A New York State Supreme Court judge out of Brooklyn is generating buzz because of his public appeal to legalize medical marijuana, as outlined in an opinion piece that he wrote forThe New York Times.

The plea from Judge Gustin Reichbach to the New York State Legislature, which is debating a medical marijuana bill, has prompted follow-up pieces in the New York Daily News, The American Bar Association Journal and Reuters, among other news organizations.

Support among New York State officials is mixed, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, has said the problems with medical marijuana outweigh the benefits, according toMetroFocus, a site produced by New York City-area public television stations.

Reichbach writes that three and one half years ago, on his 62nd birthday, doctors told him he had Stage 3 pancreatic cancer and that he had four to six months to live. His grueling treatment has included “chemotherapy, radiation hell and brutal surgery,” he writes. The cancer disappeared but returned, prompting doctors to prescribe a more aggressive course of chemotherapy.

Reichbach writes about the constant nausea and pain, about forcing down food, and about the side effects of the many drugs to treat the disease and ease the symptoms of chemotherapy, including loss of appetite, constipation, insomnia and raised glucose levels.

“Inhaled marijuana is the only medicine that gives me some relief from nausea, stimulates my appetite, and makes it easier to fall asleep,” Reichbach writes. “Rather than watch the agony of my suffering, friends have chosen, at some personal risk, to provide the substance. I find a few puffs of marijuana before dinner gives me ammunition in the battle to eat. A few more puffs at bedtime permits desperately needed sleep.”

Reichbach notes 16 states have legalized medical marijuana and that Connecticut and New York are weighing bills.

“I implore the governor and the Legislature of New York … to join the forward and humane thinking of 16 other states and pass the medical marijuana bill this year,” Reichbach writes. “Medical science has not yet found a cure, but it is barbaric to deny us (cancer patients) access to one substance that has proven to ameliorate our suffering.”

Among the voluminous evidence released Thursday in the shooting death of 17-year-old Florida high school student Trayvon Martin is a toxicology report showing that the teen had trace levels of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, in his blood and urine.

The evidence includes abundant new information: conflicting witness statements, an autopsy report showing that Martin, who was black, died from a single gunshot wound to the chest and medical records documenting that Hispanic neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, who will stand trial for second-degree murder, had a broken nose the day after Martin’s death. Yet the media is focusing on the marijuana findings.

That’s a mistake that only serves to distort an already contentious case. The levels of THC detected don’t reflect Martin’s character or even his state of mind the night he was shot. For one, they are so low as to almost certainly not be connected to recent intoxication:  1.5 nanograms of THC were found as well as 7.3 nanograms of THC-COOH, a metabolite of THC that can stay in the system for weeks after cannabis has been smoked. Immediately after inhaling, THC levels typically rise to 100 to 200 nanograms per milliter of blood, although there can be a great deal of variation.

(MORE: New Evidence — Trayvon Martin Had Drugs in His System)

“THC in blood or urine tells us nothing about the level of intoxication,” says Carl Hart, associate professor of psychology at Columbia University and author of the leading college textbook on drug use and behavior. “That would be like someone going to have a beer some evening, and when he goes to work the next day, you can find alcohol metabolites in his bodily fluids. That says nothing about his functioning.” (Full disclosure: Hart and I are working on a book project together).

Moreover, even if Martin had been stoned out of his mind, it wouldn’t predispose him to violence. “I have given hundreds of doses of marijuana to people in the lab, and no one has gotten violent ever and everyone has been able to respond to the situation in an appropriate manner, when given low or large doses and single or repeated doses,” Hart says.

The night of the killing, Zimmerman began following Martin, who had gone to a 7-Eleven to get Skittles and an Arizona iced tea during a break in the NBA All-Star game. Zimmerman told a 911 operator that he was worried about Martin because he “looks like he’s up to no good, or he’s on drugs.” He was informed that the police would handle the situation and that he should not take further action. Zimmerman didn’t heed that advice; an altercation ended with Zimmerman shooting Martin in what he says was self-defense. He was charged months after the Feb. 26th killing, following widespread public outrage over the perceived lack of an appropriate criminal justice response.

(MORE: Report Details Zimmerman’s Injuries on Night of Trayvon Martin Shooting)

“If people are trying to discount the acts of Zimmerman or excuse him because [Martin may have smoked] marijuana, they need to think about their own marijuana use and think about whether they ever get violent,” Hart says. “More than half the country has used marijuana and they really need to use some common sense.” The drug that has the strongest pharmacological link to violence is the legal one, alcohol.

And despite the fact that black youth are actually equally or even less likely to use — or sell — marijuana compared to whites, they are arrested for drug crimes at a rate ten times higher.  In New York City, a recent analysis found that 80% of those arrested for marijuana were black or Latino, despite whites outnumbering them by far.

(MORE: Study: Whites More Likely to Abuse Drugs Than Blacks)

As Michelle Alexander points out in her book, The New Jim Crow:  Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, our drug laws have become little more than a pretext for arresting, imprisoning and disenfranchising people of color in a way that is no longer permissible to do based on race alone.  Once someone is charged with a drug crime, liberty, property and voting rights can all be rescinded— in a manner that appears colorblind if you ignore the selective enforcement.

Says Hart: “If Trayvon was a white kid, we wouldn’t be here talking about drugs. George Zimmerman would have long been in jail.”

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2012/05/18/traces-of-marijuana-found-in-trayvon-martins-body-does-it-matter-2/#ixzz1vFsKX4IM

A young and politically connected businessman who sought fame as a “ganja-preneur” in Oakland’s medical marijuana industry was charged Thursday with 13 felonies for allegedly defrauding a city grant program that helps property owners pay for renovations.

Alameda County prosecutors charged Dhar Mann, 27, with stealing thousands of dollars from the city in 2008 and 2009. Mann was not arrested and is scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday.

His attorney, John Runfola, conceded that Mann “took shortcuts” in the grant program but said the charges were overblown.

Mann owns a property management firm, rents limousines and exotic cars, is a scion of one of the city’s biggest taxi companies, Friendly Cab, and launched the nation’s first chain of hydroponic superstores catering to the medical pot world.

Prosecutors said Mann, while operating MannEdge Properties of Oakland, defrauded city redevelopment programs that paid as much as half the cost of renovations of commercial buildings in certain areas.

Fake checks

Mann submitted copies of cashier’s checks made payable to contractors as proof he had made the renovations. But he actually paid the contractors much less and redeposited the checks in his own bank account, district attorney’s investigator Frank Moschetti wrote in a court filing.

The city paid Mann more than $44,000 based on fraudulent paperwork, Moschetti said.

Runfola said Mann had obtained grants for 12 projects. In total, the defense attorney said, Mann’s own spending exceeded the city’s matching grants.

“Discouraged by … the complex bureaucratic process and the struggling economy, my client admittedly took shortcuts to complete reimbursement for the development process,” Runfola said.

“It is unfortunate,” he added, “that the district attorney’s office is prosecuting this young businessman instead of continuing the dialogue.”

Warehouse scam

Prosecutors accused Mann of fraud in connection with four of his projects. In one case in October 2009, Moschetti wrote, Mann told the city he was going to pay $48,500 to Berumen Construction of Dublin for work on a warehouse where Mann later opened a hydroponics store.

Company owner Javier Berumen told investigators that Mann had later renegotiated the deal for $22,000.

In November 2009, Moschetti wrote, Mann sent documents to the city showing he had paid Berumen the full $48,500. Less than a month later, the investigator alleged, Mann said he had paid Berumen $14,700 more.

“In truth, Berumen never received those checks, nor did he do all the work indicated,” Moschetti said.

The investigator said Mann had forged Berumen’s signature on a document certifying that the contractor was paid. Moschetti said Berumen had reported the suspected fraud, allowing the city to withhold payment.

In all, prosecutors charged Mann with four counts of grand theft, two counts of attempted grand theft and six counts of forgery.

Prominent family

The charges mark an abrupt turn for Mann, who comes from an influential family and became a leading face of the medical marijuana industry.

Mann rode the publicity frenzy in 2010 surrounding a ballot initiative that would have legalized adult use of marijuana in California statewide. He was featured on the cover of Mother Jones magazine and in documentaries, and even scored a reality TV show.

He attracted the city’s top leaders to his events and helped host a fall 2010 fundraiser at his parents’ Dublin home for now-Gov. Jerry Brown. The two were pictured on his Facebook page drinking champagne.

Mann was also a vocal proponent of the Oakland City Council’s plan to license industrial-scale medical marijuana farming, and planned a 57,000-square-foot pot farm of his own. The council dropped the idea when law enforcement officials warned that it was illegal.

