Lake Forrest Dispensaries Voluntarily Close

Patients in Lake Forrest

Score another one for the bad guys as attorneys for medical mariuana dispensaries have advised their clients to shut down while the this federal crackdown issue is being address.

Full story from OC Register: http://www.ocregister.com/news/marijuana-321612-federal-medical.html

Long Beach Shutting Down?!

More bad news on the medical marijuana news front as word from the dispensaries is that the city of Long Beach has sent out notices to all dispensaries in Long Beach to close within 21 days. 1 Love one of the coolest collectives in the LBC has sent out emails to their patients notifying them of this latest development. Those email notices apparantly went out on October 13, 2011.

The possibility that Long Beach will shutting down or atempting to shut down its dispensaries is an epic event.  Long Beach had enacted a controversal lottery system that allowed dispensaries to operate in a quasi-legal way. That lottery system was over thrown by a the Appeals court earlier this month.

Feds Go After Media

Wow the feds showing no respect for the 1st Amendment have now announced a coordinated policy of targeting media outlets that sell ads to medical marijuana dispensaries.

See Toke of The Town article:

http://www.tokeofthetown.com/2011/10/feds_to_go_after_newspapers_radio_for_medical_mari.php#more

Fed Crackdown Begins

Last week the fedeal crackdown on California medical marijuna dispensaries was announced.  Over the weekend it began in ernest.

NoHo Caregivers has been shut down. According to reports this was a for profit enterprise that was engaging in illegal marijuana distrubution.

http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_19068188

Canna Clinics in Torrance and Garden Grove was shut down temporaraily over the weekend.

Garden Grove Update

Despite the upcoming federal crackdown on medical marijuana dispensaries in California, Garden Grove will still press on with its upcoming plan to regulate and allow medical marijuaa dispensaries in Garden Grove.

There was some initial puzzlement over just what Garden Grove would do in light of this federal crackdown. We now have at least an intiial answer.  Full story in OC Registger:

http://articles.ocregister.com/2011-10-08/news/30261483_1_dispensaries-medical-marijuana-susan-emery

The Feds Are Coming

The federal government, yes our federal goverment has announced a crackdown on California's Medical Marijuana dispensaries.  This results in an about face from Presdient Obama's initial hands off policy for medical marijuana dispensaries that are in compliance with their states law's and regulations.

See Los Angeles Times article detailing this policy change:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-obama-medical-marijuana-20111008,0,5209592.story

Rancho Santa Margarita Bans Dispensaries

Seems like every week another city is misinformed and chooses to deny medical marijuna patitients acess to medical cannabis.  This time the misguided city is Rancho Santa Margarita.  The city council while not enacting an outright ban has chosen to enact a 45 day temporary ban.

While a 45 day ban on medical marijuana dispensaries may not seem so serious on its face the issue is that these 45 day bans usually result in much longer bans which are de facto permanent bans.

So we'll see how this plays out in Rancho Santa Margarita and we wish the medical marijuana community all the luck down there.