Palo Alto Weekly, 07 Sep 2012 – As courts issue conflicting rulings on marijuana dispensaries, city officials urge voters to reject Measure C With California’s marijuana laws still immersed in a legal cloud, a group of Palo Alto’s elected officials is urging voters to strike down in November a citizen initiative that would allow up to three pot dispensaries to set up shop in the city.

Times-Standard, 08 Sep 2012 – If marijuana were fully legal there would be no backyard residential growers cashing in on inflated medical marijuana prices. Legitimate farmers would produce it by the ton at a fraction of the current cost. There is a reason you don’t see Mexican drug cartels sneaking into national forests to cultivate tomatoes and cucumbers. They cannot compete with a legal market. The first marijuana laws were enacted in response to Mexican migration during the early 1900s, despite opposition from the American Medical Association. Dire warnings that marijuana inspires homicidal rages have been counterproductive. White Americans did not even begin to smoke pot until a soon-to-be entrenched federal bureaucracy began funding reefer madness propaganda.

Times-Standard, 08 Sep 2012 – Your article on the environmental damage from illegal marijuana growing (" ‘A huge, huge mess’," Times-Standard, Sept. 2, Page A1) was good as far as it went. However, you overlooked the real issue: that damage is not caused by the marijuana, but by the laws prohibiting it.

Chico Enterprise-Record, 09 Sep 2012 – I don’t understand why the supervisors continue to try to appease the drug pushers and addicts. By federal law, pot is illegal. It’s not up to the supervisors to decide that it’s a medicine. That’s the FDA’s job. I don’t know of any other "medicine" that is a mind-altering drug, that is not manufactured by a licensed pharmaceutical company and distributed by a licensed pharmacist.

DrugSense

Wall Street Journal, 06 Sep 2012 – LOS ANGELES – A ban on storefront pot dispensaries here won’t go into effect Thursday after advocates for medical marijuana successfully petitioned to block it, the latest skirmish in the battle over how local governments around the nation should regulate pot businesses. After years of failed attempts to control the number of pot shops and their operations here, the Los Angeles City Council unanimously passed an ordinance in late July that made storefront dispensaries illegal by modifying language in the city’s municipal code.

Tahoe Daily Tribune, 06 Sep 2012 – Former South Shore medical marijuana dispensary owner Gino DiMatteo has pleaded not guilty to felony charges including bribing a City Council member and possession of a controlled substance. Gennaro "Gino" DiMatteo and his wife, Irene DiMatteo, were arrested Aug. 31. Details of the arrests have not been made public by the El Dorado County District Attorney’s Office.

DrugSense

The Tribune, 06 Sep 2012 – When Proposition 215, known as the Compassionate Use Act, was passed by California voters in 1996 by almost 57 percent of the electorate, only two coastal counties voted against the marijuana-based initiative: Del Norte County in the far northwest of the state, and San Luis Obispo County. In retrospect, this county’s political position on a state law that allows a patient with a doctor’s recommendation to legally use pot for medical reasons may have been a harbinger for the Dec. 27, 2010, bust of 12 people who were later dubbed the "Doobie Dozen."

Los Angeles Times, 07 Sep 2012 – ‘Ricky’ Closed His Pot Stores and Is Selling on the Streets, but Clients Need a Doctor’s Recommendation A stocky onetime mortgage broker is speeding through Costa Mesa in an old pickup with two pounds of weed in a paper bag. He wears gray cargo shorts and flip-flops and a faded cap with the image of a marijuana leaf stitched on the front. He just smoked a joint thick as a knuckle.