Category: In the News

Female leaders of the cannabis industry in the Bay Area shared their secrets of success with other women who want to stake a claim in the business during a gathering Thursday night hosted by Women Grow. The networking event featured presentations by women including Lynnette Shaw, the “godmother” of medical marijuana dispensaries; Sherry Glaser, operator of a Mendocino County medical dispensary and “bed, bud and breakfast” inn; and Jazmin Hupp, co-founder and chief executive officer of Women Grow, the nation’s largest cannabis professional networking organization. “There is a lot of interest by women to get into this business,” Hupp said in an interview. “The idea of these networking events is to get more people involved. We want to see fresh faces all the time at our meetings.” Shaw, the founder of Fairfax-based Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana, the nation’s first marijuana dispensary recounted her lengthy legal battles against then-presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and her quest to keep the operation alive. Opened in 1996, the North Bay enterprise was the oldest operating marijuana dispensary until it was closed down by court order in 2011. In October 2015, Shaw won a ruling that stated the federal government can’t interfere with, or shut down, medical marijuana dispensaries if they comply with state laws.

The federal war on legal medical marijuana providers is paused for now, thanks to a major legal victory in California. Lynnette Shaw, who is one of California’s oldest dispensary operators prevailed Wednesday in her bid to overturn a nineteen year-old civil injunction barring her from the cannabis trade for life. Shaw won using the argument that Congressional law now forbids the Department of Justice from spending a single cent interfering with state-legal medical cannabis businesses. In October, a District Judge sided with Shaw and called the government’s argument “tortured.” The Department of Justice moved to appeal the decision in March. But the DOJ could see that they were losing the appeal, so on Wednesday, US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit granted the DOJ’s own motion to dismiss the case. Rather than continuing to pursue Shaw and potentially setting an even bigger legal precedent, the DOJ gave up the case. Shaw is now free to run a dispensary.

Medical cannabis pioneer Lynnette Shaw is back in business – or, at least, trying to get back in business.  In 2011, the federal government prohibited Shaw, who founded the first licensed medical cannabis dispensary in the country, from working in the marijuana industry ever again as part of a court settlement. But after winning one of the most significant legal cases against the government over marijuana in October, Shaw is trying to get back to doing what she loves best: run a dispensary. The 61-year-old believes the legal win gives her the ability to work in the cannabis industry again, and that’s exactly what she is now trying to do. Shaw plans to apply for one of four new dispensary licenses in Marin County, California, and also has her sights set on reopening her former dispensary, the Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana, at its previous location. That could potentially require another legal battle, but victory would be a fitting end to the story of one woman’s fight against the federal government.

Lynette Shaw, the self-proclaimed “godmother of marijuana dispensaries,” is thrilled that tech is helping bring cannabis into the mainstream. “It’s fabulous,” the 61-year-old said here Friday at the inaugural New West Summit, a two-day conference on the budding billion-dollar convergence of pot with technology, business and media. “I’m honored to see my godchildren creating all of this.” Shaw, who in 1997 opened one of the first legal cannabis dispensaries in the US, received a lifetime achievement award at the confab for her work as an activist in legalizing medical marijuana. And her “godchildren” were well represented at the summit, which wrapped up this weekend. The conference featured dozens of information booths and 30 panel discussions devoted to pot and tech and other topics. The buzz has been building for some time, said Amy Poinsett, co-founder and CEO of Denver-based MJFreeway.com, a leading maker of business software that tracks legalized weed as it goes from grower to dispensary to user.

In 1991, amid the AIDS crisis in San Francisco, a former jazz and blues singer named Lynnette Shaw was hired as the intake officer at the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club, California’s first medical marijuana dispensary. The modest Cannabis Buyers Club would eventually transform into a flamboyant weed emporium on Market Street that founder Dennis Peron dubbed “the five-story felony.” Shaw, who would partner with Peron in backing California’s Proposition 215 medical marijuana law, went another direction months before the initiative passed in 1996. She ventured across San Francisco Bay to establish California’s first locally permitted and regulated medical marijuana provider. Peron eventually drew the ire of state narcotics officers, who raided his club. Shaw and her small-town marijuana dispensary, serving patients with HIV, cancer and other illnesses, drew something else: a nearly two-decade legal battle with the United States Justice Department.

The Bay Area woman who opened the first licensed medical marijuana dispensary in the United States might finally be allowed to reopen her business. Eighteen years ago, when Lynette Shaw opened the Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana in Fairfax, it touched off a legal battle with the federal government that is still going on today. In fact, Friday morning, it was back in federal court in San Francisco. “I’m the only licensed dispensary owner in the entire nation that’s barred for life from working in the industry that I helped create,” Shaw said outside court Friday. Shaw is still barred from reopening the dispensary the Obama administration shut down in 2011. Judge Charles Breyer granted the injunction against Shaw back in 2002 because distributing marijuana was – and still is – a violation of federal law. But, last December, Congress passed an appropriations bill with a provision expressly forbidding the Department of Justice from using federal funds to inhibit states from implementing their medical marijuana laws.