding that goes into high grade medicinal cannabis is labor intensive, whether it is indoors or outdoors. It is a bit more with the indoors I would think bcause of the constant worry of mold, bacteria, and mites that comes from an unrefreshed, closed room, and the technologies used must be constantly monitored.

The myth that states the 'weed' theory; as if anyone could grow quality cannabis, anywhere with minimal effort, is only partly true.

Yes, cannabis will grow anywhere, but quality cannabis requires much time, attention, and gardening. And though it seems a bit weird to some, the practice of 'trimming' the bud is an important part of the process. Even though some BC entrepeneurs came up with a device that trims bud like an xmas tree (lots o waste) that practice is also time and labor consuming. And a large grow requires a large number of people to do the job, its not something one person can do without major burnout. Right now in So Oregon there are hundreds of unemployed people getting temporary employment doing this job.

The idea that corporations could produce 'commercial' grades for lower prices, might be a possibility, but the demand, unless the new prohibtionists (regulators and controllers) succeed in selling the public their 'fast-food' version of cannabis, will still require the quality, that by the nature and spirit of the plant will not thrive in an industrial farming environment.

There are so many nuances involved in growing quality herb, that it is a skill needing both education (information) and dedication.

How much should it cost? Well the $10 ounce is never coming back. To try and figure the costs and overheads, with potential profit, is all rather ambiguous at this point. Is it overpriced? Is healthcare overpriced? Is there a price to put on feeling good, or relieving pain?

Apparently the controllers of the monetary-based economy think so, or else the pharmaceutical companies wouldn't be getting legal help from their lobbied reps in government, like the FDA consistently allowing toxic drugs into the public hands as fake cures.

So, if the people and planet rapers can get rich from their huge list of crimes, why shouldn't cannabis growers? Maybe if the goose got down from the throne of hypocrisy, the gander might have to accept the changes, and the price of cannabis would come down. But don't blame the greed on the growers, look a bit higher on the social scale first, and get a look at REAL greed.

END CANNABIS APARTHEID - REPEAL PROHIBITION NOW!

And it was good... and we liked it!

Recently, I paid $30 a POUND for "el cheapo" ginseng (under $2 per ounce). Ginseng is a perennial and takes years to harvest. You only get a few dry ounces of roots per plant. Cannabis is an easy to grow annual, can produce a pound (or more) per plant if grown under good outdoor conditions and is much less fussy about soil conditions than ginseng. The price of cannabis should be way less than Ginseng, but I don't see that happening, sadly.

I can go out today and spend upward of $500/bottle on Dom Perignion or Krug champagne. Or I can buy a bottle of cheap stuff for New Years at less than a tenth of that cost.

If the cannabis market were legalized, there should be a similar spread of prices for different grades of cannabis. Maybe $30 to $300 for an ounce, cheaper yet it it's medicine, maybe more expensive if it's the hand product of one of those top 24 growers in the world.

Cannabis is just a plant. But left to its own ways, the plant NEVER produces big beautiful buds. That takes a certain art and skill, and the artist should be properly compensated for his/her time and training.

IMHO.

JC

Don Peron costs considerable more than screw-top jug wine...real AAA cannabis is going to always cost more than swag, and there isn't but a couple of dozen people in the entire world who know how to mass produce AAA organically produced quality ensured cannabis.

By Stephen C. Webster

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

New legislation expected to be introduced this week would give federal medical marijuana defendants greater leverage in federal court by allowing attorneys to present evidence of medical use and compliance with local and state laws, a move prohibited under current law.

The "Truth in Trials Act," authored by Rep. Sam Farr (D-CA) and co-sponsored by 20 other Democrats and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), "enables individuals facing federal prosecution for marijuana-related offenses to provide evidence during trial that the activities they were engaged in were performed in compliance with their state’s duly-enacted medical marijuana laws," noted advocacy group Americans for Safe Access.

Sacramento, CA -- A San Francisco assemblyman will chair a legislative hearing in Sacramento Wednesday on the potential ramifications of legalizing marijuana in California.

The Assembly Committee on Public Safety will hear testimony on the social, economic and legal implications of decriminalizing marijuana and regulating its use in the same way that alcohol is regulated.

That idea has been formally proposed in a bill authored by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, the committee's chair. The committee will consider the bill itself at a separate hearing in January.

***

October 27, 2009

Sacramento, CA -- A San Francisco assemblyman will chair a legislative hearing in Sacramento Wednesday on the potential ramifications of legalizing marijuana in California.

The Assembly Committee on Public Safety will hear testimony on the social, economic and legal implications of decriminalizing marijuana and regulating its use in the same way that alcohol is regulated.

That idea has been formally proposed in a bill authored by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, the committee's chair. The committee will consider the bill itself at a separate hearing in January.

Wednesday's hearing is an informational session to review recent developments in the general field of marijuana legalization, Ammiano spokesman Quintin Mecke said.

Mecke cited a report issued by the state Board of Equalization in July that estimated that regulation and taxation of marijuana could bring California $1.4 billion annually in tax revenue.

Ammiano released a statement today calling the hearing a "long overdue discussion of how to best regulate and tax marijuana."

"The reality is clear -- the existing model of prohibition has failed, and across the country, the call for a new direction in our drug policy grows louder every day," Ammiano said.

Any change in California marijuana law would not affect federal laws criminalizing use of the drug, however.

The U.S. Justice Department last week announced a new policy that discourages federal prosecutions of patients and providers who comply with state laws, including in California, that allow medical marijuana use.

But Attorney General Eric Holder said federal prosecutors will continue to go after large-scale drug traffickers.

Copyright: 2009 by KTVU.com and Bay City News