Global Ganja Report

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.

Roger Christie, founder of the Hawaii Cannabis Ministry, was denied bail July 16 by US District Judge Alan Kay in Honolulu. Kay noted  allegations that Christie, 61, continued operating what prosecutors are calling his marijuana distribution ring from jail.

The American Civil Liberties Union and ACLU of Michigan, in partnership with the law firm of Daniel W. Grow, PLLC, has filed a lawsuit  against Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. and the manager of its Battle Creek store for wrongfully firing an employee for using medicinal marijuana in accordance with state law to treat the painful symptoms of an inoperable brain tumor and cancer.

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.

A New Jersey lawmaker who was instrumental in passage of a medical marijuana law back in January is now suggesting that the state's premier university become a national center for research into the plant and its beneficial properties.