Medical Weed Ad Boycott Called Against L.A. Weekly

In an unsigned notice posted on WeedTRACKER.com the other day, a person calls for medical marijuana collectives "that advertise in the LA Weekly (to) pull there (sic) advertising and support from the paper."

Gregory Bojorquez

Medical weed vendor at a recent "Harvest Festival" in Hollywood.

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"Lets (sic) show them that they shouldn't bite the hand that feeds them," the person writes.

In addition to posting marijuana "product reviews" and "collective menus," WeedTRACKER, which boasts to be the "largest medical marijuana website," provides a kind of open forum for pot advocates to talk among themselves and spread the word about such things as Los Angeles City Council meetings and, of course, newspaper boycotts. As a result, it's difficult to pinpoint exactly who is calling for the advertising ban.

It is clear, however, that the proposed boycott comes after L.A. Weekly conducted a two-month-long investigation of medical weed shops and the L.A. City Council's years long inability to regulate them.

The Weekly published its explosive findings last week in the cover story "L.A.'s Medical-Weed Wars."

The investigation reveals that L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa tried to completely side-step one of the most controversial quality-of-life issues facing L.A.; city council members took major guidance from a mostly unvetted, but politically-connected medical marijuana advocate named Don Duncan while shutting out neighborhood groups and other stakeholders; and city officials cannot say how many non-permitted medical weed stores are open and who's supplying them with marijuana, among many other eye-opening facts.

The person who calls for the boycott obviously wasn't pleased with what we found, even though the Weekly takes local politicians to task for allowing non-permitted, opportunistic pot shops to give a compassionate cause -- the legal use of medical marijuana by truly sick people -- a very public black eye.

Regardless, Dogpatch Media founder Jon Furry, who operates WeedTRACKER out of Sacramento, seems eager to promote the advertising ban.

Dogpatch Media/WeedTRACKER recently wrote on its Twitter account: "Collectives: Pull Your Ads From LA Weekly!: The rag mag known as LA Weekly has really been treating us badly lately." Then there's a link to the boycott notice on WeedTRACKER.

Furry takes an interesting position that's loaded with self-interest. Dogpatch Media, the "producers" of WeedTRACKER, doesn't claim to be a non-profit medical marijuana organization advocating on the behalf of sick patients. Instead, a "profitable" Dogpatch Media describes its services as one of "alternative advertising."

It also reads on the Dogpatch Media Web site: "Take advantage of our resources and market your product to highly targeted audiences."

As L.A. Weekly found in its investigation, things aren't always what they appear to be when it comes to medical marijuana in California.