How was your 2010? For the medical patient, 2010 posed a lot of questions about what we might want the future of cannabis access to look like. We now have 15 States in America with some kind of medical-use legislature (Welcome Arizona!) and have had one very close encounter at legalization here in California, with Prop 19.
The failure of Prop 19 has paved the way for a similar but hopefully more perfect initiative in 2012 – with cannabis activists talking about legalization propositions on the ballot in California, Colorado, Washington and Nevada. Although failed, the vote was extremely close at 46% approval, demonstrating that the notion of cannabis legalization will never be an unrealistic one again. Also that cannabis use is no longer a fringe cause.
In October 2010 ex-Governor Schwartzenegger signed AB 1449 in to law reducing simple marijuana possession to an infraction, akin to a traffic ticket (which kind of took the wind out of the legalization prop 19 as it was written). This is great news and will surely keep people out of court and jail. Personally, I resent the fact that users of cannabis could still face a $100 ticket. I mean, why bother…? To me it’s pure pointless buzz-kill…it won’t stop anyone from smoking when no police are present and gives police officers reasons to give concert goers and the like tickets if they wish to, well, buzzkill.
In June 2010 Oakland revealed huge expansion plans for large-scale cannabis farming – as outlined by our blog, Oakland Considering Four Large-Scale Cannabis Farms, adding Two Dispensaries and then recently shelved those plans after federal officials and Alameda County DA, Nancy O’Malley sent warning letters stating that not only the farmers- but the council members who were proponents of the expansion could be held personally responsible and could be charged with breaking state and federal law. In Berkeley this July, the city attorney wrote and signed off on a measure passed overwhelmingly that will allow for six 30,000-foot marijuana growing operations in the city’s warehouse district, as reported in our blog, Expanding Berkeley’s Medical Ordinance- Taxation and Regulation; but strangely, so far the Feds have raised no concern over Berkeley’s cultivation expansion.
Even closer to home, here at Berkeley Patient’s Care Collective, we have had an exciting year. Our launch of PCC exclusive Top Ten Trading Cards were a huge success with our patients, garnering media attention from international magazine Treating Yourself, award winning Mother Jones, wildly popular cannabis blog Toke of the Town and many more. This year we connected with our online patient community more than ever before- through our website, Facebook, Twitter and Weedmaps. Courtesy of Weedmaps, we began posting our entire menu on our website daily for our patient’s convenience!
We are looking forward to 2011 which will mark PCC’s 10th YEAR in business! Watch this space for more on how we will be celebrating this important milestone! Tomorrow we hope to publish a fun list of New Years celebrations so come back to find out what you’ll be doing if you need a little inspiration! From all of us at PCC, THANK YOU for supporting us in 2010. We hope to continue providing our stellar service, in person and online for many more years to come!
Other 2010 news round-up can be found here at The SF Weekly Snitch: The Year in Pot; LA Weekly Year in Review: Top Food and Pot Stories; Cannabis Culture Mag: A Banner Year for Bhang; and Bay Citizen: 2010 Top News