For a moment two years ago, Los Angeles officials thought they knew how many marijuana dispensaries the city had: 186. That’s how many registered to operate under the city’s moratorium. The city quickly lost control, and the number soared: 500, 600, 800, now perhaps 1,000. …….CONTINUE

SAN JOSE, Calif. (KCBS) – More and more pot clubs seem to be sprouting up in Silicon Valley, even as one major city considers a different approach to medical marijuana.

Four months ago, the San Jose Cannabis Buyers Collective opened for business in San Jose, in an office building near Santana Row. That was the city’s first pot club. Now, there are at least two more, with several others waiting in the wings.

One man who recently tried to open a similar business in Gilroy said there is high demand for medical marijuana in Silicon Valley. “There’s people who are suffering,” he said. “You see them walking in. These people need relief.”
KCBS’ Matt Bigler reports
Cities are scrambling to deal with the boom in pot clubs, seemingly in response to the recent White House declaration that prosecuting medicinal marijuana should not be a priority for authorities.

Some local cities have passed outright bans, but San Jose is instead considering taxing the clubs as well as charging them a $10,000 permit fee. A City Council committee will consider a list of proposals in January, by which time the number of clubs will likely have climbed even higher.

PORTLAND, Ore. — At the newly opened Cannabis Cafe, people sit around taking tokes from a “vaporizer” — a contraption with a big plastic bag that captures the potent vapors of heated marijuana. Glass jars hold donations of dried, milky-green weed, and the cafe serves up meals and snacks for the hungry.
It’s all perfectly legal and, for cancer patient Albert Santistevan, it’s about time………MORE

PORTLAND, Oregon (Reuters) – The United States’ first marijuana cafe opened on Friday, posing an early test of the Obama administration’s move to relax policing of medical use of the drug…………CONTINUE

Before a 2007 moratorium, the city of Los Angeles had issued 186 medical marijuana dispensary licenses. Since the moratorium, nearly 800 applications for hardship exemptions have been filed.
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