Grow Weed, Get Your Wrist Slapped Under Proposed California Marijuana Law

By Dennis Romero Thu., Feb. 24 2011 at 9:58 AM

This looks felonious to us.

Smoking weed? fairly legal, especially if you have a doctor's recommendation. Having personal-use weed? Same deal. Growing weed? Not so much.

Strange, because, if medical marijuana is legal in California, and it's sold at hundreds of outlets in L.A., the pot-shop capital of American, someone has to grow it, right?

A bill by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano seeks to address this strange gray area when it comes to California pot law. It would ...

... change the cultivation charge in California from an automatic felony to an optional one, giving district attorneys across the state the option of going for a lesser, misdemeanor violation.

Bill co-sponsor David Eyster, the D.A. of Mendocino County, states:

"When it comes to marijuana cultivation, one size does not fit all. The proposed change affords local District Attorneys the charging discretion to determine, for example, that a home gardener with a few non-medical marijuana plants will not be prosecuted at the same level as a profiteer operating a major marijuana plantation.
"It makes no sense that unlawful possession of less than one ounce of marijuana is an infraction, that possession of more than an ounce of marijuana is a misdemeanor, that possession of methamphetamines may be charged as a misdemeanor, but that growing any amount of marijuana must be charged as a straight felony punishable by prison."

Of course, as our friends at SF Weekly note, not all D.A.'s are cannabis friendly. And that would certainly be the case in L.A., where Steve Cooley has said that most dispensaries here are illicit because, he says, they operate on a for-profit basis contrary to state law.

So, growers in L.A., good luck, even if this thing passes.

Tags:

Ammiano, California law, felony, growing marijuana, law, marijuana, misdemeanor

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Big Mike

All I am going to say is would you arrest or punish George Washington or Thomas Jefferson 300 years ago? These founding fathers grew fields of marijuana for industrial hemp. Not only did they grow it they traded seeds and plants with other farmers which would make them today drug dealers. If you punish the American person that grows weed for himself you are basically punishing our founding ours ideas (the first law ever passed on marijuana was to have all farmers grow it for industrial hemp). If you are against our founding fathers then don't consider yourself an American hands down... That goes for all you law enforcement people out there.

Patriot1

I wish our Govt and Law Enforcement Officials had as much understanding and intelligence as you do Big Mike. Sadly, it seems their average IQ is not much over about 85. They just don't get that the American people want marijuana legalized. Those few that do, have given into gigantic payoffs from the pharmaceutical industry to keep what they see as competition illegal.

The fact is, marijuana is MUCH MUCH safer than the majority of their products. It is safer than alcohol. It is safer than tobacco. It is illegal simply because of greed. This is something that needs to change.

From what I can tell, a lot of democrats are somewhat open-minded on the subject. As for the Republicans, well, they don't seem to be willing to budge one tiny bit... Gary Johnson is one of the very few republicans that I have any respect for and I hope he is the one who we get a chance to elect as our next president! I don't know why, buy President Obama has let us all down terribly on this issue in spite of his own personal usage...

Big Mike

Lets not forget that in the history of mankind there has never been a reported document that a person has O.D from simply smoking it! In fact 0 people die each year from this so called "dangerous plant". Its funny that if weed was legalized this country as a whole would make more money, taxes would go down, even police would be giving upgrades on their tech (new cars ect.). If i was a police officer that still drove a crown vic i would love to have weed be legal so that the government would give the money to police departments which would then resulting in me (if i was a police officer) driving a charger R/T with 368HP. But the American people don't ever think about this why? Cause they are just thinking about the money they can get within a year, not thinking about the future.