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NORTHERN CALIFORNIA – In what supporters are calling a historic action, on Friday California Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law the most comprehensive medical marijuana regulation legislation ever seen in the state of California.
North Coast Sen. Mike McGuire worked to find common ground and build a strong coalition of support behind SB 643 – The Medical Marijuana Regulation and Safety Act, signed into law on Friday.
“From seed to sale, for the first time in our state’s history, medical marijuana will now be regulated across the state of California,” Sen. Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg) said. “Voters passed Proposition 215 nearly 20 years ago and the promised rules and regulations from the legislature were never advanced and our communities and environment have been paying the price ever since. This is a historic day for our state and generations of Californians will benefit from these sweeping rules and regulations that will protect our neighborhoods, our environment and the safety of patients.”
McGuire represents the North Coast of California – including Lake County – where the majority of marijuana is grown in the nation.
“These regulations are long overdue and I’m thrilled that we were able to work together to find common ground on these historic medical marijuana regulations for our state,” McGuire said. “The time is now.”
SB 643 was part of a three-bill package that moved forward through the Legislature together. Paired with AB 266 and AB 243, the three bills are meant to change the face of a multibillion dollar industry that has gone largely unregulated for almost 20 years.
“After the hard work of countless individuals over the last 20 years, we have finally been able to pass the strongest medical marijuana regulation package in the country,” McGuire said. “I want to thank our partners in the State Assembly, Gov. Brown and the hundreds of folks who have put in thousands of hours over the past eight months to ensure this bill was signed into law.”
The new laws cover every aspect of the commercial medical marijuana industry which would be regulated and subject to licensure – both by the state and local authorities.
The bills create a Bureau of Medical Marijuana Regulation under the Department of Consumer Affairs led by a Director who will be confirmed by the Senate.
That new bureau will develop detailed rules by January 2017, and businesses will begin to apply for state licenses in January 2018, at which point the current system of collectives and cooperatives will be phased out. Medical marijuana businesses will need to obtain local approval to continue operating.
Cities and counties will be eligible for grants from the Marijuana Production and Environmental Mitigation Fund. These monies can be used for local law enforcement activities and environmental cleanup.
Key to SB 643 are provisions that will track and trace all marijuana products, and a provision that will once and for all make medical marijuana officially an agricultural product in California.
Cultivators will have to abide by the same rules and regulations as all other agriculture, including water use, water discharge, pesticide and insecticide use and more.
SB 643 also includes provisions governing indoor and outdoor cultivation standards for small, medium and large growers to ensure that best practices related to land conversion, grading and electricity usage are instituted.
The bill makes sure that the environment is cared for and that the products are safe, while also mandating strict standards for transportation to ensure that no marijuana is diverted out of state for illegal use.
“We applaud Gov. Brown and the legislature for adopting a much-needed regulatory framework for the cultivation and distribution of medical marijuana in California,” said Lauren Vazquez, Oakland-based deputy director of communications for the Marijuana Policy Project.
“This is an important and long-awaited step forward not only for medical marijuana patients and providers, but also for the state as a whole,” Vazquez said. “Nearly 20 years ago, California paved the way for patients’ rights to access medical marijuana. Finally, it is following in the footsteps of states around the country that have proven that regulating marijuana works.
Vazquez said the regulations will ensure patients have legal, safe, and consistent access to medical marijuana, with the new guidelines for testing and labeling products ensuring that patients will know what they are getting and that it meets appropriate standards for quality.
“We hope localities that have banned medical marijuana establishments will rethink their policies now that these establishments have clear and uniform rules to follow,” Vazquez said. “Seriously ill patients in many of these areas are being forced to travel many miles to legally obtain medical marijuana. Communities should be working to make life easier for their most vulnerable citizens, not placing additional burdens on them.”
Board of Equalization Vice Chair George Runner, who also sponsored the legislation, said he was pleased that the governor signed the package.
“This regulatory package provides much-needed state oversight of the medical marijuana industry while recognizing that every California community is different," said Runner. “The new laws will help improve public safety and bring about greater tax compliance.”
