Marijuana

Authorities say they have removed about 3,500 marijuana plants found growing in sensitive parkland in the Santa Monica Mountains. The National Park Service said Wednesday that trash, pipes, camping equipment, fertilizer and pesticides also were removed Tuesday from three plantations. Two were in Malibu Creek State Park and one in the Zuma-Trancas Canyon area.

Oakland pot activists fresh off a victory at local polls on the taxing of medical marijuana took their first official step Tuesday toward asking California voters to legalize pot. A proposed ballot measure filed with the California attorney general's office would allow adults 21 and older to possess up to an ounce of pot. Homeowners could grow marijuana for personal use on garden plots up to 25 square feet.

It's not every night that a comedian peers down from the stage and notices some of the audience smoking marijuana -- at least not legally. But that's what Samson Crouppen saw at the Royal Temple of Zion, a Rastafarian temple that also served as a medical marijuana dispensary until it was raided less than two weeks ago and where on Saturday night music and comedy mingled with cannabis. "It's really not that different than going to a bar or a club," Crouppen said. "Comedians perform in front of people who are drunk or buzzed all the time.

A newly formed association of Los Angeles medical marijuana collectives has challenged the city's efforts to control dispensaries, claiming in a lawsuit that the 2-year-old moratorium is unconstitutionally vague and that the City Council violated state law when it extended the ban until mid-March. The lawsuit, filed late Monday, is the first to take aim at the city's attempts to halt the explosive growth in dispensaries. It comes as the City Council's Planning Committee continued Tuesday to struggle with a permanent ordinance to replace the moratorium.

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley said Thursday he will prosecute medical marijuana dispensaries for over-the-counter sales, targeting a practice that has become commonplace under an initiative approved by California voters more than a decade ago. "The vast, vast, vast majority, about 100%, of dispensaries in Los Angeles County and the city are operating illegally, they are dealing marijuana illegally, according to our theory," he...

Los Angeles' ban on new medical marijuana dispensaries is invalid, a Superior Court judge said Monday in a decision that undermines the city's 4-month-old drive to shut down hundreds of the stores. The judge issued an injunction banning enforcement of the moratorium against Green Oasis, a dispensary in Playa Vista that had challenged the ban. But city officials acknowledged the ruling would effectively block current efforts to enforce the ban against other dispensaries. The decision came on the day the Obama administration issued guidelines that limit federal prosecution of medical marijuana users and dispensaries.

With its moratorium on new medical marijuana dispensaries declared unlawful, the Los Angeles City Council is now poised to act quickly on a strict ordinance that it has struggled with fitfully for more than two years. On Tuesday, the city attorney's office delivered a draft that some members want the council to take up within a week. The sudden acceleration stems from a Superior Court ruling Monday that left the city unable to enforce its ban and derailed its four-month-old drive to shut down new dispensaries.

The Los Angeles City Council moved Thursday to consider a controversial medical marijuana ordinance in early November, as a poll released by a national organization that supports marijuana legalization found that more than three-quarters of voters in the county want dispensaries regulated, not prosecuted and closed. The council action comes after a Superior Court judge ruled Monday that the city's moratorium on dispensaries had been illegally extended. With the city unable to enforce it, Councilman Greig Smith decided Thursday not to hold a hearing on the proposed ordinance in the Public Safety Committee, but to send it straight to the council.

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.

Education has long been preached as a way to keep kids away from drugs. It's the walk to school that has Supt. Tom Barnett worried. This hardscrabble Northern California town has become a hotbed for medical marijuana farming. Kids stroll much of the year past pungent plants flourishing in gardens and alleys. The red-and-black-clad Timberjacks football team moved its halftime huddle on a recent Friday night to avoid the odor of marijuana smoke wafting over the gridiron from nearby houses.