San Jose mayor wants dispensaries to pay for dispensary vote
Medical cannabis advocates in San Jose gathered enough petition signatures to force a citywide vote on whether to repeal a controversial marijuana dispensary ordinance.
Now, the city’s mayor wants to raise taxes on local dispensaries to pay for the cost of the election.
In a memo to San Jose’s Rules and Open Government Committee, Mayor Chuck Reed proposed raising the city’s 7-percent gross sales tax on medical cannabis dispensaries and collectives to 10 percent. The proposed rate is twice what Oakland dispensaries pay, and would make San Jose’s marijuana business community one of the most heavily taxed in the state. Reed said a special election on the question of repealing the ordinance would cost taxpayers about $1 million.
Local medical marijuana activists responded to the proposal by saying they were willing to work with city officials on writing new dispensary regulations, but they expressed concern the hike would result in patients having to pay more for their medicine.
San Jose voters approved the 7-percent marijuana business tax last November. The levy has generated more than $2 million for the city.
NORML, ASA sue the Obama Administration
Attorneys for the nation’s largest cannabis and medical cannabis advocacy groups have fired off at least six lawsuits challenging the recently announced federal crackdown on California marijuana dispensaries.
Lawyers for the marijuana legalization group NORML filed lawsuits in early November against the Obama Administration on behalf of dispensaries in Northern California and other parts of the state. The suits, filed in all four of California’s federal courts, allege that U.S. officials sought to entrap dispensary operators by first promising a hands-off policy toward the operations and then threatening them—and any landlord that does business with them—with legal penalties.
The suits also claim that federal officials have made contradictory claims about the legal status of dispensaries, thus making it impossible for operators to follow federal policy.
NORML attorneys filed a separate request for a temporary restraining order to allow the dispensaries to remain open.
Obama gets an earful from activists in SF
If President Obama came to San Francisco hoping to bask in the love of the famously progressive city, he was in for a rude awakening.
Hundreds of jeering cannabis activists turned out at San Francisco’s W Hotel—where Obama was attending a fundraiser luncheon—to express their outrage over his flip-flopping on marijuana policy. The protesters joined other demonstrators—including antiwar and Occupy activists—to lament a long list of the president’s policy shifts. One group used a loudspeaker to play clips of Obama’s campaign promises during his 2008 election bid.
California’s medical marijuana community has been up in arms since October, when the state’s four U.S. attorneys announced a federal crackdown on for-profit dispensaries. The announcement came two years after the Obama Administration signaled it would take a hands-off approach to the compassionate-use industry.
The protesters were joined outside the W Hotel by state Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, who over the years introduced numerous bills to the legislature seeking to reform California’s marijuana laws.
THE NATION
Michigan AG: Police can’t return meds to owners
Michigan Atty. Gen. Bill Schuette, continuing his efforts to scale back the state’s medical marijuana program, has issued an opinion that police officers who return confiscated cannabis to patients run the risk of being charged with drug dealing.
The written opinion came in response to a question posed by a Republican state lawmaker, asking if Michigan’s compassionate-use law required law enforcement to return medical cannabis taken from patients who were arrested or detained and later released.
Schuette wrote: “It is impossible for state law enforcement officers to comply with their state law duty not to forfeit medical marijuana, and their federal law duty not to distribute or aid in the distribution of marijuana.” He added that the 2008 medical marijuana law must defer to federal law.
Before he became the state’s attorney general, Schuette led the ultimately unsuccessful campaign to defeat the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act—the 2008 ballot measure that set up legal protections for marijuana patients.
Head of New Mexico’s MMJ program abruptly quits
Medical cannabis activists in New Mexico are scratching their heads over the abrupt and mysterious resignation of the head of the state’s compassionate-use program.
Dominick Zurlo, who ran the program through the New Mexico Department of Health, apparently notified officials in late October of his decision to leave the post at the end of November, according to a Santa Fe New Mexican article. State officials would not say why Zurlo resigned, other than insist he resigned of his own accord.
The episode raised eyebrows among the state’s cannabis activists, who have long expressed concern that New Mexico’s new Republican governor, Susan Martinez, will move to get rid of the medical marijuana program started nearly five years ago under Democratic governor Bill Richardson. Martinez has publicly said she favors eliminating the program, but, according to the New Mexican, has so far taken no known steps to do so.
The Land of Enchantment is home to nearly 4,000 state-registered medical cannabis patients. Some 25 cannabis producers have been licensed by the state to grow and distribute marijuana.
THE WORLD
Formerly Red Czechs about to go green
Citizens of the 18-year-old Czech Republic may soon enjoy a freedom most Americans have never experienced: legal marijuana.
The former Soviet satellite announced it is drafting a bill aimed at legalizing the cultivation, possession and use of cannabis for medicinal purposes. The bill is scheduled to be ready for parliamentary consideration this month. If approved by both the legislative and executive branches of government, licensed growers will be allowed to sell marijuana to licensed distributors, who will then make it available to qualified patients for consumption. Patients would not be allowed to grow their own medicine.
Should the bill pass, the Czech Republican would become the first Central European nation and only former Soviet territory to permit the compassionate use of cannabis.
