Marijuana
A bill that arrived on Governor Jerry Brown’s desk last week could change where people can purchase and consume cannabis products.
Following a talk by Reverend Al Sharpton on banning menthols, a debate on policing and tobacco companies raises questions.
The Oakland City Council met on Tuesday night, the the last meeting before the November 8 election, and considered a resolution in support of Proposition 64, a state ballot initiative that would legalize recreational marijuana use for people age 21 and over.
A new wave of activists focused on life after prison set a national agenda for reform.
Oakland is predicted to become the capital of cannabis, as California’s first marijuana incubator sets up shop in Jack London District.
Since 2010, the Bay Area’s cannabis industry has been unionizing, in almost every case by the United Food and Commercial Workers, or UFCW.
Daniel J. Rush, a union official who has been at the center of a four-year FBI investigation, sat on the front bench in a federal courthouse in Oakland waiting to enter his plea in a lawsuit filed by the US Attorney’s Office that alleges he was involved in attempted extortion, money laundering and receiving illegal payments.
Oakland resident Sableu Cabildo was diagnosed at the end of 2011 with a kind of brain cancer known as an astrocytoma. It originated on the right side of her thalamus, the lobed mass under the cerebral cortex that acts like the brain’s switchboard, regulating sensory perception and motor functions. Because of the cancer, Cabildo has been steadily losing her short-term memory and her balance. She stutters sometimes, and to be on the safe side, doesn’t drive at night anymore.
To alleviate some of the symptoms of her cancer and the harsher side affects of her medications, Cabildo, 34, has a medical marijuana prescription. It’s helped to calm her mood swings and improve her diminished appetite. It also dulls the pain from the migraine headaches caused by her disease. It lets her sleep at night.
He might direct the largest medical marijuana dispensary in the country, but Steve DeAngelo isn’t scared of the government’s attempts to shut it down.
“The federal government has thrown everything they had at us and we met them and we pushed back,” DeAngelo said, referring to Harborside Health Center, where he serves as founder and executive director. “It’s a drug war machine that’s bound for extinction.”