Taking a decided step backward, the City of Napa has shut the door on pot. The Napa City Council voted 3-2 Dec. 4 to ban medical marijuana dispensaries within city limits. Council members voted to repeal a 3-year-old ordinance that, had it been implemented, would have allowed a single dispensary in Napa. The vote went against a recommendation by the ...

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 ...

Napa County is located just to the north of California’s San Pablo Bay. Along with 8 other counties, Napa County comprises the group of Bay Area countries in San Francisco. It is also one of the four counties of North Bay. The name “Napa County” may also refer to the Napa Metropolitan Area. In the 2010 census, the population of ...

Legal marijuana is coming to California, and it is increasingly likely it will arrive next month. That’s when voters will decide whether they want to follow the legalization experiments in Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, and the District of Columbia. Several recent polls show broad support for Proposition 64, the legalization initiative that will appear on the statewide ballot Nov. 8. ...

California’s largest newspapers want to see marijuana legalized at the ballot box next month. That includes both the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle, which formally endorsed Proposition 64 in September. Both papers argue the Golden State would be better off abandoning prohibition and regulating a legal cannabis industry. Voters are widely expected to pass Prop. 64 Nov. ...

A U.S. appellate court ruled in August that marijuana users, including medical tokers in California, may not own guns. The ruling, handed down Aug. 31 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, prohibits even legitimate medical pot patients from owning firearms. A panel including three of the court’s judges upheld a federal law barring all gun ownership ...

The group behind a proposal to legalize marijuana for recreation in California sued opponents of the measure in July, saying they were trying to put misleading scare language on the ballot to discourage “yes” votes. Backers of the Adult Use of Marijuana Act (AUMA), a ballot initiative that would make it legal for adults 21 and older to buy, possess, ...

When California voters passed Proposition 215 in 1996, they created the first legal medical marijuana system in the world. Also known as the Compassionate Use Act, Prop. 215 marked a watershed moment for cannabis policy reform in America and elsewhere. But what is California Prop. 215, and what did it accomplish? The Compassionate Use Act passed on Nov. 5, 1996, ...

A fight over taxes in the small Inland Empire city of Upland has landed at the California Supreme Court in a case that could determine whether medical marijuana dispensaries can survive there. The case started in 2015, when pro-cannabis activists collected enough signatures to require a special election so voters could decide the issue. Advocates have long pushed for a ...

Voters in San Bernardino will get a final say on Election Day whether they want to allow medical marijuana dispensaries in their struggling city. The City Council voted in early July to add a proposal to the November citywide ballot that would legalize a small number of dispensaries subject to certain regulations. Most council members were careful to stress that ...