Ties to councilwoman

Mann has cultivated especially close ties to City Councilwoman Desley Brooks. In 2010, he opened a school, University of Cannabis, which trains people in how to operate in the medical-marijuana industry. Brooks was in the first class.

Mann registered the domain for Brooks’ 2010 re-election campaign, re-electbrooks.com. In addition, Brooks’ campaign ads ran atop Friendly Cab taxis. Such ads normally cost at least $500, according to the Friendly Cab website.

Brooks did not return calls Thursday. In an interview last year, she said she had paid for the ads herself but had failed to report it at the time.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/05/17/BAA11OJP6Q.DTL#ixzz1vFoWEVKX

Hopeful pot-shop owners will have until 5 p.m. on May 25 to submit the applications. Besides paying a $5,000 application fee, weed-trepeneurs must include a business plan and details on how they’ll control their inventory.See the state Department of Health Services checklist for applications by clicking here.

Under Arizona law, the stores will be able to grow and sell marijuana legally for a growing population of qualified patients, now topping 28,000. After the close of the application process, DHS will evaluate the submissions and make their approvals or denials. Some stores are expected to open by late summer, offering patients a wide range of cannabis strains, pot-infused foods, tinctures and other concentrates.

DHS has begun a Web page that shows the public where the potential shops can go. Rural Arizona appears to be getting a head start. The number is small enough so far to list them here:

Sedona, Williams (2), St. Johns, Yavapai County South/Bagdad, Prescott, Paradise Valley Village (These are the names of the “CHAAs” — the designated areas where dispensaries can go), Camelback East, Mesa West, South Mountain, Ajo, Tucson East Central

The first thing you probably noticed is what’s not on the list yet. A dispensary in Ajo before Tempe? Really?

In fact, officials expect most of the 100-plus CHAAs to be filled up with applications in the next 10 days, meaning it’s likely the Valley will have several dispensaries to choose from.

At the least, these first 15 pioneers demonstrate that the dispensary industry is far from dead, despite problems caused by the ongoing conflict between federal law and the wishes of state voters. Last month, a Maricopa County Superior Court judge allowed a Colorado dispensary to blow off a $500,000 loan from a Valley couple simply because marijuana is against federal law. That was just one unwelcome sign that spurred local lawyer and bloggerRichard Keyt to write a “warning” for people considering investing in or running a dispensary.

Though the medical-marijuana industry has more than its fair share of obstacles, it’s also necessary to serve the thousands of registered patients in the state — many with bona fide medical conditions they use the drug to treat — who can now possess marijuana legally under Arizona law.

A murder warrant has been issued in the disappearance of Sammy Mercado, the Sanger teenager who vanished after attempting to steal marijuana from an outdoor growing site last month, the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office said.

Sheriff’s investigators say Ernie Chanmany, 21, of Fresno is wanted on suspicion of murder, attempted murder and weapons charges.

Chanmany was identified three weeks ago as one of the suspects possibly involved in Mercado’s disappearance.

Mercado’s body has not been found, sheriff’s spokesman Chris Curtice said.

Mercado, 16, has been missing since April 12 when authorities say he and two friends attempted to steal marijuana from an outdoor grow at Annadale and Willow avenues.

Two men emerged from a hut, and one of them started shooting at Mercado. His two friends drove away, leaving the boy lying on the ground. When they returned, Mercado was gone, but evidence at the scene indicated the teenager might have been shot.

Chanmany is described as Laotian, 5 feet 6 inches tall and weighing 135 pounds. He has black hair and brown eyes and tattoos of a dragon on his left shoulder, “Chanmany” on his chest, and “01-01-10″ on his left wrist.

It’s not known where Chanmany is, but his last known address was on South Chance Avenue in Fresno. Chanmany has relatives in Las Vegas and Memphis, Tenn., Curtice said, but it’s not known if he is in either city.

Anyone with information on Chanmany’s whereabouts is asked to call the Sheriff’s Office at (559) 488-3111, or CrimeStoppers at (559) 498-STOP(7867).

The classification of cannabis as a schedule one narcotic is among the least defensible aspects of prohibition.

Dr. Jody Corey-Bloom, director of the Multiple Sclerosis Center at UC San Diego, recently helped run a study that provided multiple sclerosis patients with either a marijuana joint or a placebo that looked, smelled, and tasted like marijuana. After smoking whichever substance they were given, patients were tested to see if it reduced their muscle spasticity — an affliction, common to MS patients, that causes painful, uncontrollable spasms of the extremities. Spasticity was unaffected among the placebo patients but dropped 30 percent on average among the patients given real marijuana. The side effects? “Smoking caused fatigue and dizziness in some users,” says Reuters, “and slowed down people’s mental skills soon after they used marijuana.”

The UC San Diego study is just the latest to suggest that marijuana has some medical benefits. Sixteen states, thousands of doctors, and tens of thousands of sick people concur in that judgment. It is dramatized by the personal testimony of sick people who are offered much more powerful drugs, but nevertheless insistthat consuming marijuana was most effective at helping them. (Don’t miss the video at the top of this post, as powerful a testimonial for medical marijuana as you’ll find.)

Marijuana is nevertheless classified under the Controlled Substances Act as a Schedule One drug. Under the law, drugs placed in that category must meet all of the following criteria (emphasis added):

• The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse.
• The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.
• There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision.

Critics of the Obama Administration’s drug policy, myself included, have focused on the president’s broken promise about federal raids on medical marijuana dispensaries in jurisdictions where they’re legal. But an even less defensible aspect of Obama’s drug policy is how marijuana is scheduled.

As John Walker points out, the Controlled Substances Act gives the executive branch the power to unilaterally change a drug’s classification:

Obama can instruct the relevant agencies under him to take an honest look at the research and reschedule marijuana so it qualifies as having legitimate medical uses. The Obama administration could easily and justifiably move marijuana to, say, schedule III, which happens to be the same schedule that synthetic THC is in, making medical marijuana legal under federal law.

There would be nothing unusual, extraordinary or legally suspect about Obama doing this. The executive branch has often moved certain drugs to lower or higher schedules based on new data without Congressional involvement. In fact, multiple sitting governors have petitioned the Obama administration asking him to move marijuana to a lower schedule, so he should be aware of the flexible authority he has. Obama is not some hapless victim whose actions on this issue are constrained by congressional law. The truth is pretty much the exact opposite. Under current law Obama effectively has the power to unilaterally make medical marijuana legal.

His failure to do so is frustrating and to his discredit because it’s what the language of a law duly passed by a bygone Congress and signed by a past president demands. There just are accepted medical uses of marijuana today. Pretending otherwise is every bit as much an affront to science and empiricism as the most ill-informed denial of evolution or climate change.

Yet here is how the Obama White House touts its drug policy:

Congress also bears substantial responsibility for the anti-scientific, anti-empirical aspects of American drug policy. If Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are able to define the terms of the upcoming presidential election, this issue won’t come up. But voters have consistently shown interest in the subject when permitted to directly question politicians, and Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party nominee, is eager to challenge Obama and Romney on this issue given the chance. When opportunities for these challenges arise, the classification of marijuana is one of the most vulnerable parts of the status quo to attack.12 states have pending medical marijuana legislation.

On the show, the author mentioned that during the election FDR espoused more conservative policy regarding the Great Depression. He was opposed to the government going into debt in order to employ people or provide relief and he discussed a system with much more limited power to the federal government than he ultimately practiced. Hoover on the other hand had made his money as a brilliant mine engineer and was well known as a philanthropist and doer of good works administering famine relief in post-war Europe and Russia. Dickson did not venture into why FDR became more popular than Hoover even though he was espousing a more conservative policy. Jesserich missed the chance to ask him that really intriguing question.

Luckily for you I have studied this. At the Democratic Convention held in Jun of ’32 a coalition of anti-Prohibitionists (alcohol) comprised of cruise ship lines, resorts, distilleries, unions and social activists forced legalization of alcohol onto the party platform. FDR, the party’s candidate was opposed to this action. However, as soon as the platform was adopted the Democratic party, which had been trailing behind the Republicans, immediately surged and FDR began to campaign on the issue. Hoover was an adamant Prohibitionist. Shortly after FDR won the election the 18th Amendment (which created Prohibition) was nullified by the 21st Amendment.

Of course people are expecting my analogy to the Obama Administration which won on the perception of pro-marijuana policy– just like in 1932 Obama would not have won without either the money or votes without the support of marijuana proponents. Just like Gore who lost because of Florida and Obama who was threatened in Ohio in ’08, Obama once again is facing the swing vote conundrum in these key battlegrounds.

You have all heard different aspects of my Obama argument before so I am not going to cover that. Instead I am interested in Jesserich and Dickson’s collective amnesia about why Hoover lost. What it came down to were these two options: compassion for the unfortunate (Hoover policies) or the liberation of alcohol (FDR’s platform). THEY CHOSE THE LATTER. Mitch, weren’t you interested in what carried FDR into the white house? Dickson don’t you think it was important to report why the Democratic party won in 1932?