Banking still remains an issue
Some concerns, however, remain, according to State Board of Equalization Board Member Fiona Ma, who represents Lake County, and Assemblyman Jim Wood (D-North Coast).
While applauding the effort, Ma said the issue of banking remains unaddressed.
In a rare parliamentary procedural exception, in the final hours of the regular 2014 Legislative session on Friday, Sept. 11, Wood introduced AB 1549 to address the urgent matter of the lack of banking opportunities for the legal cannabis industry in California. Ma sponsored the legislation, written by Wood.
The bill is the starting point for discussions amongst stakeholders and will be heard in committee early next year when the Legislature reconvenes, Ma and Wood reported.
“Forty-three states today allow some form of legal cannabis or hemp access under state and/or local laws. However, not one state allows individuals access to banks or credit unions which creates a huge safety concern when millions of dollars remain unbanked on our streets, homes and businesses,” said Wood.
“Our currency still says 'this note is legal tender for all debts, public and private' and yet we are still forcing cannabis businesses to use cash-only in a digital world,” said Ma. “By failing to conform our laws with their business needs and not allowing access to bank accounts, we are creating a whole society of third-class citizens.”
Passed by voters in 1996, Proposition 215, “The Compassionate Use Act,” requires the creation of nonprofit cooperatives that would register with the State Board of Equalization and pay sales taxes on products sold.
Last year, the State Board of Equalization collected about $44 million in sales tax from the licensed medicinal cannabis dispensaries that represent about 25 percent of the dispensaries in operation in California, Ma reported.
However, given the federal government’s classification of marijuana as a Schedule I Controlled Substance, banks and credits unions cannot provide banking services to medicinal cannabis operations without risking the threat of criminal prosecution, according to Ma.
Ma said this remains true even if financial institutions follow the federal guidance issued by the Department of Justice and Department of Treasury, via the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network which oversees Bank Secrecy Act compliance.
For those financial institutions willing to take on the enhanced compliance for banking cannabis, Ma said they face an additional threat of risking their eligibility to participate in the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., or FDIC, or National Credit Union Administration, which guarantees deposits for credit unions similar to the FDIC’s guarantee for bank deposits.
She said this has the effect of forcing medicinal cannabis operations to remain strictly cash operations, making compliance and enforcement of California tax law significantly more difficult.
Medicinal cannabis operations also do not have access to checking accounts, ACH transactions or credit lines to finance their day-to-day operations or opportunities to expand, Ma said.
The all-cash nature of medicinal cannabis dispensaries operations includes employees, which Ma said exposes them to liability for federal and state tax withholding errors, and prevents them from participating in the Social Security program.
Because the medicinal cannabis industry operates on a cash basis, employees, patients and neighborhood residents are at greater risk of violent crime, Ma said.
In July, the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee voted 16-14 to allow cannabis operators access to the federal banking services. This historic vote was on the heels of the Federal Reserve System denying Master Account status to a newly formed compliance-based credit union in Denver who was prepared to bank the now-legal cannabis industry in Colorado. The credit union has since filed a lawsuit demanding “equal access” to the payments system.
On July 31, Ma convened a banking stakeholder meeting in Sacramento. “The consensus from this meeting was that until the federal government affirmatively addresses many of the conflicting federal and state laws, California needs to step up and find a creative and feasible legislative proposal to bank the unbanked in our state,” Ma said.
“In order to continue serving our customers and for the sake of the security of our community, people who work in credit unions and banks need to have a place at the table to ensure any laws and regulations are feasible,” stated Janet Sanchez, senior vice president of Community Credit Union of Southern Humboldt. “This will make sure financial institutions are willing and able to participate.”
The introduction of AB 1549 has the support of Congressman Ted Lieu, who is cosponsor of HR 2076 in Congress to provide banking access to marijuana-related businesses.
“I look forward to working with my colleagues at the federal and state level to ensure we update our state and federal banking laws to allow cannabis providers and consumers the full range of financial access,” Lieu said.
LUCERNE, Calif. – District 3 Supervisor Jim Steele will host a town hall in Lucerne on Saturday, Oct. 17, to discuss various topics of interest to the Lucerne and broader Lake County community.
