Local Growers Give An Inside Look AT A Booming Multimillion-dollar Industry The benevolent outlaw “Nobody produces any better weed than we do here,” says Raul G.  Raul, a pot grower whose farm is somewhere between Santa Paula and Ojai.  Raul likes to think of himself as a benevolent outlaw, supplying “medical” marijuana to clinics and [...]

For the second time this fall, a committee of the Liberal-dominated Senate has amended a Conservative law-and-order bill, eliminating an element that would automatically send marijuana growers to jail for at least six months if they’re caught with as few as five plants. The committee altered the controversial bill yesterday to retain a judge’s discretion [...]

Pennsylvania — Not a single lawmaker from the Lehigh Valley had the guts or the integrity to join him. John Ray Wilson, 36, of Franklin Township, N.J., has multiple sclerosis, an incurable disease. He has no medical insurance, so the only way he could ease some of his agony was with a few marijuana plants [...]

When It Comes to the Local Economy, Pot Is Potent Were you wondering why your favorite supermarket was totally out of Reynolds Turkey-Size Oven Bags–in October? Or why every single pair of those handy little spring-loaded Fiskars shears were gone all of a sudden at your neighborhood crafts store? Here’s a clue: marijuana harvest [...]

Elected Officials in Chico and Elsewhere Struggle to Come to Grips With an Explosion of Pot Dispensaries Dawn Jenkins grew up in the Mormon Church, where her father was a bishop.  Her husband, Mike, has owned a pool-service company in Red Bluff for decades.  They have deep roots in the community. They also happen [...]

Pennsylvania — A state House committee waded into the national debate over the legalization of marijuana as it took up a bill Wednesday that would allow some people to buy the drug for medicinal use. ”The cultural wars of the 1960s have long since been over,” Rep. Mark Cohen, D-Philadelphia, the bill’s sponsor, told his [...]