Fresno County

The struggling Central California city of Coalinga approved a groundbreaking agreement with a medical marijuana company in July, agreeing to let the business use a vacant jail as a cannabis production plant. The vote will give Ocean Grow Extracts access to the empty Claremont Custody Center, a local holding facility that closed in recent years, where the company will manufacture ...

California Democrats threw their support behind a public referendum that would legalize marijuana for recreational use. The state’s Democratic Party voted in June to endorse the ballot initiative, which would make it legal for adults over 21 to buy, possess, and use up to an ounce of marijuana per person. They could also grow up to four plants at home, ...

Fresno County isn’t exactly known for its love of marijuana. All cultivation is banned in unincorporated parts of the county, even for medical use. So are cannabis dispensaries. But one town in this decidedly conservative part of California wants to buck the trend and welcome the marijuana industry to town. Specifically, to the now empty Claremont Custody Center in Coalinga. ...

A California marijuana bust led police to arrest an ex-convict whose extensive face tattoos immediately gave him away as a gang member. Khamprasong Thammavong, 33, was arrested in the San Joaquin valley after police found guns and dozens of marijuana plants at his house, authorities said. He was booked into the Fresno County Jail on several serious felony charges, including ...

Fresno authorities plan to charge a 12-year-old – a 12-year-old – for selling pot brownies at school. The boy, a student at Sequoia Middle School in Fresno, brought his older brother’s marijuana-laced brownies to class and sold them to at least one other student, police said. That student became so ill hospitalization was required. The student recovered. It’s hard to ...

For the second time this year, a California court has upheld Fresno County’s notorious ban on marijuana cultivation. County Superior Court Judge Carlos Cabrera recently dismissed a lawsuit against Fresno County officials filed earlier this year by the ACLU. Cabrera gave the plaintiffs 60 days to decide whether they want to pursue two related claims in Superior Court or appeal ...

A gunfight during a robbery at a Fresno marijuana grow site left two suspects dead while their accomplices took a 15-year-old girl hostage. Seven men, armed and dressed as police, burst into a home in south Fresno in an attempt to rob the residents of cash and weed, police said. They pistol-whipped one man inside the house and then started ...

Authorities have accused a Northern California marijuana grower of starting a large wildfire while he was transporting material for a pot garden. The man, who gave his name as Freddie Alexander Smoke III, was arrested July 12. He was charged with recklessly causing a fire and cultivating marijuana, both felonies, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. ...

Sheriff’s deputies in Fresno County discovered two plastic hothouses containing about 400 marijuana plants Feb. 13. Deputies first discovered several hundred marijuana plants growing in an outdoor hothouse at a home on the 45000 block of Panorama Lane in Squaw Valley, in unincorporated Fresno County. While searching the site, detectives found four medical cannabis recommendations that pointed them to a ...

Fresno County leaders have closed the last door that still provided hope to patients and providers wanting to grow medical weed. County supervisors voted Feb. 4 to shut a loophole that allowed medical marijuana cultivation on manufacturing zone sites. Together with a general ban on pot grows passed in early January, the decision will make it impossible to grow cannabis ...