Best location for MMJ business?

[Geodesic]

I'm sick of living in the barbaric NE where they can take away your house and practically kill you for using pot which helps to control my fibromyalgia. I'd like to move to someplace with liberal MMJ laws and
get into the business. Not looking to spend a million $$$ or make a million $$$, just make a decent living with a small indoor grow. I've pretty much narrowed it down to CA (either near SF or LA) or CO (maybe Colorado Springs). I'm leaning towards SF so I can go to Oaksterdam and get up to speed. I've read the great info here and watched some videos so I know the basics but could use more education on the subject. Thanks for any suggestions.

 

[Geodesic]

Maybe here:

Spain Village Offers Land for Cannabis Growing

A Spanish village plans to rent out its fields for growing Cannabis in an urgent bid to create jobs and money to pay off its debts, officials said.

The Catalonian village of Rasquera, population 900, voted late Wednesday in favour of a plan to rent land to an association that promotes the legal recreational or therapeutic use of Cannabis by its 5,000 members.

"This is an opportunity that will bring money to the village and will bring jobs," mayor Bernat Pellissa told TVE television after the village council, controlled by a pro-Catalan independence party, approved the plan.

The village's economic councillor Josep Maria Insausti told AFP the plan is to create a public company through which landowners will be able to rent their fields to the Barcelona-based Cannabis smokers' association ABCDA.

Private consumption of Cannabis is not outlawed in Spain although it is illegal to sell the drug.

The village is suffering from Spain's public financing crisis and hopes income from letting the land will help it pay down its 1.3 million euros ($1.7 million) of debt.

"The village, like so many others, has many difficulties, a big crisis, a lot of inhabitants without work," said Insausti. "Now we are being asked to pay off our debts impossibly quickly for a small village."

He said the Cannabis growers will plant fields that are currently unused.

Source: Spain village offers land for cannabis growing

 

[JohnnyApple]

What are you talking about? You're forcing it right now, you should go back to the books do some research weed is nearly legal in Massachusetts and practically legal in rhode island thy even have a shop that sells seeds and hydrophonic accessories. If you're caught with a ounce or less you cannot be arrested in Massachusetts you get a 50 dollar ticket. Wow you know I didn think anything on this site would get my attention. Is it illegal, yes but calling us barbaric doesn't only make you stupid because your talking about your own homeland but it makes you even more stupid because you don't even have your facts straight.

If you wanted to grow weed in your house, do it? If you're not selling it who is going to find out? And even if the police found out to get a warrant to search your house you would have to be selling and growing a shit load of weed, and I mean bricks.

A bill is already in process of legalizing marijuana for medicinal and recreational purposes.

Like where have you been?

 

[JohnnyApple]

And I'm not answering your question bye.

 

[JohnnyApple]

Wow sorry I realized ne, is Nebraska duh lol sorry carry on. I thought you ment new England :/ well I made a fool of myself

 

[Vampire]

Chatted with a grower from Rhode Island and he said he has more med patient requests than he could handle; said he turns them away. Maybe be good there hey?

 

[Vampire]

Wow sorry I realized ne, is Nebraska duh lol sorry carry on. I thought you ment new England :/ well I made a fool of myself

Ooops regarding my RI suggestion; i thought new england too, hehe but it is legal there not practically legal in case you wanna go east.

 

[dersd00]

your house you would have to be selling and growing a shit load of weed, and I mean bricks.

 

[Vapedogg223]

What are you talking about? You're forcing it right now, you should go back to the books do some research weed is nearly legal in Massachusetts and practically legal in rhode island thy even have a shop that sells seeds and hydrophonic accessories. If you're caught with a ounce or less you cannot be arrested in Massachusetts you get a 50 dollar ticket. Wow you know I didn think anything on this site would get my attention. Is it illegal, yes but calling us barbaric doesn't only make you stupid because your talking about your own homeland but it makes you even more stupid because you don't even have your facts straight.

If you wanted to grow weed in your house, do it? If you're not selling it who is going to find out? And even if the police found out to get a warrant to search your house you would have to be selling and growing a shit load of weed, and I mean bricks.

A bill is already in process of legalizing marijuana for medicinal and recreational purposes.

Like where have you been?

For the record, I live in New England... You make it sound like a pot paradise! Nothing could be farther from the truth.

On the Introduce Yourself forum you said you were planning on going to the police academy. When I asked you what you were going to do if you hot hired and had to deal with a cannabis grower or user you responded:

Don't give me that premeditated crap, but thanks.

Sorry bro...Not cool. You're on here asking for help setting up a stealth grow, and then when you're a cop you will take the very same people trying to help now, and take away their freedom, along with everything else they have.

I'm done with you bro... Oh! and with the polygraph test...

your house you would have to be selling and growing a shit load of weed, and I mean bricks.