We know that in almost every state where a medical marijuana initiative has passed, it has passed with a greater percentage than the president the state’s delegates went to. (Montana: 2004, Michigan: 2008). Marijuana will always be more popular than any politician and that is what makes them so mad. You know, Mirror Mirror on the Wall? There are more pot smokers than there are Jews, Mormons, Catholics and Atheists and more people smoked pot last week than went to church. Although less would admit they smoked pot and more would claim to have gone to church. Progressive politicians like Obama ignore this sentiment at their own peril.

Here is what Russ says is the reason for shutting down the network:

We don’t have any money. There is no money at NORML. We don’t have enough to justify covering the expenses it takes to produce this network.

Russ goes on to tell about how National NORML pulled the plug after the network raised $5-6k to cover its own expenses and how they say they “just do not have it in the budget to earmark funding for any specific projects.” In the video below you can hear Russ tell the tale in his own words, and you can tell he is extremely pissed. I do not blame him, either.

Russ alludes to the real issue, which is the new Chairman of the Board, Paul Kuhn, does not see any real value in the network, and does not care for Russ being so “Radical.” He goes on to even state the jackass wants to “rechristen him Reasonable Russ.” Russ lets go a little and can be heard almost cringing as he talks about his “vision being too big” and how he “cannot have any of the money we raised.” I agree. Russ has all very valid points and has every right to be disgusted. Join the club.

National NORML is a joke at this point. I am not sure why they continue the charade and act as if they are actually accomplishing anything of value over there. On the reals, the NORML network was really the ONLY thing NORML had been doing that I saw to be of any value. Lord knows they are not organizing the community to make real impacts on policy. They are not winning the PR battle, with assholes like St. Pierre wandering around and damning the entire medical cannabis industry as evil profit-makers who are only about money. NORML has not made real and meaningful impacts to cannabis reform since the 70′s in my book….at least at the national level. Many of their local affiliates do most of the heavy lifting, while National NORML stands back and takes the credit.

I posed a challenge to Paul Kuhn the last time I mentioned the void of leadership at NORML during the WeedMaps debacle when he responded to a piece I wrote called Weedmaps Takes Over NORML. After Paul was kind enough to tell me my writing was not journalism, I challenged back that NORML was not really activism or reform, and begged him to show me a list of accomplishments for the last 40 years. I mean if you are running a policy reform group with almost a million dollar budget for 40 years, you should at least have 40 good accomplishments if you did one lousy thing a year….I responded:

So how exactly is it that you guys are “the major role players” in cannabis reform since 1995? I just do not see it. And after Keith ratted off Peter Bourne and blew any influence the organization had in National politics in the 70′s, the organization has done very little…..but you know that. I will be waiting for those accomplishments….

For the record, National NORML never responded with a list of accomplishments. Why? Because they have very little to show for the money they have gotten over the years. I hope Russ is right. I hope NORML doesn’t have any money. I hope whoever was funding that debacle took a step back and said “What the fuck are these losers doing with my cash?” 40 years of failure is not a great track record. No matter how much people like the NORML conference every year, at some point we have to realize as a community that these guys will not be taking us to the promised land.

Here was Kuhn’s bullshit defense of NORML then:

When I became active in NORML in 1971, support for legalization stood at 12%.  Now it stands at 50%.  I take pride knowing NORML played a major role, perhaps the major role, bringing this change about.  If it wasn’t NORML,  who was it?  NORML and the board have faithfully (not always perfectly, but faithfully) represented the interests of marijuana consumers for four decades.

Um….no asshole. Standing around the water cooler does not count as an accomplishment….Here was my response then, which I stand by today:

As for NORML’s history of reform, and your “if not them who?” remark…I will go with Jimmy Carter and Dennis Peron….If you notice the timeline you guys are touting as your work (link below) there was a small spike in 1976; and from 1977 to 1994 we actually LOST ground. This was when NORML was in control of the entire message and was the primary resource of cannabis reform policy and operations. In 1994-95 the number began to steadily rise and most of the real progress has been seen since Dennis began to widely publicize the medical cannabis issue then and Prop 215 was passed in 1996. Going from 12% to 24% over 25 years is no great feet. I would almost bet that had NORML done NOTHING from 1969-1994 simple attrition of an older generation would have seen the same increase in support.

I also think MPP was created around 1995 as well, and then the Gallup chart really jumps on 2004 after ASA was created….. Coincidence? Hardly.

I will be waiting for that list of accomplishments and simply pointing to a 40 year Gallup poll number is not an accomplishment by any stretch of the imagination. I will say your conference is normally informative and resourceful….and also kind of like Groundhog’s Day….Maybe after another 40 years we will actually have some serious reform to brag about….

I have given NORML plenty of breaks and nobody ever said you had done nothing. I just do not recall and major accomplishments in the actual reforming of laws…..That is not being mean. That is me asking for a list of NORML accomplishments for the last 40 years that have resulted in less arrests for cannabis consumers. I do not think that is too much to ask.

Walking Buster was the hardest part of watching his friend’s house. It meant he had to walk around the neighborhood with the dog, without making eye-contact with the neighbors.

“Just don’t offer any information,” Jake lectured. “I don’t even know their names,” he added. “And they don’t know mine, and that’s the way we all like it.”

Jake said there were a lot of grow houses here in Cutten. The town was an old, established neighborhood in Humboldt’s County seat, and still considered a family neighborhood with parks, a school and a town center.

This was just one of Jake’s houses and no one lived here. A four bedroom California ranch-style, with four grow rooms for the ladies and a false room in the garage for growing babies. Nick was just one of several house-sitters keeping watch at any given time.

Unlike other neighborhoods he worked in, you could still see the occasional mom walking with a stroller, and parents walking kids to school in the morning.

Nick quickly led the dog out of the cul-de-sac and onto the busier street of Walnut. “Less people wondering who I am on this street,” he thought, averting his eyes from a passing car.

School was letting out and he had a moment of dread as carpool mom’s filed past him in a sea of mini-vans. “Note to self: don’t walk dog during school rush.”

Back at the house Nick rinsed out Buster’s water dish and filled it up again, reminding himself to dump the humidifier in the big room.

“It was nice outside, eh boy?” he said, patting him on the head. If only he could open a window or the blinds for some light. But that wasn’t going to happen.

The list of have and have-nots lie face-up on the kitchen table. “No open curtains or shades, no open blinds. When opening front door, make sure hallway curtain is pulled shut. When opening grow room door, make sure other doors to outside doors are blocked…” The list went on and on.

The house was always too warm from the hot lights in the grow rooms, and no matter how many fans were on back there you could still smell the green of thriving plants. Well, thriving except for the occasional spider mite, but that’s another story altogether.

Nick propped pillows on the open futon in the living room and eyed the cover of an old North Coast Journal, “Best Weed Strains.”

“How would they know,” he laughed to himself. “Let’s see what they think…‘OG Kush’ and ‘Headband,’ well, I can agree with Headband – that’s stuff’s killer. Wonder if they even know what the ‘OG’ stands for. Obviously not, or they wouldn’t spread the lie of its So Cal creation. Ocean Grown in Petrolia, on Humboldt soil, assholes.

The futon felt hard as a rock. Jake said he could sleep in the bedroom, but the noise from the fans was deafening, so he slept on the couch in the living room. Not that he slept much. All of the work was done at night when the lights in the rooms were on.

Last night was exhausting, first pinching back larger plants, then spraying babies with Neem for the never ending mite situation, then fertilizing. Feeding the plants was a bear, as Jake’s notes were always sketchy and each set of plants had different requirements at various stages.

Nick stuck the pH tester into the runoff water in the drain dish under the more mature ladies and checked the meter. “Six-point-eight, time for vinegar,” he whispered to himself.

There were at least 15 gallon jugs of fertilizers to choose from in Mike’s garage and he used them all – Tiger Bloom, Big Bloom, Open Sesame, Beastie Bloom, Bio Bud, Bio Weed, you name it. He was always amazed at the amount of stuff needed to get a few pounds out of this small,
four-room grow.

The money was good at a hundred bucks a day, but his better side felt guilty about the waste, the runoff and the energy consumed. He read that grow houses use sixty percent more than the average household. And most of the growers he worked for didn’t recycle all those big, plastic jugs of “organic” fertilizer for fear of being found – either at curbside, or at the recycle yard.

Regulations are out the window too, with spraying without a mask or bending over in cramped spaces a given – with no complaint department, and no Christmas ham.

Yes, everything about this gig was bleak with no future, sans a bigger black market grow to tend.

