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<p class=MsoNormal style='border:none;padding:0in'>Courtesy of today’s
(July 28, 2010) Spokesman-Review.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='border:none;padding:0in'><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='border:none;padding:0in'><o:p> </o:p></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>Oakland pot plan worries small growers<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>Lisa Leff, Associated Press<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>OAKLAND, Calif. – After weathering the fear of federal
prosecution and competition from drug cartels, California’s medical
marijuana growers see a new threat to their tenuous existence: the
“Walmarting” of weed. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>The Oakland City Council voted Tuesday in favor of a plan to
license four production plants where marijuana would be grown, packaged and
processed into items ranging from baked goods to body oil.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>The plants would not be limited in size – one
potential applicant for a license wants to open a plant that would produce over
21,000 pounds of pot a year – but they would be heavily taxed and
regulated.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>Those vying for one of the four licenses would have to pay
$211,000 in annual permit fees, carry $2 million worth of liability insurance
and be prepared to devote up to 8 percent of gross sales to taxes.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>The vote came after more than two hours of public comment,
with speakers divided between those who opposed the measure – largely on
the grounds that it would put small medical marijuana growers out of business
– and those who said it would generate millions of dollars for Oakland in
taxes and sales and create hundreds of jobs.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>Oakland’s decision, and fledgling efforts in other
California cities to sanction cannabis cultivation for the first time, have
some marijuana advocates worried that regulations intended to bring order to
the outlaw industry and new revenues to cash-strapped local governments could
drive small “mom and pop” growers out of business. They complain
that industrial-scale gardens would harm the environment, reduce quality and
leave consumers with fewer strains from which to choose.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>“Nobody wants to see the McDonald’s-ization of
cannabis,” Dan Scully, one of the 400 “patient-growers” who
supply Oakland’s largest retail medical marijuana dispensary, Harborside
Health Center, grumbled after a City Council committee gave the blueprint
preliminary approval last week. “I would compare it to how a small business
feels about shutting down its business and going to work at Walmart. Who would
be attracted to that?”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>The proposal’s supporters, including entrepreneurs
more disposed to neckties than tie-dye, counter that unregulated growers
working in covert warehouses or houses are tax scofflaws more likely to wreak
environmental havoc, be motivated purely by profit and produce inferior
products.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>“The large-scale grow facilities that are being
proposed with this ordinance will create hundreds of jobs for the city,”
said Ryan Indigo Warman, who teaches pot-growing techniques at iGrow, a
hydroponics store whose owners plan to apply for one of the four permits.
“The ordinance is good for Oakland, and anyone who says otherwise is only
protecting their own interests.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>Council members Rebecca Kaplan and Larry Reid, who
introduced the plan, have pitched it largely as a public safety measure.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>The Oakland fire department blames a dramatic rise in the
number of electrical fires between 2006 and 2009 in part to marijuana being
grown indoors with improperly wired fans and lights. The police department says
eight robberies, seven burglaries and two murders have been linked to marijuana
grows in the last two years.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>Reid and Kaplan also are open about their desire to have the
city, which last week laid off 80 police officers to save money, cash in on the
medical marijuana industry it has allowed to thrive.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>Oakland’s four retail marijuana stores did $28 million
in business last year, and if sales remain constant, the city would get $1.5
million this year from a dispensary business tax that voters adopted last
summer. A similar tax on wholesale pot sales from the permitted grow sites to
the dispensaries would bring in more than twice that amount, the city
administrator’s office has estimated.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>“Allowing medical cannabis and medical cannabis
products to be produced in a responsible, aboveboard and legitimate way will be
a benefit to the patients, to the workers and to the people of Oakland,”
Kaplan said.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>Adding to the anxiety of growers – and the impetus
Oakland officials have to get the grow tax in place – is a November state
ballot measure to legalize marijuana possession for adult recreational use and
authorize local governments to license and tax non-medical pot sales.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>If it passes, Proposition 19 is expected to feed the
state’s hearty appetite for marijuana. Backers of creating the four big
indoor gardens say the plan is not dependent on legalization, but would benefit
from it.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>“The reality is, this is an issue that is going to
grow. I would like it to grow here. I would like it to be Oakland business and
not the tobacco industry,” Councilwoman Jean Quan said.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>Regulating the supply side of the business would represent
another turning point in California’s complicated, 14-year-old
relationship with medical marijuana. Although Maine, New Mexico and Rhode
Island license nonprofit groups to produce and distribute cannabis,
California’s law is silent on cultivation other than for individual use.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>Even as hundreds of storefront pot dispensaries, marijuana
delivery services and THC-laced food products have flourished, the question of
where they get their stashes remains murky: Inquiring is considered as impolite
as asking someone’s income or age.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>Industry insiders usually say they rely on a variety of
sources, including farmers who grow outdoors in the far northern end of the
state, contractors who run sophisticated indoor operations, and customers who
grow their own and sell the surplus.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>Officials in Berkeley and Long Beach also are moving to take
the mystery out of medical marijuana production.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>The Berkeley City Council recently approved a measure for
the November ballot that would authorize the city to license and tax six pot
cultivation sites. Companies running the facilities must agree to give away
some pot to low-income users, employ organic gardening methods to the extent
possible and offset in some way the large amount of electricity needed to grow
weed.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>Long Beach officials want to reduce the amount of medical
marijuana being sold in the city that isn’t grown there.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>The city is in the process of trying to whittle its more
than 90 dispensaries down to no more than 35 marijuana collectives through a
lottery. License winners will be required to grow either at their retail sites
or elsewhere in Long Beach and to open their books to prove they aren’t
growing more than enough to supply their members, said Lori Ann Farrell, Long
Beach’s director of financial management.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>-------------------<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>Richard Lee is the president of Oaksterdam University, a
pot-growing school, in Oakland, Calif., where small growers could be hurt by
pot factories.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><img width=527 height=350 id="Picture_x0020_0"
src="cid:image001.jpg@01CB2E82.E8FE30B0" alt=OaklandCannabis.jpg><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal style='border:none;padding:0in'><o:p> </o:p></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>How about it, Area Man? Ya think if ya ask really
really REALY nice and say “please a lot”, that . . . just . . .
maybe.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>Hey, it’s just a thought.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>Seeya round the farm, Moscow.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>Tom Hansen<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>Moscow, Idaho<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>"Corporations
are an oppressed minority forced to move headquarters from state to state in
search of friendlier tax codes--sometimes being forced to live just off our
shores in tiny mailboxes." <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>- John
Oliver, The Daily Show<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
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