Tax season just ended, so I thought I'd talk about something specific to medical marijuana patients: the sin tax on medicinal cannabis that Sacramento voters voted into office in 2010 via Measure C. In a city council session early in Summer 2010, before the midterm election, the Sacramento City Council was having discussions about the medical marijuana ordinance. They were discussing making dispensaries licensed and legal in Sacramento City, when a city council member thought it would be prudent if they put a marijuana tax on the ballot. The idea behind it was that if Prop 19 made it legal for the recreational use of cannabis, they would need a tax structure in place in order to make

Spring has sprung and the time has come for everyone to plant their gardens. If you live in a residential zone in Sacramento, you most likely won't be legally employing the sunshine to nourish your marijuana plants. It has been totally illegal for a few years now to plant any cannabis outdoors or indoors in the County of Sacramento, This was all due to a ban passed by the County Board of Supervisors in 2010. No law prohibiting cultivation of cannabis existed in the City of Sacramento until November 2012 when the Sacramento City Council passed it’s own ban on growing marijuana outdoors. The City Council pushed it through quickly and it now exists in the form of Ordinance 2012-045. This l

Have you ever heard of “drugged driving?” Well, the proponents of Senate Bill 289 are making it their job to bring this new phraseology into the vernacular of the California electorate. What precisely is "drugged driving?" On the surface this law seems to make sense – nobody wants someone who is incapacitated behind the wheel of heavy machinery. However, closer scrutiny reveals that anyone who has consumed cannabis in the last few weeks could test positive. While the law will allow for prescription drugs to be exempt, this exemption does not apply to those who choose marijuana as medicine because they can only get it through a doctors recommendation - which is not the same, legally, as a

Since its formation in 1970, the nonprofit known as the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws aka NORML has not had a presence in the Sacramento area. Originally formed by Keith Stroup on a mere $5,000 donation from the Playboy Foundation, the Washington, D.C.-based group has grown to have 12 chapters in California and more than 100 in other American cities and abroad. Bob “Adman” Bowerman took it upon himself to change all that. Newly retired at 61 from his multimillion-dollar ad agency Concepts, Bowerman became familiar with medical cannabis due to personal illness. “I got my medical cannabis card in 2002,” he told me in a recent interview. "Cannabis has helped me thro

Try to imagine you are in jail charged with a marijuana crime. You’ve been lead to believe that all your friends believe the exaggerated claims made about you by the media. You enter a courtroom, but are in a cage to protect the room from you. Feeling humiliated, subjugated and demoralized you look up to see a courtroom full of people wearing green ribbons to show their support.. You are elated! You can see your community has not turned its back on you – you have friends who care enough to support you. This is the power of court support. On March 9, over 30 supporters of medical marijuana filled up a courtroom in Yuba County for the case of Eric Salerno. The group was organized by Winagai