The meeting will begin at 4 p.m. at the Marymount California University Lakeside Campus, 3700 Country Club Drive.
Topics on the agenda include an update on the Valley fire, fire preparedness, a petition for a new water system owner, trash problems and solutions, Caltrans project update and a proposal for an art colony sculpture.
Supervisor Steele also will take questions from the floor.
For more information contact Supervisor Steele at
GLENHAVEN, Calif. – A Thursday evening structure fire did major damage to a Glenhaven home, displacing its residents.
The fire in the 9500 block of Harbor Drive was reported shortly before 5:45 p.m., according to radio reports.
Firefighters with Northshore Fire and Cal Fire arrived a short time later, reporting that they found a working structure fire in the lakeside home.
It took them about an hour to knock the fire down, with a few additional hours of mop up, based on reports from the scene.
Northshore Fire Capt. Dave Emmel said the large two-story home sustained significant damage to one of its sides, as well as heavy smoke damage throughout the structure.
He said the fire displaced two people – one of whom was at home at the time – along with one dog and 16 cats.
Red Cross was called to assist the home's human residents, while Animal Care and Control responded to help collect the animals, Emmel said.
The cause of the fire was a candle that was knocked over by some of the unattended pets, he said.
Emmel did not have a dollar estimate for the amount of damage the fire did to the home.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
The first color images of Pluto’s atmospheric hazes, returned by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft last week, reveal that the hazes are blue.
“Who would have expected a blue sky in the Kuiper Belt? It’s gorgeous,” said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Boulder, Colorado.
The haze particles themselves are likely gray or red, but the way they scatter blue light has gotten the attention of the New Horizons science team.
“That striking blue tint tells us about the size and composition of the haze particles,” said science team researcher Carly Howett, also of SwRI. “A blue sky often results from scattering of sunlight by very small particles. On Earth, those particles are very tiny nitrogen molecules. On Pluto they appear to be larger — but still relatively small — soot-like particles we call tholins.”
Scientists believe the tholin particles form high in the atmosphere, where ultraviolet sunlight breaks apart and ionizes nitrogen and methane molecules and allows them to react with one another to form more and more complex negatively and positively charged ions.
When they recombine, they form very complex macromolecules, a process first found to occur in the upper atmosphere of Saturn’s moon Titan.
The more complex molecules continue to combine and grow until they become small particles; volatile gases condense and coat their surfaces with ice frost before they have time to fall through the atmosphere to the surface, where they add to Pluto’s red coloring.
In a second significant finding, New Horizons has detected numerous small, exposed regions of water ice on Pluto. The discovery was made from data collected by the Ralph spectral composition mapper on New Horizons.
“Large expanses of Pluto don’t show exposed water ice,” said science team member Jason Cook, of SwRI, “because it’s apparently masked by other, more volatile ices across most of the planet. Understanding why water appears exactly where it does, and not in other places, is a challenge that we are digging into.”
A curious aspect of the detection is that the areas showing the most obvious water ice spectral signatures correspond to areas that are bright red in recently released color images.
“I’m surprised that this water ice is so red,” says Silvia Protopapa, a science team member from the University of Maryland, College Park. “We don’t yet understand the relationship between water ice and the reddish tholin colorants on Pluto's surface.”
The New Horizons spacecraft is currently 3.1 billion miles from Earth, with all systems healthy and operating normally.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Next week state officials will honor Lake County Animal Care and Control and its Lake Evacuation and Animal Protection volunteer group for their efforts to evacuate and shelter animals during the Rocky fire.
CaliforniaVolunteers, the state office that manages programs and initiatives aimed at increasing the number of Californians engaged in service and volunteering, and the Office of the Governor selected Animal Care and Control and LEAP for California’s 2015 Governor’s Volunteering and Service Award for Governmental Agency of the Year, according to spokeswoman Monica Hassan.
Hassan said the annual award will be presented in a ceremony beginning at 10 a.m. Thursday, Oct. 15, on the West Steps of the California State Capitol building in Sacramento.
The award, according to the notification Animal Care and Control received, “is intended to recognize a state, county or city agency that has demonstrated a remarkable dedication to engaging volunteers.”