Nick pulled the brochure from the Small Business Center out of his backpack. “Developing a Business Plan,” he read the first entry aloud.

Outside a car door slammed. The dog began to bark wildly. Inching the curtain away from the blinds, he carefully peeked out and held his breath.

Will the Rohrabacher-Hinchey-Farr Amendment End DEA Raids of State-Legal Dispensaries?

The Amendment reads:

None of the funds made available in this Act to the Department of Justice may be used, with respect to the States of Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington, to prevent such States from implementing their own State laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of medical marijuana.

If this amendment passes, I predict that the DEA will continue raiding state-legal marijuana dispensaries. The justification will be that while any state can “implement their own State laws” regarding medical marijuana the amendment does not (explicitly) prohibit the enforcement of federal law criminalizing all aspects of marijuana, and a court is likely to sanction the interpretation that a federal agency can enforce federal law without “preventing” states from “implementing” their own laws. Nor does the Rohrabacher-Hinchey-Farr Amendment provide an affirmative defense for defendants caught in the federal medical marijuana crackdown. In other words, the Rohrabacher-Hinchey-Farr Amendment provides only the barest of restrictions on the actual conduct of the Department of Justice and its subsidiary agencies towards medical marijuana. And before we finish beating this horse, I should note the Amendment does not reach non-DOJ agencies like the IRS, who are also currently part of the federal crackdown on medical marijuana.

And…this Amendment would also not prevent state or local agencies from enforcing the federal law at the behest of the Drug Enforcement Administration. How is this the case? Keep reading…

Beyond Appropriations: Asset Forfeiture Allows for Agency Independence

A basic, structural feature of Drug War funding are the federal asset forfeiture laws that drive hundreds of millions of dollars of seizure revenue into funds not appropriated by Congress but by the Department of Justice itself. I’ll excerpt this overview from the FY 2013 Performance Budget of the Asset Forfeiture Fund of the Department of Justice:

The Assets Forfeiture Fund was created by the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 (P.L. 98-473, dated October 12, 1984) to be a repository of the proceeds of forfeitures under any law enforced and administered by the Department of Justice (see 28 U.S.C. 524(c)).

The primary purpose of the Fund is to provide a stable source of resources to cover the costs of an effective Asset Forfeiture Program (AFP), including the costs of seizing, evaluating, inventorying, maintaining, protecting, advertising, forfeiting, and disposing of property seized for forfeiture. Prior to the creation of the Fund in 1985, the costs of these activities had to be diverted from agency operational funds. The more effective an agency was in seizing property, the greater the drain on its appropriated funds. The creation of the Fund is responsible, in large measure, for the growth in the Department’s forfeiture program over the past decade. A secondary benefit of an aggressive and well-managed forfeiture program is the production of surplus revenues to assist in financing important law enforcement programs. If the forfeiture program ceases to function effectively in its primary role, these surplus revenues will not be generated. The AFF’s mission has as its primary strategic goal to enforce Federal laws and prevent and reduce crime by disrupting, damaging and dismantling criminal organizations through the use of civil and criminal forfeiture. The program attempts to remove those assets that are essential to the operation of those criminal organizations and punish the criminals involved by denying them the use of the proceeds of their crimes.

Table 1 on page 2 displays the functional activities of the participating agencies. For the full names of the participating agencies, see footnote 1. These agencies investigate or prosecute criminal activity under statutes, such as the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations statute, the Controlled Substances Act, and the Money Laundering Control Act, or provide administrative support services to the program.

Note again that line from the Rohrabacher-Hinchey-Farr Amendment…”None of the funds made available in this Act”…that is, funds appropriated by Congress. But this ignores the river of non-appropriated forfeiture revenue controlled by the DOJ, implying that in the case that this law is read to substantially affect appropriations for federal marijuana law enforcement, DOJ agencies will just find their revenue from non-appropriated sources. Moreover, the federal Equitable Sharing program is slated to distribute close to half a billion dollars in forfeiture revenue to state and local law enforcement agencies participating in a federal seizure in 2013. Another $147 million in forfeiture revenue is budgeted for joint operations between state and federal law enforcement operations. In other words, the DEA and any other federal agency that still deems it worthwhile to enforce federal law against state-legal medical marijuana operations still has plenty of funding…and motive…to do so.

BOSTON — Voters in Massachusetts may get to decide by ballot question this November whether to legalize medical marijuana. It’s already legal in Vermont, Maine and Rhode Island.

But in Rhode Island there is continuing controversy over the law.

In that state, we met 62-year-old Ellen Lenox Smith of North Scituate. She’s one of more than 4,500 Rhode Island residents with state-issued medical marijuana cards.

Living With Pain

“I don’t think I know what life is like without pain,” Ellen says. “I live with it all the time.”

Ellen and Stuart Smith of North Scituate, R.I. (Lynn Jolicoeur for WBUR)

Short and thin, Ellen weighs just over 100 pounds and is wearing braces on her upper back and neck.

She suffers from Ehlers-Danlos, a rare disease that makes her collagen defective and in turn weakens her ligaments and tendons.

As she describes, “they’re like over-stretched elastic bands,” which eventually snap and fail to hold her bones in place. She’s had 20 surgeries to stabilize them, some of those operations involving tendons transplanted from cadavers.

With a doctor’s approval, Ellen manages her chronic pain with marijuana, which she grows, legally, at home.

Ellen and her husband were both so amazed at how marijuana helped Ellen manage her pain and sleep better that they decided to become state-authorized “caregivers.” That means each of them can grow marijuana for up to five other patients.

Ellen and Stuart cultivate marijuana plants at various stages of growth inside three big, well-lit cabinets in their basement.

The marijuana plants inside a small room they built in their basement are about 3 feet tall and are maintained with a system of fans, lights and a dehumidifier. They require daily labor.

I ask Ellen and Stuart if they feel uncomfortable about growing, or in Ellen’s case, using, a drug that for most of the population is illegal.

“This is keeping me alive, so I don’t have any guilt trip here,” Ellen says. “And we became instant advocates for it. I mean, I was scared to try it. I’m not going to lie to you. I hated it in college. I didn’t like the feeling of being stoned. I don’t get stoned as a patient. I get pain relief only.”

“Once you see what the drug does for people, and then you see what other drugs do to people, medicinal marijuana is so benign relative to Oxycontin, Percocet, all these other things,” Stuart says.

Dispensaries On Hold

Those who can’t grow, or don’t want to grow marijuana themselves might eventually turn to a dispensary, or “compassion center” as they’re called in Rhode Island — if the three centers authorized by state law get the final go-ahead.

The problem? U.S. Attorney for Rhode Island Peter Neronha has a big issue with those operations.

“I have some real concerns, in a state where I believe there is an appetite for drugs, illegal drugs, that the use of marijuana here could really explode,” Neronha says.

And Neronha has the authority to shut down compassion centers and prosecute those involved. That’s because although medical marijuana is legal on the state level, under federal law it’s not.

“The concern is not with individual patients and their individual caregivers,” Neronha says. “What the department does have concerns about are large, commercial grows of marijuana that are done for profit.”

Red Tape

Last year, Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee, who supports medical marijuana, stopped the centers from opening out of concern over what steps Neronha might take.

Seth Bock, director of the planned Greenleaf Compassionate Care Center in Portsmouth, R.I. (Lynn Jolicoeur for WBUR)

So now, Rhode Island lawmakers are working on a compromise amendment they hope will appease the federal government by further restricting the number of marijuana plants each center can grow — centers like the one Seth Bock plans to open.

Bock, who’s an acupuncturist with a master’s degree in herbal medicine, won a state permit to open the Greenleaf Compassionate Care Center in a Portsmouth, R.I., industrial park. He insists — no matter how many plants he’ll be allowed to grow there — it will be a nonprofit, as state law requires.

Bock says he’ll have to weigh the chance of being arrested by the feds against his desire to help patients.

“I have a long history of working intimately with people that have benefited from this,” Bock says. “You know, I’m not a pothead. I’m not interested in the marijuana culture. That’s just not my thing.”

Medicine, Not Pot

Back in North Scituate, Ellen and Stuart Smith grow an organic garden, sell eggs from their free-range chickens to Whole Foods and have no plans to stop growing medical marijuana.

Ellen has a half dozen jars filled with pot — which she never calls pot, only medicine. And like many other patients, she says she does not smoke it. Rather, she heats some of hers with olive oil, strains it, and then swallows it about a tablespoon at a time.

“This is a night-time sleeping medication for me,” Ellen says, “and I have found ingesting it this way, getting it into my system, it carries me through most of the day.”

And though she’s seen news accounts of some registered caregivers and patients selling marijuana illicitly, Ellen insists that no one other than patients has ever come to her or her husband asking to buy the drug.