Sorry bro, but thats just not true...Google civil forfeiture if you would like to be educated. There have been houses seized because a guest came over and had "drugs" on them. There have been rented boats seized from rental companies because people that rented it for the day were partying and had "drugs" on the boat. Don't even get me going on how many vehicles are seized every year. Ever been to a DEA auction? Thats only after they use the seized property to set up sting operations to entrap other people. That is of course after they rip everything apart and shoot your dogs in the process. Many local police departments around the country fund large portions of their operations with the money that they get to keep after the citizen's property is auctioned off.

 

[Vapedogg223]

There an organization called FEAR (Forfeiture Endangers American Rights). It would be a good place to start. here’s a primer for you:

Why do we FEAR asset forfeiture?
Incredible as it sounds, civil asset forfeiture laws allow the government to seize property without charging anyone with a crime.- Until FEAR achieved the nation's first major federal forfeiture law reform at the turn of the millenium, the government was allowed to keep whatever property it seized without ever having to prove a case. Seized property was presumed guilty and could be forfeited based upon mere hearsay—even a tip supplied by by an informant who stood to gain up to 25% of the forfeited assets.- Owners were forced into the untenable situation of trying to prove a negative—that something never happened, even though no proof of any illegal act had been offered at trial.

Newspapers and television stories across the nation documented hundreds of cases of innocent citizens wrongfully deprived of their homes, businesses and livlihoods.- Eighty percent of property forfeited to the US during the previous decade was seized from owners who were never even charged with a crime!- Over $7 billion has been forfeited to the federal government since 1985.- Until the advent of FEAR law enforcement officials promoting expanded forfeiture laws comprised the overwhelming majority of lobbyists at hearings on forfeiture litigation. Meanwhile, prosecutors complained that police were less available to investigate crimes that did not involve forfeiture.

Over 200 federal forfeiture laws are attached to non-drug related crimes. Even a false statement on a loan application can trigger forfeiture. Physicians are subject to forfeiture of their entire assets based on a clerical errors in medicare billing. The government even tried to forfeit a farmer's tractor for allegedly running over an endangered rat. The federal government obtained a judgment of forfeiture against the prized sailboat "Flash II," once owned by the late John F. Kennedy, without bothering to provide notice to the principle owner of the forfeiture proceeding against the sloop. It took several years of expensive litigation before the district court in Massachusetts ruled the historic sailboat had never been legally subject to forfeiture; that the government had no right to seize and then sell the sloop; and that the proceeds of that sale rightfully belong to the innocent owner.

They go on...

Further changes are still urgently needed at both federal and state levels. Many innocent owners still face the untenable situation of having to prove a negative—that their property was not involved in a crime, or that they had no knowledge of criminal activity. Most owners of seized property still lack the financial resources to even bring their cases to court. A final hour amendment to CAFRA won by the Dept. of Justice allows appointed counsel only for property owners who have court appointed attorneys in related criminal charges, and for some owners of seized homes.
Innocent owners who are never charged with a crime still must prove their innocence in complex proceedings, where many cases are lost before even coming to trial. Most forfeiture cases are never contested, in part because contesting the proceedings can cost more than the value of what's been confiscated. "The average vehicle siezed is worth about $4,000," states FEAR president Brenda Grantland, Esq. "To defend a case, especially when you're out of state, they've pretty much made it cost prohibitive." Under civil asset forfeiture laws, the simple possessoin of cash, with no drugs or other contraband, can be considered evidence of criminal activity.
FEAR is a non-profit organization dedicated to stopping the drift into tyranny that unfair forfeiture laws encourage. FEAR membership is $35 per year. Because our focus is on legal reform, membership dues are not tax deductible. However, donations made to FEAR Foundation will be used to educate the public about forfeiture law, and are fully tax deductible.

Civil asset forfeiture laws pervert law enforcement priorities at your expense.

"Even if you're a law-abiding citizen who's never been convicted of a crime, local police are allowed to confiscate your property and money and keep up to 80 percent of it for themselves, with the legal stipulation that this windfall be spent only on programs likely to result in additional confiscations where the police can keep up to 80 percent of the booty for themselves," wrote Jennifer Abel in an October, 2007, article published by the Hartford Advocate.

The Spring 2007 edition of Justice Policy Journal features a 31 page treatise, Civil Asset Forfeiture: Why Law Enforcement Has Changed its Motto from "To Serve and Protect" to "Show Me the Money," in which Jared Shoemaker examines the negative impact on law enforcement goals and practices when police agencies aggressively pursue civil asset forfeitures as a means of supplementing their budgets, as well as how police agencies' addiction to forfeiture revenue leads to disregard for individual due process rights, sometimes with tragic and life-altering consequences for innocent individuals.

