medical marijuana

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. - Due to the current blizzard, the South Lake Tahoe City Council meeting on Tuesday, February 5 will start two hours late at 11:00 a.m. The closed session portion of the meeting will start at 10:30 a.m.

City officials said this delayed start will allow attendees to get to the meeting safely.

There are 15 items on the agenda including the final vote on a cannabis use ordinance and first reading on a mobile vending ordinance.

The City of South Lake Tahoe Planning Commission are expected to vote on the new cannabis ordinance during their meeting on Thursday, November 9 at 3:00 p.m.

The new ordinance will repeal and replace Article X of the City Code.

With what looks a City Council with three new members, the ordinance will most likely go before them during their first meeting on December 11, 2018. If Cody Bass, the president of Tahoe Wellness Cooperative and South Lake Tahoe's medical dispensary, holds on to the third council seat he will have to recuse himself from the discussion and vote.

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. - After a referendum to put a halt to the South Lake Tahoe cannabis ordinance was successful, a meeting held Monday was to work through the points of the ordinance Cody Bass and Tahoe Wellness Cooperative took issue with.

Led by the City Council representatives Austin Sass and Brooke Laine, members of the original cannabis workgroup, Cody Bass and some members of the public, about two dozen in total, spent three hours trying to come up direction for the city attorney to use in creating a new ordinance.

The City of South Lake Tahoe was set to start accepting development agreement applications for the six cannabis licenses up for grabs after City Council approved a cannabis ordinance on August 21, 2018.

That is on hold after 1,687 signatures were gathered and submitted to the South Lake Tahoe city clerk's office to prevent the ordinance from taking effect for now. Only 1,019 signatures were needed but those collecting the signatures wanted to make sure they had enough.

A unanimous vote of the South Lake Tahoe City Council brought applause from the audience during Monday’s special meeting. It has been months of expert testimony, community input, committee meetings, and almost two dozen public meetings that led to Monday’s approval of two new cannabis ordinances.

“You have done a remarkable job,” said local resident Oliver Starr on the Council’s sorting out what will be best for the community. Starr said they created an ordinance that is clean, safe and reputable.

For the second time this week, a group gathering signatures to get initiatives on November's ballot has failed to get past the first phase of signature validation.

On Friday, the El Dorado County Elections Department said the group attempting to grandfather in the existing medical marijuana dispensary in South Lake Tahoe and allow them to sell adult use marijuana failed the first count of a sample 500 signatures.

The Tahoe Wellness Cooperative at 3445 Lake Tahoe Boulevard is the only medical marijuana dispensary in the City limits.

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. - There will be an ordinance regulating the retail sale of cannabis in South Lake Tahoe, that is certain, but when it will be in place is uncertain.

During a special meeting of the South Lake Tahoe City Council Tuesday afternoon and evening, several areas were discussed from zoning to processes, and many were narrowed down enough so the acting City Attorney, Sergio Rudin, can bring a draft back at the April 17 council meeting. If there are no major changes that document can be voted on as a "first reading" with an ordinance 30 days later.

1/8/18 6:00PM Update: It has been confirmed that Tahoe Wellness Center has reopened their doors for sales of medicinal marijuana. It is unknown at this time why they closed as both the State and the City did not ask him to close.

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As of Monday, January 8, 2018, Tahoe Wellness Cooperative (TWC) in South Lake Tahoe is closed, but the reason for the closure differs between the parties involved.

California's legal marijuana marketplace is coming with a kaleidoscope of new taxes and fees that could influence where it's grown, how pot cookies and other munchies are produced and the price tag on just about everything.

Be ready for sticker shock.

On a retail level, it costs about $35 to buy a small bag of good quality medical marijuana in Los Angeles, enough to roll five or six joints.

But in 2018, when legal sales take hold and additional taxes kick in, the cost of that same purchase in the new recreational market is expected to increase at the retail counter to $50 or $60.

The Medical Marijuana Advisory Committee for El Dorado County will meet again on Thursday, October 12 in Placerville to discuss proposed ordinance changes to both the cannabis cultivation ordinance and code compliance ordinance that will create a civil enforcement process for marijuana cultivation.

Supervisors Sue Novasel and Michael Ranalli were appointed to the ad hoc committee in March 2016 and have been meeting with stakeholders since then as well as looking at what similar counties are doing in their communities. The Medical

The South Lake Tahoe City Council is holding a Cannabis Workshop on Tuesday, August 29 at 5:00 p.m. in their chambers at the Lake Tahoe Airport.

