While Oakland keeps taking steps towards becoming the first major city in the
United States to allow marijuana cultivation for wholesale medical marijuana use, the budding cannabis cultivators who showed up at Oakland City Hall Monday night wanted some kind of guarantee that their sizable business investments will be sheltered from the DEA should they come to town.
Whoever the lucky four medical marijuana farmers are will have to pay an annual permit fee of $211,000. That being said, they also stand a chance to make millions for themselves and the city of Oakland. Nevertheless, they are in unexplored legal waters and one of the principal threats out there will be the federal government and the DEA.
There were around 75 applicants attending the meeting to gain knowledge of how to apply for the one of the four (golden ticket) permits allowing for the development of medical marijuana on a large scale manufacturing level. From all I’ve read it will be a “blind selection” process.
Of course there will be rigorous environmental and safety regulations that will have to be meet by all four medical marijuana farms.
How can all of this be done when CA state law is in direct disagreement with federal law on this issue? Many of these applicants will invest somewhere around five to eight million dollars, and would like to know if the city will defend them if the DEA decides to come to town and do a search and seizure on their cannabis farms.
