Cannabis Law Group's Medical Marijuana Legal Blog
California’s First Medical Marijuana Chief Appointed
As part of a push to wrangle state control of a pot industry that has largely been subject to localized oversight, legislators last year approved the creation of the Bureau of Medical Marijuana Regulation. And now, they have a person set to run it.
Gov. Jerry Brown announced recently the appointment of the first medical marijuana czar of California. Lori Ajax, currently the chief deputy director of the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, will assume the role soon after a state Senate confirmation.
The move comes almost two decades since voters made California the first state to legalize medicinal marijuana. Primarily, the bureau’s purpose will be to create and enforce a more comprehensive set of rules and standards for the industry, which will range from marijuana cultivation licensing to guidelines that ensure environmental protection.
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According to the USCSA, marijuana is a Schedule One controlled substance. This means that Congress considered marijuana to be highly dangerous, highly addictive, and a drug that has absolutely no valid medical use. Despite the fact that we now know that none of those attributes are true, marijuana has remained a Schedule One controlled dangerous substance for more than 40 decades. This is as a result of lobbying, issues with taxation, and utter nonsense like “Reefer Madness” which was an anti-marijuana propaganda film made in 1936. This movie shows how marijuana leads to murder.
Researchers at the San Diego State University began to review public health surveys from around the country through a process known as surveillance. The date on these surveys covered the period of time from 1990 until 2012. What they found was, in states where medical marijuana is legal, average obesity rates are as much as six percent lower than they were predicted to be. Obviously, it would be easy to be skeptical, since the researchers would have to prove causation and also overcome data and empirical research that shows the opposite effect to be true. For example, HIV patients experience serious complications from unintended weight loss, and marijuana has been proven to be an appetite stimulant.
One of the problems with this is that while authorities are using helicopters and satellites to find a very small percentage of these illegal grow operations, and then spending millions of dollars raiding them, there is no water regulation occurring. If these were legal grow operations, they would have to register and get licensed and be subject to routine and unscheduled inspections from either water conversation agencies or the new Bureau of Medical Marijuana Regulation.
Hash oil, also known as butane oil, honey oil or “BHO,” involves using a solvent to extract THC oil in a highly concentrated form that can be smoked, used in a vaporizer, or otherwise consumed. The process essentially involves taking marijuana residue and adding it to a tube, where butane and coffee beans are used to filter the resin into a concentrated, thick, brown oil. This method is very dangerous, and when being performed by “chemists” with no actual training or education in chemistry, has often led to disastrous results according to a recent news feature from 
In 2008, the United States Attorney’s Office prosecuted defendant for violating federal drug laws, and he was convicted. His conviction occurred approximately two years after he had opened a medical marijuana dispensary in California. City officials and members of the chamber of commerce had attended his grand opening.