They decided to hold the meeting during the evening hours instead of their normal 9:00 a.m. meeting time in hopes more citizens would attend and speak.

No sales of cannabis are currently allowed in California outside of medical marijuana dispensaries. The state is finalizing their regulations and the City wants to be prepared as those are slated to start January 1, 2018.

There was one thing all speakers during Wednesday evening's Town Hall on recreational cannabis agreed on: People need to get involved, educate themselves and share their opinions with their elected leaders at local, county and state levels.

A panel of six people spoke to the crowd of almost 100 people (and another 300 who were viewing online) during the Tahoe Regional Young Professionals (TRYP) fourth Town Hall meeting in South Lake Tahoe.

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, CALIF. - As the State of California figures out how commercial sales of recreational marijuana will be handled in 2018, the City of South Lake Tahoe has adjusted the marijuana ordinance to handle residential grows.

With the passage of Proposition 64 in November, residents can grow up to six plants in their homes, and the City changed their medical marijuana ordinance to match the requirements of the new law legalizing recreational use.

"We will continue to stay open," said Cody Bass, founder and executive director of the Tahoe Wellness Cooperative after being told by the City Council Tuesday that he no longer has a Medical Marijuana Dispensary Permit to operate in South Lake Tahoe. "We are going to take this to the end."

One of his lawyers, James Anthony added, "They will be reviewing this decision in Superior Court."

A full agenda awaits the new City Council as soon as the two new members are sworn in on Tuesday, December 13.

The 9:00 a.m. meeting in the council chambers at the Lake Tahoe Airport starts with the Administeration of Oath to Brooke Laine and Jason Collin and will be followed by a presentation by South Lake Tahoe Police Chief Brian Uhler on what the passage of Proposition 64 means for the city. He will be joined by others from Barton and the Drug Free Coalition who will discuss the implications on the community with increased access to marijuana.

The Medical Marijuana Advisory Committee was created by the El Dorado County Supervisors to address taxation, cultivation, medical marijuana and other issues surrounding the use and distribution of the drug in the county.

Mountain Resort Television reporter Ashley Lindner interviews the Founder/Executive Director of the Tahoe Wellness Corporative, Cody Bass about the Control, Regulate, & Tax Adult Use of Marijuana Act. The Tahoe Wellness Co-Op is South Lake Tahoe's first and, currently only, medicinal dispensary.

California took the first step June 5 to regulate its nearly 20-year-old medical marijuana industry, one that lawmakers said currently resembles something out of the “wild, wild West.”

AB266 merges what were two competing bills and attempts to set up state regulations that will pass muster with the federal Department of Justice. It was one of dozens of pieces of legislation advancing through the Legislature Thursday as lawmakers faced a Friday deadline to move bills out of their house of origin.

There’s no shortage of views on the question of legalizing recreational marijuana in California.

That much was evident at a series of focus groups earlier this year, where 48 men and women representing a cross-section of the state filed into rooms with one-way mirrors to share their opinions. The research is aimed at shaping an expected legalization initiative for the 2016 ballot.

The former operator and members of a Diamond Springs marijuana dispensary are suing El Dorado County to recover seized marijuana, medical records and financial documents taken in a Sheriff’s Department raid last year.

The Pure Life Collective has been shuttered since the Nov. 17, 2014, raid, which resulted in the arrest of dispensary operator Kelly Chiusano. No charges have been filed.

It's a sunny afternoon at Kelly's Collective, a medical marijuana dispensary in Los Angeles, and Nikki Esquibel is getting stoned. But you wouldn't know it.

The 19-year-old, who has a medical prescription for marijuana, is "smoking" pot with a handheld vaporizer, or a vape pen. It's sleek, black, and virtually indistinguishable from a high-end e-cigarette.

That's the point, says Esquibel. "I use it mostly around my neighborhood. It's easy to hide." The vapor coming from the device doesn't even have much of an odor.

More than 64 pounds of marijuana was seized last Tuesday from a couple heading down US 395 from South Lake Tahoe to Rancho Cucamonga last Tuesday, according to reports by the San Francisco Chronicle and the Record Courier.

Mono County Deputies stopped the suspects near Bridgeport, CA. They were identified as driver Mark Bishop, 55, of Claremont, CA, and Heather Davis, 25, of Alta Loma, CA.

TRUCKEE, Calif. - Americans for Safe Access has expanded the Nevada County chapter of the national organization into the Truckee area. The first meeting is scheduled for noon March 9 and will conti...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - California's medical marijuana stores, which experienced a boom in 2009 when the U.S. Department of Justice said prosecutions were a low priority and then a bust in the form of...