The City Council decided to suspend the smoking ban for a few hours Saturday after medical marijuana patients pleaded for permission to light up at the Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana festival at San Lorenzo Park.

But pot smokers can only smoke [...]]]> More on the Santa Cruz City Council’s decision from CBS 5 in the Bay Area:

The City Council decided to suspend the smoking ban for a few hours Saturday after medical marijuana patients pleaded for permission to light up at the Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana festival at San Lorenzo Park.

But pot smokers can only smoke dope in a tent designated for that purpose.

Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana is a cooperative started in 1993 for seriously ill medical marijuana patients to grow and share pot to ease various symptoms.

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 [...]]]> 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.