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From ABC7 in Los Angeles:

Palm Springs could be the first city in Riverside County to allow medical marijuana dispensaries if approved by city council members Wednesday night.

The meeting will open with a public hearing at 6 p.m. Wednesday in the council chambers at City Hall, according to the agenda. The proposed law limits dispensaries to industrial zones. The city now has at least four dispensaries operating illegally, with at least one more waiting for council approval to open, according to The Desert Sun.

The draft ordinance states that dispensaries would not be allowed within 1,000 feet of each other or within 500 feet of schools, public parks, playgrounds, churches, youth centers or residential areas. Other provisions state that the dispensaries must be set up as nonprofit collectives or cooperatives, as recommended in the guidelines issued by California Attorney General Jerry Brown in August. No one under the age of 18 would be allowed to work in marijuana dispensaries.

In one of the largest marijuana seizures in U.S. Coast Guard history, a cutter scooped up nearly 10,000 pounds of marijuana thrown overboard by a speedboat‘ off the coast of Baja California earlier this week.

The marijuana, which was wrapped up in 137 steamer-trunk-sized bales, had an estimated street value of $32 million, said Lt. Kristopher Ensley, the commander of the cutter that recovered the drugs.

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Cocaine busts are more common for the Coast Guard. During that same period from 2007 to 2008, Coast Guard crews collected about 170,000 pounds of cocaine.

The Coast Guard’s last two sizable drug busts occurred in September, when the agency, aided by the U.S. Navy, seized two semi-submersible vessels en route from South America to the U.S., off the coast of Guatemala. Each of those vessels was carrying more than 200 bales — or about seven tons — of cocaine.

The SacBee with the story of eight men who tried to steal cannabis from a man who was growing plants for his own personal use. (SacBee)

Mendocino County sheriff’s deputies arrested eight Sacramento-area men Friday on suspicion of robbing at gunpoint a Laytonville man who grew marijuana in his garden for medical use.

The men, who range in age from 18 to 24, are from Citrus Heights, Elk Grove and Sacramento, and are facing armed robbery and conspiracy charges.

Detectives said the men learned about marijuana growing in Mendocino from reading the High Times, a magazine about marijuana.

They took six large plants - equivalent to 10 pounds of processed marijuana, said Sheriff Tom Allman. Each pound is valued at $3,000, he said.

The men were apprehended on Highway 101 and booked into the Mendocino County jail.

The apprehended:

• Adam Jin Casey, 21, Citrus Heights
• Todd William Hess, 22, Citrus Heights
• Alan Paul Roach, 18, Citrus Heights
• Ray Anderson, 20, Citrus Heights
• Brandon Gregory Bunning, 21, Citrus Heights
• Francis Strasser-King, 24, Citrus Heights
• Michael Cameron Ferrigno, 23, Elk Grove
• Samir Elie Nayebkhil, 21, Sacramento

In a shining example of how NOT to run a cannabis dispensary in California, authorities shut down the “Local Patients Advocacy Group of Santa Cruz” yesterday and arrested the operators.

This wasn’t your typical, law abiding cannabis dispensary. These guys were using the US Postal Service to mail cannabis from California to other states on the East Coast and in the Midwest.

The Mercury News explains:

The Postal Service inspectors were tipped off to the operation in 2007 because some of the marijuana was being mailed from Soquel to buyers in California, South Carolina, New Jersey, Virginia and Illinois.

From March to June, Postal Service inspectors reportedly seized 4.5 pounds of pot the men sent to buyers and confiscated thousands of dollars worth of payments sent back to the dealers, Carney said.

Police also found a greenhouse with over $1 million in cannabis plants, plus money, guns, ledgers, etc. A total of five people were arrested yesterday, and a warrant was issued for a sixth.

Rogue, greedy operators like this are not only abusing the law, but their actions are causing major damage to the medical marijuana movement in California.

Patients need to make sure they are getting medicine from legitimate operations, because incidents like this cast a negative light on EVERYONE involved in the medical cannabis community.