Dispensaries

Behind the bolted steel doors of an old brick warehouse, Big Wes meets a nutrient company scientist to see if he can increase his crop yield. Rows of hydroponic marijuana plants soak up solution flowing through plastic troughs and light blazing from high-pressure sodium lamps. Big Wes has spent more than half his life calibrating his system of growing high-grade marijuana to its utmost efficiency. At 50 years old, he harvests a crop of dozens of plants every week from five rented warehouses scattered along the rutted streets and alleys around the docks of Oakland.

Richard Lee, whose bid to legalize marijuana in California brought him international attention, plans to give up ownership of his Oakland-based marijuana businesses after a federal raid this week seized many of their assets, including plants, bank accounts, records and computers. "I've been doing this for a long time. Over 20 years.... I kind of feel like I've done my time," Lee said Thursday. "It's time for others to take over. " Lee said he would remain an outspoken marijuana advocate.

The tech broke the bud of marijuana into small flakes, measuring 200 milligrams into a vial. He had picked up the strain, Ghost, earlier that day from a dispensary in the Valley and guessed by its pungency and visible resin glands that it was potent. He could have determined this the old-fashioned way, with a bong and a match. Instead, he began the meticulous process of preparing the sample for the high-pressure liquid chromatograph. His lab, called The Werc Shop, tests medical cannabis for levels of the psychoactive ingredient known as THC and a few dozen other compounds, as well as for contaminants like molds, bacteria and pesticides that marijuana advocates don't much like to talk about.

Richard Lee has been one of the state's most visible activists for liberalized marijuana laws, having spent $1.5 million of his own money supporting an ill-fated ballot initiative in 2010 to decriminalize recreational use. But Lee is also an entrepreneur in the legally cloudy arena of medical marijuana, and on Monday the Internal Revenue Service and the Drug Enforcement Administration raided his home and his hemp-related ventures, including Oaksterdam University,...

Federal prosecutors are threatening to shut down medical marijuana dispensaries throughout California, sending letters that warn landlords to stop sales of the drug within 45 days or face the possibility that their property will be seized and they will be charged with a crime. The stepped-up enforcement escalates the Obama administration's efforts to rein in the spread of pot stores, which accelerated after the attorney general announced in 2009 that federal prosecutors would not target people using medical marijuana in states that allow it. "It's coming out of left field as far as we're concerned," said Joe Elford, the chief counsel for Americans for Safe Access, which advocates for medical marijuana use. "I really don't know what inspired this.

Los Angeles has sued nine medical marijuana dispensaries to force them to close immediately and permanently, even as more boldly open throughout the city, often in prominent locations. With hundreds of dispensaries in L.A., City Atty. Carmen Trutanich decided to target those within 600 feet of a school, a violation of state law. The city is seeking civil penalties of up to $5,000 a day if the dispensaries defy the lawsuits and remain open. "These are the ones that have been brought to our attention.

Oooh, there's a pinch in my lower back. My head hurts too. And my vision is blurred from going through long lists of Southern California physicians who specialize in herbal medicine. I need relief, and I need it fast, but how does one go about choosing a medical marijuana doctor? "I am a person first, a scientist second and a friend always," a Melrose Avenue doctor says in an ad that can be found in medical cannabis magazines. I suppose there are advantages to having a medical marijuana doctor who is a friend always.

The Los Angeles City Council voted Tuesday to adopt a comprehensive medical marijuana ordinance that clamps strict controls on dispensaries, which have spread with a velocity that stunned city officials and angered some residents. Settling the last controversial issue on its list, the council decided to require the stores to locate at least 1,000 feet from so-called sensitive uses, such as schools, parks, libraries and other dispensaries. The decision to reject a 500-foot setback reflected the council's intent to write the most restrictive rules that would still allow dispensaries.

When the deadline passed Monday afternoon, Los Angeles city officials counted 169 notifications from people who intend to continue running medical marijuana dispensaries. Dispensary operators crowded the city clerk's office to beat the 4 p.m. deadline that ended the weeklong notification period. Burdened by the paperwork-intensive process, relieved staffers cheered when the last form was filled out. "The majority came in on the Mondays and then it was steady in between," said Holly L. Wolcott, the executive officer for the city clerk.

With the fate of the city's medical marijuana industry in question, workers at more than a dozen Los Angeles pot shops have formed a labor union in part to help ward off a proposed citywide ban on dispensaries. The employees joined the ranks of grocery workers, healthcare providers and pharmacists at the United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 770. At a news conference Thursday, the president of the union vowed to leverage the "full force" of its 35,000 members to keep dispensaries open.