“We want to try to continue to keep this program as clean as we can and eliminate those people that are abusing it, because that’s not what it’s here for,” Ellen says. “We’ve met the real people that need this, and they have a right to dignity and quality of life, and this is giving it to them.”

Mass. Ballot Initiative 

The U.S. attorney and Rhode Island State Police tell us they have made some arrests of people involved in the program, as have local police in Rhode Island. Rhode Island does not keep statistics tracking those arrests.

Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley’s office has certified the medical marijuana ballot initiative here in Massachusetts. Backers now have to gather about 11,000 signatures to get it on the November ballot. Coakley is not taking a public position on the issue.

HARTFORD, Conn. — Connecticut lawmakers’ approval of the use of medical marijuana includes strict regulations for the cultivation and distribution in an attempt to avoid problems other states have run into when legalizing the plant for medical use.

The bill, passed early Saturday by the state Senate, is headed to Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, who said in a statement that he plans to sign it, as he believes the law would “avoid the problems encountered in some other states.”

Sixteen states and the District of Columbia have laws authorizing the use of medical marijuana. Since California passed the country’s first such law in 1996, states have struggled with disorganization and clashes with the federal government, which considers the drug illegal and of no medicinal value.

“Everything from California back is trying to get away from chaos,” said Allen St. Pierre, the executive director of the National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws.

Advocates say the Connecticut proposal goes further than any other state in regulating the drug.

Under the legislation, marijuana would be sold in multiple forms at dispensaries, which must have a licensed pharmacist on staff. It would be marketed only to patients authorized to use it. The measure also outlines diseases that would be treated by the drug, establishes a registry for patients and caregivers and restricts cultivating the plant to growers with permits.

“Experience has shown that having statewide structures in place makes it easier for everyone to understand what the rules really are,” said Alan Shackelford, who serves on a state advisory work group for medical marijuana in Colorado and helped advise Connecticut lawmakers on their proposal.

Opponents in Connecticut, however, point to a letter from U.S. Attorney David Fein, who wrote that while the Department of Justice would not go after seriously ill patients who use the illegal drug, federal laws would be enforced against those who manufacture and distribute it.

“The violation of a federal law to me is a big stop sign and I just can’t bring myself to go through it,” said Rep. Steven Mikutel, a Griswold Democrat who voted against the legislation when it passed the state House.

In addition to federal efforts to shut down dispensaries in California and, to a lesser extent, Colorado, problems with regulation have arisen in states where the drug was legalized through ballot initiatives and the system was implemented without regulations in place, advocates say. Likewise, some states don’t allow medical marijuana dispensaries and patients are left to grow their own.

Because of this, several states have been taking steps to strengthen regulations.

Colorado imposed tight regulation and state government control over dispensaries in 2010. New Jersey and Delaware also have passed laws to strictly regulate medical marijuana.

California state Sen. Mark Leno said he was working to enact legislation that would further clarify that care providers be exempt from prosecution for providing the drug to patients.

But Leno said he is uncertain how states’ attempts to improve regulation will succeed in reducing federal scrutiny. He points to small patient-owned and patient-run dispensaries in his district that the federal government has shut down.

Allison Price, a DOJ spokeswoman, said in a statement the department “is focusing its limited resources on significant drug traffickers, not seriously ill individuals who are in compliance with applicable state medical marijuana statues.”

So whenever we went back, we always asked if we were going to stay at the the Howard Johnson’s.

By the early ’70s, the Howard Johnson’s in Times Square had became a favorite hangout. The all-you-can-eat fried chicken or clams pulled us in. And for dessert, you could choose from 28 different flavors of ice cream.

I bring this all up because of the latest episode of Mad Men (“Faraway Places”). It’s an extraordinary episode with Roger and his wife Jane trying LSD, Peggy smoking pot with a stranger in a movie theater, and Don and Megan have a marriage-threatening argument. While the acid subplot may draw more attention – three couples dose in a Manhattan apartment – I keep flashing back to Don’s obsession with HoJo’s.

After the melodramatic tripping session during which Roger decides it’s time to dissolve his marriage, Don (above) invites Megan to take a drive to the brand-new Howard Johnson’s just north of the city. Confused about her work relationship with Don, Megan rains on his parade and even has the nerve to tell the waitress that she doesn’t like their signature orange sherbert.

It’s 1966, so Mad Men is becoming more psychedelic, with drugs and garish colors like those displayed at Howard Johnson’s getting more attention.

As for Peggy, she’s the office pothead. Taking in Born Free after a tough pitch meeting, Peggy smells a joint being puffed behind her by the handsome male stranger. He passes it to Peggy and is quick to take a seat next to her and slip his hand up her dress. Peggy’s response is liberated to say the least.

Though couples LSD therapy may have pushed Roger and Jane to the edge, Don and Megan better try it before their marriage does fall apart (and LSD is prohibited).

Now about that orange sherbet…

Also see:
Mad Men Season 5 on AMC
More Blogs by Steve Bloom
More CelebStoner Reviews
More CelebStoner News

I am not writing this because I have an answer to that question. Far from it. I am writing this to try and flush an answer out of my spinning brain.

I have never understood this reality. Medical cannabis seems like a no brainer to me. I just do not get living in a world where other humans would deprive sick people of a safe and effective plant to serve some strange ideology, or to create wealth from its prohibition. When I stood in Santa Cruz in 1996 collecting signatures for Prop. 215, I never imagined over 16 years later we would still be fighting this battle. I have grown old watching patients and providers struggle to find their place in this society. The evolution of the medical cannabis movement has been astonishing at times, but more so, it has been plain weird.

I cannot wrap my head around the concept that because Nixon, the Nation’s most corrupt President, ignored reports that warned of the dangers of prohibition and decided to outlaw weed through the Controlled Substances Act, that some how we are stil trying to reverse that insane decision decades later. What is more appalling is the real lack of a conscious and meaningful conversation on the obvious failures that cannabis prohibition has resulted in.

Law enforcement, elected officials, community leaders, and every citizen should be very concerned with the incredible harm cannabis prohibition has created in our communities. Our world is far less safe as a result of the lucrative black market we have created for illegal weed. We have made criminals out of millions of our friends and neighbors in what we can only call a huge failure by any metric used. We lock up mostly poor people and use “the system” to create income for corporations who have bought our prison system, forced us to be tested regularly for drug use, and who have law enforcement in their pocket. It is an absurd police state we live in. When Nixon first outlawed weed it was the conservatives who thought he was nuts for telling people what they could and could not do to their own bodies. But as these assholes turned archaic laws into huge profits, their understanding of liberty changed and now they only believe in those freedoms for certain issues…like education, healthcare, and finances. On those issues, fuck it…you are on your own. Too much big government, ya’ know? But not for weed…for weed we have all the government you need.

So that is where we are as a society. In some fucking alternate universe where grown ass people are afraid to have an open and honest discussion about weed because we have brainwashed people for decades to think a safe, enjoyable, and helpful plant is evil. Even the rational people who know this is not true do not want to get accused of being a dope lover or, God forbid, a Liberal. We continue to dance the medical weed dance and allow for the “who is sick enough for weed” game to go on. Instead of demanding our society just stop the madness and cut the shit, we allow the squeaky wheels to get the oil, and the prohibitionists have created quite the machine to ensure that their profits from making criminals out of innocent people does not go away. It sucks.

So the “what now?” question is a difficult one to answer. I can assure you the answer is not to run and hide. I can assure you the right thing to do is not to start stuffing the mattress and heading for the hills. It is time for our community to double down on the progress we have made and ensure that the future is not one where we continue to see almost a million people a year in trouble for weed. We must put aside our internal issues to rise up and ready for battle. We continue to see support swell for cannabis freedom and we must not let the continued attacks by those who make their living off weed being illegal stop us. We are the many. We are mighty. Weed is bigger than all of us.

Understand that I, or anyone else, can not truly answer the “what now?” question. Fate is seldom wrong. We all have a responsibility and a duty to work to create the society we want to live in. I do not want to live in a society where we lock up 25% of the world’s prison population, but only have 5% of the actual population. I do not want to live in a society where we allow people to suffer and where we compromise people’s health for money. I do not want to live in a world where we authorize militarized local police forces to violate people’s right to privacy because they smell weed. My WHAT NOW has a lot to do with changing those things, and making our community one where we do not continue to oppress people for their personbal choices. I hope you will join me.

It was one of those small, curious stories that make it into almost every global news outlet: To fight a national economic crisis bringing hardship and crushing debt to a tiny municipality, the government and residents of Rasquera, Spain, in February unveiled plans to start growing marijuana. Then in April the town council approved the measure, followed by a successful referendum of the 1,000 inhabitants.

