Long Beach residents will soon be asked to tax medical marijuana dispensaries, even as city officials continue to draft regulations for the pot shops. City council members voted at their Dec. 17 meeting to direct the city attorney to prepare documents to put a tax proposal on the ballot in April. The initiative would impose a city tax on medical ...

Medical marijuana dispensaries that do business in Long Beach could find themselves paying a new local tax. Long Beach voters may be asked to decide next year whether they want to impose a 6 percent tax rate on medical pot shops, plus a minimum $1,000 business license tax. City Council Member Suja Lowenthal asked in December that City Attorney Charles ...

Efforts to welcome medical marijuana dispensaries back to Long Beach hit a snag in December. Earlier this fall, the city council asked staff to draft an ordinance regulating a small number of pot shops within city limits. But that attempt stalled, at least briefly, when officials realized the council’s instructions would shut dispensaries out of most of Long Beach. Council ...

Residents of one California city may be seeing the glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. Years after banning medical marijuana dispensaries everywhere in town, the Long Beach City Council took the first step in September toward bringing them back. It would make the city a rarity outside Los Angeles, where dispensaries are still allowed under tight new ...

A judge invalidated Kern County’s marijuana ordinance Feb. 14, effectively opening the door to an all-out ban on medical weed dispensaries in unincorporated parts of the county. Superior Court Judge Kenneth Twisselman struck down Measure G, a referendum passed by voters in 2012 that limited where dispensaries could locate. Twisselman said the county had failed to conduct proper environmental studies ...

In what is apparently a first in the nation, the owner of a medical marijuana dispensary has been appointed mayor of a small town north of the Bay Area. Sebastapol, CA in Sonoma County, population 7,500, is known for its left-leaning politics, its commitment to the environment and, now, its fearlessness in choosing a mayor whose life’s work is an ...

Another light has gone out in Southern California. Whittier has now joined the long list of cities, towns and counties that have banned medical marijuana dispensaries. The situation was already bad, but in some place it continues to get worse. The Whittier City Council voted 4-1 at a special meeting Nov. 19 to ban all dispensaries in the city. They ...

Napa appears likely to close its doors to medical marijuana dispensaries, but the city planning commission isn’t happy about it. Commission members voted 3-2 Oct. 31 to recommend the Napa City Council not repeal the city’s three-year-old medical pot ordinance. The ordinance, passed unanimously in 2010, has allowed a single dispensary to operate in the city under stringent regulations. If ...

Medical marijuana laws may have prevailed in California, but some counties are doing whatever they can to get around them. In an ironic twist of roles, counties like Riverside are using legal loopholes to keep marijuana out of the area. In Riverside and Orange County new zoning ordinances are keeping dispensaries out. City Attorney Greg Priamos took Riverside’s battle all ...

An Orange County man who pleaded guilty to running illegal dispensaries in Southern California was sentenced to nearly 22 years in federal prison on July 21, plus more than $4 million in fines and restitution. San Clemente resident John Melvin “Pops” Walker, 56, ran at least nine dispensaries in Long Beach and Orange County. He was indicted last fall by ...