Animal Care and Control Director Bill Davidson said LEAP, which operates under his department's oversight, was formed four years ago. “For the last decade and more, our first responders have increasingly run into the need for assistance with animal issues. The old idea of simply turning animals loose to fend for themselves during a disaster doesn’t work today.”
He said having a trained animal response unit available to assist in emergency situations helps everyone, and is important since many people will refuse to leave without their animals during an evacuation.
Since LEAP's founding, its volunteers have been trained in a variety of key aspects in emergency response, including the incident command system, wildland fire behavior, slack water awareness, radio protocols and advanced first aid, Davidson said.
Among the first of the group's half dozen deployments was the 2012 Wye fire, when it helped evacuate animals from Spring Valley.
Then on July 29 the Rocky fire broke out east of Lower Lake. That fire burned 69,438 acres over a two-week period.
In the video above, Lynnette Bertelli, one of the people who was key to founding LEAP, and fellow volunteer Karen Schaver speak about the animal rescue response during the Rocky fire.
Hassan said Cal Fire nominated Animal Care and Control and LEAP for the state award.
The nomination explained that the LEAP volunteers and Animal Care and Control “worked tirelessly for 120 hours with no rest” in the effort to evacuate 400 animals – both large and small.
Hassan said two creatures who were among those helped during the Rocky incident were given particular mention in the Cal Fire nomination.
They were Rupert, an Italian-speaking African gray parrot who was brought into the animal evacuation center in Lower Lake along with several other parrots while their owners got out of the fire path, and an exceptionally heavy tortoise that LEAP volunteers helped move.
“We were very impressed with them,” Hassan said of the local animal rescuers.
She said anyone can nominate an organization for the award. Nominees are then reviewed by selection committees and sent to the Office of the Governor for final review and approval.
Davidson was surprised to get the news of the award, but grateful, coming as it did in the midst of his team's response to the Valley fire, in which they once again were deployed, this time responding to requests to help some 3,400 animals.
“Although there is always room to grow and more to learn, we are now a well organized disaster response group that can and will assist our community whenever the need arises,” Davidson said.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The Federal Emergency Management Agency is continuing its work to register those impacted by the state's major wildland fires, including the Valley fire in Lake County.
A Sept. 22 presidential major disaster declaration granted by President Barack Obama activated the federal response and assistance from FEMA and the Small Business Administration in Lake County for the Valley fire.
The following day, the Butte fire in Calaveras County was added to the disaster declaration.
Between Lake and Calaveras counties, FEMA staffers have taken 2,861 registrations to date. Of those, 2,046 are in Lake County, according to FEMA spokesman Steven Solomon.
Fire victims have until Nov. 23 to register for FEMA assistance. At the same time, Solomon said those impacted by the fire are urged to file their insurance claims so that the eligibility for the federal assistance can be determined.
The federal assistance is aimed at the uninsured and underinsured, Solomon said.
He said 22 FEMA inspectors have conducted 1,591 inspections for both Lake and Calaveras counties.
Between the two counties, approximately $1.7 million in housing assistance and $648,000 for other needs has been disbursed. Solomon did not have available a breakdown of funds disbursed only in Lake County.
One of the latest developments in the FEMA response is that disaster assistance teams are now going out into neighborhoods in both Lake and Calaveras counties to try to find fire victims who may not have registered yet for assistance, Solomon said.
In the field, the full registration process can take place with the help of those teams, said Solomon.
He said community members who have concerns about being approached by someone claiming to be from FEMA should ask to see photo identification badges.
Two FEMA Disaster Recovery Centers also are available at the Middletown Senior Center, 21256 Washington St. and at 14860 Olympic Drive, Clearlake.
Hours for both centers are 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday; 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday; and noon to 4 p.m. Sunday.
To register, go online to www.DisasterAssistance.gov ; use a Web-enabled mobile device at http://m.fema.gov ; or call 800-621-3362, TTY 800-462-7585, 711 or for Video Relay Service (VRS) call 800-621-3362.
Solomon said FEMA will remain in Lake County as long as it takes to reach every eligible Valley fire survivor and ensure that they get the access they need to federal assistance.
Email Elizabeth Larson at