The perversion of law enforcement priorities was also the subject of an empirical study published thirteen years ago. Sociologists Mitchell Miller (University of Tennessee) and Lance H. Selva (Middle Tennessee State University) received the 1994 Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences Award for their undercover study and critical analysis of asset forfeiture's impact on police procedure. Based on twelve months of covert observation from within narcotics enforcement agencies, Drug Enforcement's Double-Edged Sword: An Assessment of Asset Forfeiture Programs described forfeiture as a "dysfunctional policy" that forces law enforcement agencies to subordinate justice to profit.

The Double-Edged Sword undercover researcher observed agencies abandon investigations of suspects they knew were trafficking large amounts of contraband simply because the case was not profitable. Agents routinely targeted low level dealers rather than big traffickers, who are better able to insulate themselves and their assets from reverse sting operations. The report states: "Efficiency is measured by the amount of money seized rather than impact on drug trafficking."

A reverse sting operation, where the officer becomes the seller who encourages the suspect to commit a crime, "was the preferred strategy of every agency and department with which the researcher was associated because it allowed agents to gauge potential profit prior to investing a great deal of time and effort." More importantly, the narcotics units studied preferred seizing cash intended for purchase of drugs supplied by the police, rather than confiscating drugs already on the street. When asked why a search warrant would not be served on a suspect known to have resale quantities of contraband, one officer responded:

"Because that would just give us a bunch of dope and the hassle of having to book him (the suspect). We've got all the dope we need in the property room, just stick to rounding up cases with big money and stay away from warrants."
In one case an agency instructed the researcher to observe the suspect's daily transactions reselling a large shipment of cocaine so that officers could postpone making the bust until after the majority of the drug shipment was converted to cash. This case was only one of many in which the goal was profit rather than reducing the supply of drugs reaching the street.

Thirteen additional years of policing for profit have now entrenched agencies in a dependency on forfeiture revenue that continues to subordinate the pursuit ot justice to the pursuit of profit.

They end with this quote..

"A conflict of interest between effective crime control and creative fiscal management will persist so long as law enforcement agencies remain dependent on civil asset forfeiture."

—John L. Worrall, Department of Criminal Justice, California State University, San Bernardino, Addicted to the drug war: The role of civil asset forfeiture as a budgetary necessity in contemporary law enforcement, Journal of Criminal Justice Volume 29, Issue 3, May-June 2001, Pages 171-187.

But maybe thats not mainstream enough for you... Well, here's an article from Forbes.com:

Constitutional Crossroads
Civil Forfeiture Laws And The Continued Assault On Private Property
by Chip Mellor

Your property is guilty until you prove it innocent.


Civil forfeiture laws represent one of the most serious assaults on private property rights in the nation today. Under civil forfeiture, police and prosecutors can seize your car or other property, sell it and use the proceeds to fund agency budgets--all without so much as charging you with a crime. Unlike criminal forfeiture, where property is taken after its owner has been found guilty in a court of law, with civil forfeiture, owners need not be charged with a crime let alone be convicted to lose homes, cars, cash or other property.

Americans are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, but civil forfeiture turns that principle on its head. With civil forfeiture, your property is guilty until you prove it innocent. Civil forfeiture--where the police may seize property upon the mere suspicion that it may have some connection to criminal activity--threatens the property rights of all Americans. The overriding goal of police and prosecutors should be the fair and impartial administration of justice. Civil forfeiture laws at the federal level and in 42 states, however, dangerously shift law enforcement priorities instead toward policing for profit.

American forfeiture law arose from the British Navigation Acts of the mid-17th century. Passed during England's vast expansion as a maritime power, the Acts required that any ships importing or exporting goods from British ports fly under the British flag. If the Acts were violated, the ships or the cargo could be seized and forfeited to the crown regardless of the guilt or innocence of the owner. The British laws focused on seizing the assets because they could punish violations of the law even when they could not capture the violators. Using the British statutes as a model, the first U.S. Congress passed forfeiture statutes to aid in the collection of customs duties, which provided up to 90 percent of the finances for the federal government during that time.

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld early forfeiture statutes. Most important to understanding these early cases is the underlying rationale for permitting civil forfeiture even against innocent property owners. The Court reasoned that civil forfeiture was closely tied to the practical necessities of enforcing admiralty, piracy and customs laws. Such forfeiture permitted courts to obtain jurisdiction over property when it was virtually impossible to obtain jurisdiction over the persons guilty of violating maritime law. Justice Joseph Story wrote that the "vessel which commits the aggression is treated as the offender, as the guilty instrument or thing to which the forfeiture attachés, without any reference whatsoever to the character or conduct of the owner." Justice Story justified these forfeitures "from the necessity of the case, as the only adequate means of suppressing the offense or wrong, or insuring an indemnity to the injured party."

