How exciting.
◼ Pot initiative enters circulation This one at least is news.
Months ago, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said it's “time for a debate” on the legalization of marijuana in California. Now, some want to skip the debate and get to the legalization.
Wednesday, the first of three initiatives seeking to effectively legalize marijuana possession, cultivation and sales entered circulation. While there seems to be a rising tide of support for such a state policy change, it remains wholly unclear if any of the three initiatives would garner support from a majority of the state's voters. And, if one does, the potential impacts on Humboldt County are murky.
”Complete legalization would not be good for the Humboldt County economy,” said local attorney and longtime medical marijuana advocate Greg Allen. “But, there's no question that for the state's economy, legalization would be a good thing.”
After years in the background as the state was awash in controversy over medical marijuana laws, the debate over out-and-out legalization in California was thrust forward amid the state's epic budget crisis earlier this year. With the state then facing a projected $42 billion deficit, state Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, introduced a bill in February seeking to legalize, regulate and tax marijuana. It was the prospect of new tax revenue -- to the tune of an estimated $1.3 billion, according to the state Board of Equalization -- that seemed to give the idea a foothold.
◼ Search warrants served on suspect grow houses in Arcata
The Humboldt County Drug Task Force and the Arcata Police Department served three warrants on suspected grow houses in Arcata on Wednesday -- including one home within 150 feet of Pacific Union School -- and the task force was zeroing in on two others in Fortuna.
The five residences are separately owned by two individuals, according to task force Agent Jack Nelsen. No arrests were made.
Nelsen said the task force reported finding a total of nearly 300 plants growing in a home on the 3000 block of Janes Road and another on the 3700 block of Coombs Drive near Diamond Drive in Arcata. Those two houses are reportedly owned by Steven Robert Mialocq, who is currently out of the state, according to Nelsen.
He faces charges of cultivation of marijuana for sale, possession of marijuana for sale and maintaining a drug house, along with a possible enhancement because the Janes Road house is located near a school, according to the APD.
The APD said each house had living space converted into marijuana grow rooms and unpermitted electrical modifications.
On the other end of town, the APD was called in for a civil standby by PG&E, which suspected a residence on the 200 block of G Street was stealing power, Nelsen said. The responding PG&E representative found the meter had allegedly been bypassed.
No one responded at the small, one-story home with a peeling facade, but officials reported the sound of fans and the odor of marijuana and the task force was called.
After obtaining a search warrant, task force members loudly announced their presence and that they had a search warrant several times before knocking down the front door around 3 p.m. Inside, a curl bar and a couch were visible from the street.
”It doesn't appear that anyone lives in the house,” Nelsen said after agents made entry. “It's purely for growing and packaging and a crash pad, but no one is living here.
Talk about corruption!
ReplyDeleteAmen 10:51 a.m.
ReplyDeleteHow about "yet another meth story" ?
ReplyDeleteWouldn't that be lovely
Ploy # 1084: change the subject whenever the social costs of pot growing come up. Can't have people thinking that codling a bunch of armed, paranoid, millionaire tax cheats is ruining Humboldt County.
ReplyDeleteE. R.
They can grow all the pot and make all the money they want - just make it fair, make them pay the same taxes, and adhere to the same business requirements, ordinances and regulations that all others have to follow.
ReplyDeleteThat means paying social security withholding for their trimmers, unemployment taxes for their trimmers and field workers, sales tax collection, reporting and filing, water quality and discharge requirements...
And - since it is an AG crop, put in AG areas instead of taking up "affordable" rental housing, and endangering neighborhoods with outlaw wiring and diesel spills.
I'm with you on all that, Rose, but don't hold your breath. The parasitic model is deeply ingrained in the hills: any obligation to society is seen as a big conspiracy. If pot is legalized you will see them move to harder drugs. It's all they know and they really could care less what the cost is to the rest of us.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, our beautiful hills are effectively closed to the public. If that doesn't constitute terrorism, I don't know what does.
E.R.
My last comment bit the dust? Must have messed up the word verification.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I was saying
I don't understand the speculative argument "If pot is legalized you will see them move to harder drugs."
Harder drugs don't have the market that cannabis has. The competition from foreign DTOs is much heavier with hard drugs. There are no specialty varieties of cocaine. Coca, yes, but no market for coca. Hard drugs are exponentially more difficult to manufacture. Fertilizer and seeds is not difficult.
When wine became legal, wine bootleggers moved to... wine. The old cooperatives in California wine country came out of prohibition bootlegging. Who is to say that won't happen in this case?
Yeah, good points, NIce -
ReplyDeleteand if you lose comments, sometimes you can use a back button to get back to where you were typing, doesn't always work, but sometimes it does.
Nice is not correct or nice. He's yet another apologist for Big Pot. He's asking us to believe that a move to heroin and cocaine involves a manufacturing process, when all it involves is a fast car and a gun, both of which are common enough in pot country. In fact, many growers have been trading pot for heroin etc for years. You have them to thank for our soaring heroin problem. That too.
ReplyDeleteI don't know what to say. It is slim pickings trying to counter a speculative argument back by paranoid speculation.
ReplyDeleteAre you implying that pot growers in the hills have more influence on the heroin market than Baja/Tijuana smuggling rings and street gangs?