MMJ: The Goverment Soup

What’s up with that bill to create comprehensive medical marijuana regulations in California? – Willy Wonky

There has been progress, but I feel like they may be making it worse. AB 266 has been amended (again) in the Legislature, and the new one is horrible. Cities and counties can still ban cannabis clubs (although Dale Gieringer, the head of CA NORML, expects this rule to be changed), the grow limits are way too small, there’s a $50-per-plant fee, yada yada.

Here is my note to legislators: Marijuana is not crack or even Sudafed. No reason to be ridiculous with these regulations. Keep it simple: 600 feet from kids, reasonable taxes, and fees like $10 per plant with a 5,000-plant limit for commercial growers, 5-percent excise tax, and $1,200 per year for commercial licenses.

Make cities and counties that want to ban dispensaries hold a vote. If they vote against being involved in the industry, that’s cool, but then they don’t get a cut of the marijuana tax revenues. Throw in a six-plant or, say, 200-square-foot home-grow limit. No muss, no fuss, and we can all kick back and blaze one in celebration.

I heard a tribe in California got raided. I thought Native American tribes were allowed to grow weed? – Little Big Joint

You are correct on both. Earlier this month, an alphabet soup (DEA, BIA, ATF) of law enforcement agencies swooped onto the Alturas Indian Rancheria and seized 12,000 plants and 100 pounds of processed marijuana. No one was arrested. Yet in December 2014, the DOJ circulated a memo saying tribes could grow pot. The memo also says some things about federal and state law.

Native American tribes should be able to do whatever they want. The radical rabble rouser that lives inside my head decries this raid as a straight-up smash-and-grab robbery, and yet another example of the federal government saying one thing and its agents doing something else entirely. The more reasonable person in my head thinks that maybe a 12,000-plant operation from a tribe with only five members, seemingly bankrolled by a tobacco company from Canada, may not be the best way to start a gray-market business. The feds need to go ahead and remove marijuana from the schedule of controlled substances. Then maybe the DEA will stop robbing people.