Not one but two federal agencies raided the Oakland medical marijuana businesses run by Richard Lee, one of California's leading advocates of legalization, on Monday. A judge has sealed the affadavits behind the raids of Lee's apartment, dispensary, marijuana museum and medical marijuana trade school, so there's no way of telling yet what led the Internal Revenue Service and the Drug Enforcement Administration to target him. But Lee was unabashedly pushing the edge of the legal envelope in at least one respect: He argued that dispensaries could be run as for-profit businesses, not simply collectives that members joined to share the weed they grew.

OAKLAND — Federal agents struck at the heart of California's medical marijuana movement, raiding the nation's first pot trade school and a popular dispensary, both run by one of the state's most prominent and provocative activists, Richard Lee. The raids in Oakland by the Internal Revenue Service and Drug Enforcement Administration sent a shudder through the medical cannabis trade and angered the plant's devotees, who believe the federal government...

Behind the bolted steel doors of an old brick warehouse, Big Wes meets a nutrient company scientist to see if he can increase his crop yield. Rows of hydroponic marijuana plants soak up solution flowing through plastic troughs and light blazing from high-pressure sodium lamps. Big Wes has spent more than half his life calibrating his system of growing high-grade marijuana to its utmost efficiency. At 50 years old, he harvests a crop of dozens of plants every week from five rented warehouses scattered along the rutted streets and alleys around the docks of Oakland.

With the fate of the city's medical marijuana industry in question, workers at more than a dozen Los Angeles pot shops have formed a labor union in part to help ward off a proposed citywide ban on dispensaries. The employees joined the ranks of grocery workers, healthcare providers and pharmacists at the United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 770. At a news conference Thursday, the president of the union vowed to leverage the "full force" of its 35,000 members to keep dispensaries open.

Mireya Ingham follows her favorite food trucks on Twitter so she knows when the movable feasts set up curbside in her East Hollywood neighborhood. But some recent foodie tweets are giving her heartburn: A state lawmaker wants to significantly limit where lunch wagons can operate, keeping them even farther from schools than marijuana dispensaries. That could put many of the mobile kitchens out of business just as the industry is surging with creativity. Dozens of colorfully painted trucks have hit the road throughout California, serving gourmet dishes to largely young epicures and becoming nearly as emblematic of the state as surfboards and convertibles.

California cities may not ban medical marijuana dispensaries, but the operations may sell only weed that is grown on site, an appeals court ruled in an Orange County case. The unanimous decision by a three-judge Court of Appeal panel in Santa Ana was the first in the state to prohibit cities from enacting zoning restrictions that effectively ban all marijuana dispensaries. The court was also the first to rule that dispensaries must grow the marijuana they sell, a requirement that would force most of them out of business.

Los Angeles city prosecutors began notifying 439 medical marijuana dispensaries Tuesday that they must shut down by June 7, when the city's ordinance to regulate the stores takes effect. It's the first step in what could be a lengthy and expensive legal battle to regain control over pot sales. The letters, which were sent to both dispensary operators and property owners, warn that violations of the city's laws are a misdemeanor and could lead to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Medical marijuana dispensaries in California pump more than $100 million in tax revenue into state coffers, but that windfall is being threatened by a federal crackdown on the facilities, a group of dispensary operators told state tax officials Tuesday. In testimony before the state Board of Equalization, half a dozen medical marijuana activists -- including several who have seen their operations closed and assets seized by drug agents -- said federal raids are eroding tax revenue just when the fiscally strapped state needs it most.

The tech broke the bud of marijuana into small flakes, measuring 200 milligrams into a vial. He had picked up the strain, Ghost, earlier that day from a dispensary in the Valley and guessed by its pungency and visible resin glands that it was potent. He could have determined this the old-fashioned way, with a bong and a match. Instead, he began the meticulous process of preparing the sample for the high-pressure liquid chromatograph. His lab, called The Werc Shop, tests medical cannabis for levels of the psychoactive ingredient known as THC and a few dozen other compounds, as well as for contaminants like molds, bacteria and pesticides that marijuana advocates don't much like to talk about.

Forget years of conflicting rules, hazy regulations, hard lines and soft bans. An LAPD narcotics squad has made an end-run around the city's fumbling efforts to regulate medical marijuana, shutting down every dispensary in its San Fernando Valley division in a three-year campaign whose success just might signal the end of legal pot sales in Los Angeles. The closure this week of Herbal Medicine Care in Chatsworth ended a string of Devonshire Division busts that netted 30 guns, $2 million in cash and nine kilos of cocaine, in addition to a ton of marijuana.