Although the U.S. Supreme Court expanded forfeiture law during the exigencies of the Civil War, throughout most of the 20th century, civil forfeiture remained a relative backwater in American law, with one exception--the government used it extensively during Prohibition against automobiles and other vehicles transporting illegal liquor.

Modern civil forfeiture expanded greatly during the early 1980s as governments at all levels stepped up the war on drugs. No longer tied to the practical necessities of enforcing maritime law, the forfeiture power has become one of the most powerful weapons in the government's crime-fighting arsenal.

For instance, in 1986, the second year after the creation of the U.S. Department of Justice's Asset Forfeiture Fund, the fund took in $93.7 million in proceeds from forfeited assets. In 2008, the fund skyrocketed to more than $1 billion in forfeited assets for the first time in the fund's history. Changes in the law have had a profound effect on law enforcement priorities. Indeed, in 2008, it was reported that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had ordered Leatherman multi-tools inscribed with the letters ATF--"Asset Forfeiture" and "Always Think Forfeiture." Researchers point to evidence indicating that the use of state forfeiture is, likewise, extensive and growing.

Three factors work in combination to set up modern forfeiture abuse.

Profit Motive
Most states and the federal government allow law enforcement agencies to keep 90 percent or more of the profits from assets they forfeit. This money may be used for better equipment, nicer offices, newer vehicles, trips to law enforcement conventions and--in states like Texas--even police salaries. Thus, law enforcement agencies benefit in a very direct way from every dollar in assets and currency they manage to seize and forfeit. This profit motive forms the rotten core of forfeiture abuse.

Standard of Proof
The second way states make civil forfeiture harder on property owners is to establish a lower "standard of proof" under which the government can take the property. As most people know, the standard of proof in a criminal proceeding is "beyond a reasonable doubt." That is, the state must demonstrate to the jury that evidence shows that the accused individual committed the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. This high standard exists to protect the rights of innocent individuals who might be accused of a crime. But innocent property owners enjoy no such protections. In only two states (Nebraska and Wisconsin) does the civil forfeiture standard match the criminal standard--"beyond a reasonable doubt." And North Carolina has nearly abolished forfeiture entirely. Most states, however, have adopted a mere "preponderance of the evidence" standard, a standard that is usually reserved for such things as contract disputes. In effect, this means that criminals have more rights than innocent owners when it comes to forfeiture.

Innocent Owner Burden
Finally, many states shift the burden of proof from the state to the owner to prove that he or she is innocent of the crime in forfeiture cases. In other words, with civil forfeiture, property owners are effectively guilty until proven innocent. The increased burden (including substantial legal costs) with proving one's innocence can result in owners abandoning rightful claims to seized property. And if owners do not fight civil forfeiture and the government wins by default, law enforcement agencies are more likely to engage in it. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the forfeiture of an innocent owner's property in 1993 under then-current federal law and since that time forfeitures have skyrocketed at both the federal and state level.

The net effect of these three factors is to increase the use of forfeiture by law enforcement agencies by incentivizing forfeiture through making it profitable for the agencies that engage in it, by making it easier to keep seized property (by lowering the standard of proof) and by making it more expensive and difficult for owners to challenge the action (by shifting the burden of proof to the innocent owner).

When public officials and their agencies have a direct financial stake in the outcome of their actions, courts must subject such actions to even closer scrutiny than is done now. Impartiality is one of the primary principles guaranteed by the Due Process Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The clause guarantees the right to an impartial tribunal in criminal and civil cases. In such cases as Tumey v. Ohio, the Supreme Court held that an impermissible bias exists when the fact finder has a financial interest in the outcome. The Supreme Court has also held that the Due Process Clause could be violated even if an official does not receive a direct benefit from a particular scheme, so long as his department or agency could.

Moreover, the relevant inquiry is whether the scheme creates a possible temptation--rather than a proven biased result. But until the High Court weighs in on the due process issues at the heart of civil asset forfeiture, we will continue to see private property increasingly at risk across the nation.

Chip Mellor is president and general counsel of the Institute for Justice.

To the mods... I know this is probably way off topic, so I understand if you have to delete it... I just couldn't let this stuff go without saying something. My sincerest apologizes if I've made extra work for you or unintentionally violated any of the guidelines with this post.

 

[JohnnyApple]

Ooops regarding my RI suggestion; i thought new england too, hehe but it is legal there not practically legal in case you wanna go east.

No no, I think new Hampshire and rhode island are the only states in new England that permits medicinal marijuana, but that's out of what 5 states?

New Hampshire Connecticut rhode island Massachusetts Humm, I'm pretty sure weed is still in the class with crystal meth. So until the federal law is changed weed will still be practically legal