You can guess the rest: The news spread like wildfire and the previously unknown Spanish hamlet southwest of Barcelona became the center of nationwide debate, tourist interest and international curiosity. Journalists from around the world flooded its narrow, provincial streets, tourists to Catalonia put it on their itinerary, and the center-right Spanish government issued solemn statements condemning the move as illegal.

The idea is to rent seven hectares (17 acres) of  the town’s land to the Barcelona Private Consumption Cannabis Association (ABCDA ) to grow marijuana for the “recreational and therapeutic use” of its 5,000 members. The plan would provide 40 jobs and bring up to €1.3 million to the town in two years – enough to pay off all its debts.

Spanish law permits the cultivation of marijuana in small amounts for private use. As a consequence, in recent years numerous cannabis clubs like ABCDA have sprung up across the country, with courts accepting the argument that small plantations providing marijuana for a limited number of people are not illegal. The rules are strict: Each member must calculate and order just the amount of pot he or she needs for a few months. The club may then plant only enough to meet that specific demand.

Rasquera’s plan has received so much attention because of the potential example it sets for other villages and towns in Spain and other European countries suffering from staggering unemployment, deep recession, and decline as their youth leave in search of work.  It also has revived the old debate over legalization of cannabis as a response to the reality of illegal drug traffic and widespread use – and as a creative, if controversial, municipal strategy in times of economic crisis.

Rasquera’s dilemma is heard in many other Western countries, where the popularity of cannabis intersects with the grey zone of illegality – for instance in the United States where, despite its prohibition it can be grown and sold for medical use in 17 states (‘medical use’ being oosely defined and controlled in California, for example).

Spain’s position is somewhat unique. Its geographical situation makes it Europe’s port of entry for Moroccan hashish, as well as one of the E.U.’s prime marijuana growers. The economics are irresistible: One gram sells for about €6, while one cannabis plant can produce €1,000 of product. As a result, pot growing inside and outside in houses, gardens. warehouses and farms around Spain has exploded over the past few years.

In that context, Rasquera’s plan seems neither unreasonable nor farfetched.

Nevertheless, the proposal won’t pass the national test. The central government has already threatened to jail anyone found growing marijuana plants in large amounts.

At least the 15 minutes of fame haven’t hurt. “The stores have had new clients,” one local told a Spanish newspaper. “The bread and olives have been sold out every day.” And the newly-attracted tourists have discovered Rasquera’s non-narcotic charms: beautiful scenery, excellent goat cheese and authentic, artisan olive oil.

Unsuccessful applicants to the District’s medical marijuana program are asking the courts to force the reconsideration of their submissions, claiming they were rejected by a review panel despite meeting or exceeding stated criteria.

Three firms filed a total of five civil complaints to contest the way officials, led by the D.C. Department of Health, scored and rejected their applications to open a cultivation center to grow the drug or a dispensary center to dole it out to qualified patients, according to the D.C. Office of the Attorney General.

A spokesman for the office said each of the petitions “raise the same allegations, namely that the scoring of their applications was inappropriate.”

Among them is plaintiff Dr. Michael D. Duplessie, of Bethesda, who filed a civil complaint last week in D.C. Superior Court claiming the scoring “has been done improperly and not in accordance with relevant laws and regulations.” He wants the court to send his applications from his firm, the Health Company, back to the health department and appoint an “independent, third-party observer” to oversee its second review.

City health officials are getting ready to begin the medical marijuana program in earnest this summer, more than a decade after D.C. residents approved it through a referendum. Since the issue passed, the program has been delayed by congressional interference and the complex rule-making process. The city has tread carefully in rolling out the program, hoping to avoid the regulatory pitfalls that roiled programs in other states. It also requires applicants to acknowledge that growing and selling marijuana is technically illegal under federal law and they cannot hold the city liable for prosecution.

In late March, the health department notified six applicants they can register to grow medical marijuana in the city. Five of them will be located in Ward 5. A sixth – Phyto Management – has been forced to move from its Ward 7 site because the D.C. Council passed legislation by council member Yvette M. Alexander, Ward 7 Democrat, that prohibits medical marijuana business in “retail priority areas.” Ms. Alexander and the company’s principal have recently said they are working to find a new spot for the cultivation center.

Health officials are scheduled to approve up to five dispensaries – where the drug is doled out to patients – on June 25.

Dr. Duplessie’s attorney, Jason D. Klein, said he filed a pair of “almost identical” civil complaints for another hopeful firm, Compassion Centers of America, after it unsuccessfully applied to open both a cultivation center and a dispensary in the District.

A third firm, the Free World Remedy led by Jonathan Marlow, also has sought help from the courts, according to the attorney general’s office.

In an email, Dr. Duplessie said he does not agree with the health department’s assessment of his firm’s financial status and site plans. He also disputes the department’s criticism of his business partners’ level of experience, citing their backgrounds in banking and federal law enforcement.

“It appears that the D.C. Board of Health has either not read my application or the playing field is not level,” Dr. Duplessie said. “I think the process is beyond flawed.”

Dr. Duplessie, in his email, touted his experience as an eye-care professional and said 100 percent of his profit from the medical marijuana business “was to be devoted to eye charity.”

In an interview Friday, Mr. Klein said city health officials need to defend their decision beyond saying “it’s just our right.” He also argued the application process has lacked transparency and communication between the department and applicants.

“We’re sort of shooting bullets in the dark here,” he said.

VALLEJO, Calif. — On a suburban block with six family homes, palm trees and views of the surrounding green hills, nothing at 110 Windsor Court stood out. Its occupants, who had moved into the foreclosed house a few years earlier, were quiet types.

On a street in Vallejo, a burned-out house that had been used to grow marijuana. Unsafe wiring for lights for the plants often causes such fires.

Until the noise from falling roof tiles alerted neighbors to a fire there one recent morning, and Stephen Snowden, who lived nearby, banged on the front door. Nobody was inside, but firefighters discovered that the house had been converted into a type of illegal business found increasingly in suburbia: a marijuana grow house.

The entire second floor of the five-bedroom, 2,251-square-foot home, as well as parts of the first floor, was used to cultivate marijuana plants.

“They just blended right in,” Mr. Snowden said of the residents. “They left early for work and came back late in the afternoon. They mowed their lawn, took out their trash and got groceries. There was never any extra foot traffic.”

Organized marijuana growers are shifting to the suburbs from rural and commercial areas, helped by a housing crisis that created a glut of affordable, spacious houses and a stream of new residents to previously more stable communities. Houses that sold for $1 million before the crisis have been turned into grow houses, equipped with the high-intensity lights, water and air-filtering systems necessary to produce potent, high-quality marijuana.

Many grow houses go unnoticed, even by next-door neighbors, until there is a fire, typically caused by unsafe electrical wiring. Local police forces, especially in California, which has permitted the limited cultivation of marijuana for medical use since 1996, have stopped seeking out grow houses.

Rusty Payne, a spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration, said crime syndicates used to concentrate production in low-income areas. But now, he said, “you’re hearing more and more in middle-class, upper-middle-class, high-end neighborhoods.”

“They either buy them or rent them,” Mr. Payne said. “They’re buying them in places like Northern California, where the real estate market’s really taken a turn for the worse.”

In Northern California, grow houses have been discovered in older suburbs hit hard byforeclosures, including Vallejo, a city 25 miles northeast of San Francisco that declared bankruptcy in 2008. They have also been found in newer communities that mushroomed during the housing boom, like Elk Grove, near Sacramento.

“They were located in suburbia, pretty much,” Officer Christopher Trim, a spokesman for the Elk Grove Police Department, said of the grow houses discovered there. “Residential streets, kids playing outside and going to soccer practice, folks going to and coming from their work.”

California accounted for more than 70 percent of all marijuana plants confiscated nationwide in 2010, the last year for which statistics are available, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. The authorities seized 188,297 plants at 791 indoor grow houses, compared with 107,047 plants at 572 locations in 2005.

Vietnamese-American crime groups have specialized in running grow houses, which produce marijuana that can fetch up to twice the price of the outdoor kind, Mr. Payne said.

Law enforcement officials, especially in local forces that have been downsized during the financial crisis, say they lack the resources to go after grow houses. They also say that California laws have created an environment tolerant of marijuana cultivation in general.

“Ten years ago if there was a grow house, we’d seize all their equipment and lamps, and they would be prosecuted,” said Sgt. Jeff Bassett, a spokesman for the Vallejo Police Department. “Now the chances of being caught, or of being prosecuted if you are, are substantially less than they were 10 years ago.”

No one has been arrested in connection with the grow house at 110 Windsor Court or at another previously foreclosed house that also caught fire in Vallejo recently, the police said. Firefighters responding to that house — a one-story, 1,304-square-foot house on Evelyn Circle — quickly realized that it was a grow house.

