Counties

Voters and lawmakers in California have been easing the state’s marijuana prohibitions for many years, in large part to fight the plague of racial disparities in arrest rates. But while the overall number of small-time busts has dropped, for both white people and racial minorities, the gap in law enforcement between the two groups is growing rather than shrinking, according ...

Medical cannabis could soon reach a corner of California where many would consider it out of place among the tourists, seaside cottages, and salt breezes: Santa Catalina Island. The resort island, three square miles and just 3,800 residents, is one of the Channel Islands located off Los Angeles. Just an hour from the mainland, it’s a favorite Southern California vacation ...

When you think of marijuana, “athletic” probably isn’t the first word that comes to mind. The drug is far better known for its tendency to induce sloth and depress motivation than it is for its ability to spark drive and fuel determination. But that perception is wrong much of the time. Many pro athletes smoke up, some during the season. ...

Most of the time, when you hear a dire warning issued by police about marijuana, you know it’s going to be a farce. Maybe not this time. In a typical effort to scare stoners away from their favorite drug, the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Department issued a warning in May that might actually make some sense: Wash your weed. We all ...

They call it the “California Way,” and they want to hold onto it. A group that supports small-scale marijuana farming is out with a series of billboards, bus ads, and YouTube videos promoting the mom-and-pop approach to the cannabis industry. “Craft farmers,” the spots say. “Small batch. Sustainable. The California Way.” This approach has indeed dominated marijuana cultivation in the ...

It has been a long time since Ricardo Montes and Luke Scarmazzo opened their medical marijuana dispensary in Modesto. But they are still paying the price. Montes and Scarmazzo are serving mandatory 20-year prison sentences for doing something that is now widely accepted: selling medicinal pot out of a retail store. Times have changed around them, but their circumstances have ...

Los Angeles is known for a lot of things, but two in particular, one good, the other bad: medical marijuana dispensaries and a large and growing population of homeless people. Now one of those things could be used to help deal with the other. City leaders passed a $2 billion program in 2016 that is designed to give homeless residents ...

A California sheriff’s deputy, a local postal worker, and two other Golden State residents face federal felony charges for allegedly trafficking large amounts of marijuana to Pennsylvania. U.S. Attorney Peter Smith of Pennsylvania said in March that the four defendants have been indicted by a grand duty on charges they shipped cannabis from Yuba County in Northern California to York ...

Stoners are lazy, confused, lost in the clouds. Send them on a quick errand and you might not see them again for a week. Such are the stereotypes, anyway. The first annual 420 Games fun run in Santa Monica was designed to bust those myths, but the pothead runners also took time to play along with them for laughs. The ...

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. ...