Marijuana

Medical marijuana advocates Saturday opened a three-day event to rally support to regulate a legal dispensary industry in California, spurred on by videotaped messages from two members of Congress who recently pushed an amendment to deny funds for federal raids on cannabis businesses.

The pot market is crashing in California's legendary Emerald Triangle.

An Assembly committee Tuesday passed a bill to create state oversight for pot businesses, as its chairman implored the Legislature to act to stave off federal raids on medical marijuana providers.

Directly across the street from tiny Sgt. John Macaulay Park, with its swings and wooden climbing train, is a strip club flashing signs for "Live Nude Shows."

Richard Lee, who brought California its first university of cannabis and bankrolled a pot legalization initiative, said Monday's federal raids have persuaded him to give up his Oakland marijuana businesses – but not his cause.

A day after federal agents rousted him from his apartment and seized his famed Oakland cannabis college, a renowned California marijuana advocate said Tuesday he knows "they can indict me any day" and "arrest me any time."

Multiple federal agencies unleashed raids Monday on the home and businesses of one of California's most famous marijuana advocates, Richard Lee, founder of the renowned cannabis industry trade school known as Oaksterdam University.

For the school renowned as the Princeton of Pot and the Harvard of Hemp, the high times have wafted into a downer.

The Moonlight fire was the U.S. Forest Service's worst nightmare.

When it comes to rulings on medical marijuana, California courts have a case of multiple personality disorder.

Medical marijuana advocates are dropping efforts to qualify a November ballot initiative to regulate California's dispensary industry and instead plan a media campaign to lobby the Legislature to tackle the issue.

Jordan Vas bought a marijuana plant last month for his home in Parlier. He admits he doesn't have a green thumb, but tending his own crop is his strategy for getting marijuana as Fresno County's ban on dispensaries begins.

As the top federal prosecutor in Sacramento was announcing a new focus on huge pot farms in the Central Valley on Tuesday, a U.S. district judge delivered a separate blow to efforts to thwart crackdowns on medical marijuana.

The Elk Grove City Council on Wednesday night approved one of the most restrictive medical marijuana growing ordinances in Northern California, requiring that any growing operation be conducted in a home or detached backyard building.

A proposed ballot initiative aimed for the November elections begs a key question looming over California's medical marijuana industry: Can stricter state regulation keep the federal government from shutting it down?

U.S. authorities filed suit Thursday seeking to seize the building of a Sacramento dispensary, charging the marijuana store violated federal laws against drug transactions near schools.

Three months after federal authorities seized its bank account in a probe of alleged concealment of medical marijuana proceeds, a Sacramento dispensary announced Thursday it will close its doors on New Year's Eve.

In response to a court order, the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department Friday afternoon returned 2 pounds of medicinal marijuana to a dispensary from which it was seized earlier this month.

Boasting what was perhaps Sacramento County's largest registry of medical marijuana users, an Orangevale dispensary was closing with a flourish. Throughout the day, it offered specials that included free grams of marijuana and discounts on "top shelf" cannabis strains.

Sacramento County supervisors are seeking to bring an end to the county's once teeming medical marijuana trade by denying business permits to establishments that conflict with "either state or federal law, or both" under a new policy approved Tuesday.

It's the twilight hour for medical marijuana dispensaries in Sacramento County.

The sexual marketing of medical marijuana – with racy promotions that often trump the beer industry's swimsuit models – is at the center of an uncomfortable debate in the medicinal cannabis community.

With legal uncertainty swirling around the issue, the city of Sacramento formally entered a holding pattern on its issuance of medical marijuana permits Tuesday night in a move that advocates said could help save the industry in the city.

They are the public face of a litigious battle to redefine federal authority on medical marijuana.

Lawsuits were filed Friday in federal courts in Sacramento, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego in a move to block efforts by U.S. attorneys to crack down on medical marijuana dispensaries in California.

The U.S. drug agents' vehicles rumbled past vineyards and cattle ranches, traversed winding roads through oak woodlands and cleared a gate marked with a sign: "Member, Mendocino Farm Bureau."

An advocacy group for medical marijuana users sued U.S. Justice Department officials Thursday, charging that the federal government has violated the Constitution in cracking down on California marijuana dispensaries.

Sacramento Bee writer Peter Hecht has been named a winner of the Society of Professional Journalists, Northern California Chapter, 2011 Excellence in Journalism Award.

Medical marijuana advocates, decrying a federal government crackdown on dispensaries and a failure of state lawmakers to act, said Tuesday that they are drafting a 2012 ballot initiative to impose statewide oversight of California's burgeoning medicinal cannabis trade.

Medical marijuana advocates, decrying a federal government crackdown on dispensaries and a failure of state lawmakers to act, said today that they are drafting a 2012 ballot initiative to impose statewide oversight of California's burgeoning medicinal cannabis trade.