Like other neighbors, Tim Langford, 54, said nothing aroused suspicion about the occupants, who had been spotted at the house for a couple of years. But Mr. Langford said the housing crisis had weakened the social ties on his block.

“You have a much more transient population now, so you mind your business,” he said. “It’s not the day when you take an apple pie over and say, ‘Hi, I’m your neighbor.’ ”

The housing crisis also led to the emergence of grow houses in new real estate developments, creating lasting problems for those communities.

In Pittsburg, a city about 40 miles northeast of San Francisco, marijuana growers occupied a five-bedroom house on Pilar Ridge Drive, across the street from an elementary school. The house, part of a sprawling, luxurious community that was built about a decade ago, sold for nearly $1 million in 2007 but went into foreclosure three years later.

In June 2010, acting on a tip from a neighbor, the police found that the house had been transformed into a grow house. Last fall, Stephen Tucker and his wife, Tomasita, bought the property from a bank for $363,000, Mr. Tucker said, after looking at hundreds of other places.

“My daughter came to this house, and she’s the one who said, ‘That’s the house I want,’ ” Mr. Tucker, 51, said of his daughter Veronica, 8.

Mr. Tucker said he learned after the purchase that the house had been used as a grow house. He began discovering mold and other damage under the new carpet and in the drywall.

Not all stories involving foreclosed houses and grow houses have ended unhappily, though. Mr. Snowden, who banged on the door of the house on fire, said that despite the discovery of a grow house on his block, he did not regret moving there three years ago. In 2009, he purchased his house — which had been foreclosed the year before — for roughly 60 percent of what it had sold for in 2004.

“It was cheaper than renting,” he said. “This is actually a pretty quiet, decent neighborhood.”

ARCATA – The pot market is crashing in California’s legendary Emerald Triangle.

The closure of hundreds of marijuana dispensaries across California and a federal crackdown on licensing programs for medical pot cultivation are leaving growers in the North Coast redwoods with harvested stashes many can’t sell.

Some pot cultivators who sought legitimacy through the medical market are fleeing to the black market. So much cheap weed is getting dumped in the college town of Arcata, some local dispensaries say business is down 75 percent. Even the region’s itinerant and colorful bud trimmers are going broke.

By the scores, people have long trekked into the marijuana fields and indoor greenhouses of Humboldt, Mendocino and Trinity counties. Workers used to earn as much as $200 a pound meticulously cutting leaves from marijuana buds, prepping them for display at dispensaries or for sale in a purely illicit market.

These days, a 47-year-old man called Mover, a dreadlocked migrant from Ohio who is a fixture in downtown Arcata, says the tedious work isn’t worth his trouble as the per-pound pay rate has dropped to $100 or often just a few nuggets of pot.

“I got paid in weed,” Mover, who refused to give his real name, said of his last trimming job. “It’s worthless here. You can’t give it away. And I’m not going to transport anything. I’m too old, and I don’t want to go to jail.”

The region’s pot pilgrimage had accelerated in recent years as people were drawn by local cannabis traditions and dreams of cashing in on the medical marijuana market. They planted marijuana in the backwoods and in rewired houses with high-intensity grow lights.

But the saturation of pot growers set off a price tumble by 2010, as a pound of prime Emerald weed slipped from $5,000 to the $3,000 range for marijuana grown indoors and to the $2,000 range for product grown outdoors. Lately, prices are in free-fall.

“Last I heard, a pound of marijuana is $800 for outdoor grown,” said Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman in Ukiah. “That’s plummeting. You might do better with tomatoes.”

The marijuana meltdown could have major regional effects. In Humboldt County, a recent study by a local banker estimated marijuana accounts for more than a fourth of the county’s $1.6 billion economy.

In recent years, many locals already thought the influx of pot growers exceeded demand in the state’s sanctioned medical pot market. When U.S. authorities in October announced a crackdown on medical marijuana businesses that they contended were profiteering in violation of federal and state laws, it darkened growers’ fears.

Raid heightened fears

Lelehnia Du Bois, 41, was one who thought she had found a safe niche. A former fashion model in Southern California, Du Bois started growing marijuana indoors in Eureka after rupturing her spinal cord. She supplied her unused home-grown “Sweet God” to a Eureka dispensary, earning $5,000 a year on top of her disability income, she said.

Du Bois had spent her childhood in Trinity County and remembers growers having “a big potluck” meal after the outdoor marijuana harvest. She said the weed culture changed markedly as indoor growers in Arcata and Eureka competed for access to the medical market – and many went into illegal trafficking.

As indoor pot prices dropped as low as $1,800 a pound, “People started taking risks. All of a sudden, people were not farmers. They were drug dealers,” Du Bois said.

Last year, months before federal prosecutors began targeting California dispensaries for closure, Du Bois got out of the pot business and moved out of Humboldt County. She now lives in Utah.

At Arcata’s Humboldt Patient Resource Center, a dispensary that grows its marijuana on site, cultivator Kevin Jodry said fewer people are coming to buy seedlings for this year’s outdoor marijuana crop or quarterly indoor yields.

“Many people distributing in the medical marijuana market didn’t get into it for the risk situation,” he said. “The people who were formerly in the black market were able to stay functioning. People who were not criminals can’t move their product.”

Pressures on growers intensified after federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents raided a marijuana farm that had been licensed by Mendocino County and was considered a model for establishing local compliance rules for medical cultivation.

The raid prompted Mendocino County supervisors in January to rescind a program that allowed the sheriff to enforce a 99-plant limit on pot farms by attaching $50 zip ties to each plant and inspecting the gardens of nearly 100 growers who provided documentation to show they were serving medical pot users.

The program, which also offered cheaper tags for smaller quantity growers, brought in $630,000 in county fees in two years.

Sheriff Allman said it allowed his department – which spends 30 percent of its $23 million budget on pot enforcement – to target major cultivators who he says are illegally growing thousands of plants, diverting water and fouling the environment.

Humboldt County had sought to put a similar program in place last summer as District Attorney Paul Gallegos called for licensing to ensure “sustainable and responsible cultivation.” After the federal government launched its crackdown, supervisors tabled work on the plan, and Eureka and Arcata placed moratoriums on new dispensaries.

Outdoor growers struggle

Among the most worried cultivators are the outdoor growers who increasingly struggle to compete with the exotic strains produced in climate-controlled indoor grow rooms.

Alison Sterling Nichols, executive director of the Emerald Growers Association, which seeks to protect the Emerald Triangle’s sun-grown pot traditions, said outdoor growers were most directly affected by the collapse of local licensing programs. The group backs legislation to regulate medical marijuana statewide as long as it would preserve growers’ ability to supply dispensaries.

“People shouldn’t have to sleep with one eye open,” Sterling Nichols said. “People should be able to move from the black market into the light. We haven’t been able to bridge that gap. We have hills of healthy outdoor product we can’t take to the market.”

Meanwhile, many worry that the Emerald Triangle will go back to being the hub of California’s illegal marijuana trade.

Last month, authorities in Pennsylvania arrested the former operator of a Humboldt dispensary for allegedly shipping more than 25 pounds of pot in heat-sealed packets to a home he was visiting. State officers in Nebraska also stopped a Mendocino County man and a companion with 62 pounds of weed stuffed in duffel bags.

On consecutive days in late February, Humboldt authorities conducted two separate raids on growers suspected of criminal distribution, seizing nearly $700,000 in cash and 7,000 plants.

In Mendocino, Allman said his officers last year eradicated 642,000 plants, some loosely tied to Mexican trafficking networks but most involving Californians or residents from other states who secretly grew on public lands and private property.

With a federal crackdown and a shrinking market, Allman said, many out-of-towners may leave and “everything is going to go underground.”

Smoking marijuana was ‘part of the culture’ at classic children’s TV programme Play School, according to a former presenter.

Rick Jones revealed the scale of drug use at the show, following claims by ex-presenter Johnny Ball that Jones and another presenter, Lionel Morton, were ‘stoned out of their minds’ before filming a nativity scene during the 1970s.

Jones, now 75, who went on to present children’s show Fingerbobs, told The Sun said that the drug was ‘part of the culture, definitely’, adding: ‘Marijuana was like cornflakes.

‘The BBC was really liberal. Once you were in all laws were forgotten. I had a wonderful time.’

He said around ‘half a dozen’ were doing it – and that toys on the programme, Humpty and Hamble, were even put in sexual poses on the set.

Earlier this week, Ball revealed the use of marijuana behind the scenes of the seemingly-innocent show, when he told a BBC4 documentary: ‘There was Rick Jones, Lionel Morton and myself. They got stoned on the biggest joint you’ve ever seen – in the studio.

‘We were in silhouette as the three shepherds with our crooks. They were absolutely stoned out of their minds. So when we recorded, who cocked his lines up? Me.’

Ball, 73, father of TV and radio presenter Zoe, insisted he had not used the drug on air himself as it would have left him incapable of working – a claim supported by Jones, who told the newspaper Ball was a ‘good egg, but he was too dull to do it’.

Play School ran from 1964 until 1988 and its presenters also included Brian Cant, Floella Benjamin and Derek Griffiths.

Revelations: Childrens’ television presenter Johnny Ball has told how his co hosts on Play School got stoned before one scene

Stoned: Johnny Ball said his co presenters on Play School, Rick Jones and Lionel Morton, has just smoked an enormous joint before this scene

On a high: Presenter Lionel Morton smoked a joint before filming one of the scenes from Play School

Each episode included a film about the outside world to which access was gained through one of three windows, with viewers asked to guess which it would be: round, square, or arched.

The documentary, Lights! Camera! Action! Tales of Television Centre, lays bare the liberal atmosphere at the BBC in the late 1960s and 1970s.

Presenter Joan Bakewell is also seen confessing that many of the pop groups of the time were stoned when they appeared on shows.

At times the aroma was so strong in the corridors of the BBC’s West London studios that Sir David Attenborough, who was controller of the BBC2 at the time, complained about it.

He recalls on the programme how he told staff: ‘Look, please don’t smoke that stuff openly so we can all smell it. Just be sensible.’

There are also revelations about the rampant antics of stars who used dressing rooms and green rooms for sex because ‘nobody cared if you did’.

Former Doctor Who actress Katy Manning, who played Jo Grant, says: ‘People were bonking all over the BBC. Everybody was doing it on the premises.’

Former Blue Peter and Going Live presenter  Sarah Greene confesses that she enjoyed such trysts with Radio 1 DJ Mike Smith, whom she went on to marry.

The show features interviews with BBC staff and personalities including Sir Terry Wogan, Jeremy Paxman and Penelope Keith along with archive clips from hit shows such as Till Death Us Do Part, Top of the Pops and Doctor Who.

Barry Norman also gives an interview for the programme in which he reveals he was almost fired because a corporation executive thought he was wearing a wig on screen and took a dislike to it.

He said: ‘I wasn’t actually wearing a wig, I was just having a bad hair day.’  Lights! Camera! Action! Tales of Television Centre will air on BBC4 on May 17.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2139887/Marijuana-like-cornflakes-Former-presenter-Rick-Jones-reveals-drug-taking-rife-childrens-TV-favourite-Play-School.html#ixzz1u1e00ZS4

Under forfeiture laws, property owners may face loss of properties where storefront and growing operations are located.

In their stepped-up battle against local marijuana dispensaries and growing operations that supply them, federal authorities are employing a powerful weapon: asset-forfeiture laws.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office this week filed legal complaints for forfeiture against the property owners of two South Coast medical marijuana storefront dispensaries and one indoor farm. They allege that the owners should have known what the buildings were used for — growing and/or selling marijuana, which the government considers illegal under both federal and California law, even if the marijuana is considered medicinal.

Citing past testimony that points to each establishment selling and/or buying marijuana products and making a profit off it, the properties were allegedly used to facilitate law violations and are subject to U.S. forfeiture laws, according to the complaints, signed April 20 by U.S. Attorney Andre Birotte Jr.

The cases will go through U.S. Central District Court.

Drug Enforcement Administration agents and local police raided the Pacific Coast Collective on Milpas Street and an indoor farm on Haley Street this week, and filed the forfeiture complaints and sent out enforcement letters to known marijuana-related operation in Santa Barbara County, authorities said.

No arrests were made.

The letters were very similar to those sent out in October, said Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

The letters warn property owners that their buildings are being used by marijuana dispensaries, which violates federal law, and both the property and rent paid by the dispensary operator could be seized.

“Please take the necessary steps to discontinue the sale and/or distribution of marijuana at the above-referenced location within 14 days of this letter,” an October sample letter states.

Regardless of local laws, federal law — which doesn’t recognize medical marijuana — takes precedent, the letter states.

“Accordingly, it is not a defense to either the referenced crime or to the forfeiture of property that the dispensary is providing ‘medical marijuana,’” the letter says. “Even under these circumstances, an owner of real property with knowledge or reason to know of illegal marijuana distribution occurring on real property that he owns or controls may have his interest in the property forfeited to the government without compensation.”

Santa Barbara County has banned dispensaries while the City of Santa Barbara has an ordinance allowing up to four medical marijuana storefront dispensaries on the condition that they abide by strict operational standards and state law.

But state law regarding the dispensaries has been fuzzy, even with then-Attorney General Jerry Brown’s guidelines that left the door open for not-for-profit storefront collectives for qualified patients (with doctors recommendations).

The city’s permitted storefronts, including Pacific Coast Collective, sell marijuana to their members and have paid employees, but local court cases have shown the legality of an establishment often hinges on the amount of money coming in (covering overhead is acceptable) and where the product comes from.

Ventura County DEA agents loaded a van and a trailer with material confiscated Thursday from 305 E. Haley St. in Santa Barbara. (Lara Cooper / Noozhawk photo)

According to the legal complaint, the Pacific Coast Collective at 331 N. Milpas St. is leased from property owner Matilija Investment Property LLC, with principals Jeffrey Becker of Ventura and William Jonker of Ojai. It’s managed by The Becker Group Inc. of Ventura.

The property was used as a “marijuana store” that distributed marijuana to its customers and accepted money for it in this type of business since at least 2008, the complaint alleges.

The storefront collective claims to be a medical marijuana dispensary abiding byProposition 215, the Compassionate Use Act, but the DEA and the U.S. Attorney’s Office think otherwise.

Search warrants were served there in 2008 — when it was still Pacific Greens and owner David Najera was later convicted of drug-related charges — and 2010, when operator Charles Jeffrey Restivo was arrested and charged with felony cultivation and possession for sale of marijuana, according to the complaint.

Pacific Coast Collective was raided by the DEA and Santa Barbara police a third time on Wednesday, but no arrests were made. The establishment is one of four permitted by the City of Santa Barbara, but those permits are zoning-related and are conditional on the storefronts following state law.

The city sent cease-and-desist letters to the establishment, and Becker Group was sent a copy, and ordinance violation letters in 2008 and 2009. A police detective called Jeffrey Becker of Becker Group in 2010 and told him about the search warrants and resulting arrests, so the owner knew or should have known the property was utilized for illegal purposes, the complaint states.

Diane Norman is the property owner of 2173 Ortega Hill Road in Summerland and the operator of the Miramar Collective at that location. She has pleaded guilty to felony possession of concentrated cannabis as a result of a February 2010 raid, during which authorities found plants, packaged marijuana for sale and price sheets.

She told authorities at the time that her establishment sold plants, marijuana and edible products to members and she bought product from vendors and growers. Miramar Collective started making a profit in January 2010, according to the complaint.

Norman’s other business is the French Market antique store at the same property, and she said in a 2009 newspaper interview that she was trying to open dispensaries in the Santa Ynez Valley or elsewhere in the North County.

Senior Deputy District Attorney Brian Cota, who is assigned to most of the dispensary-related cases, said the federal government’s move to take property will likely have a chilling effect, with fewer landlords willing to rent to dispensaries.

“I wouldn’t want to lose a commercial property in Santa Barbara,” he said.

The 305 E. Haley St. property, which allegedly was used as an indoor marijuana grow by renter Steven Kessler, is owned by Janna and John Price, the complaint for forfeiture states.

The Prices own numerous properties on the South Coast, including gas stations and car washes.

The two-story building was used as a farm since at least October 2010, when neighbors complained of marijuana smells coming from the vents, and city code-enforcement and fire-inspector teams saw the plants during site visits.

They sent violation letters to the owners and Kessler over the unpermitted electrical and plumbing additions, which likely were made to support the marijuana-growing equipment, the complaint states.

The city inspectors observed plants in various stages of growth, and “the heat, humidity and marijuana odor inside the defendant property was overwhelming,” according to the complaint.

Architects were hired to help with the required renovations, and the property owner was in touch with city code-enforcement teams to provide updates on the plans for bringing the building into compliance.

In October of last year, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Price called the city and said he wanted to evict Kessler, but it could take six months because of the lease. In January, his attorney called the city to ask about the pending code-enforcement action, the complaint states.

It appears the Harmony Wellness Cooperative is still cultivating and distributing marijuana at that location and so the property itself can be forfeited to the United States, the complaint says.

DEA agents and local police seized a trailer-full of pungent evidence Thursday from the Haley Street building during the raid, and also served a search warrant at Kessler’s house in Santa Barbara’s Mesa neighborhood.

Attempts by Noozhawk to reach the affected property owners were not successful Friday.