Crypto Currency Financial

By MICHAEL R. BLOOD and HAVEN DALEY

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — One company rushed to expand its delivery fleet. Another has seen sales triple. The global coronavirus pandemic has left millions of people locked out of bars, restaurants and theaters, but it’s been an unexpected boost for some U.S. pot shops.

Marijuana users in the nation’s largest legal pot shop, California, and elsewhere are on a buying binge, as they stock up for potential quarantines or simply light up in search of relief during anxious times and government lockdowns. New York, San Francisco and Palm Springs, California, are among the cities labeling dispensaries “essential” businesses that can remain open during virus lockdowns, in some cases with limitations.

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Santa Ana police sought the owner and operators of an illegal marijuana business that was raided on Tuesday, March 10.

Police had received complaints from citizens regarding the business at 230 W. Warner Ave., said Santa Ana police Cpl. Anthony Bertagna.

“Based on those complaints, the vice and narcotics unit started investigating,” Bertagna said.

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Nearly four and a half decades after the late Peter Tosh first sang “Legalize it, don’t criticize it,” his daughter Niambe McIntosh became the first person to buy recreational pot legally in Boston.

“Of course: The sativa. We’re islanders; we’ve gotta have the sativa,” said McIntosh, who’d just done a little pirouette to celebrate the official opening of Pure Oasis in Dorchester, Boston’s first pot shop, referring to a type of marijuana.

McIntosh, an international cannabis activist who lives near the Grove Hall store, was first patron at Pure Oasis, which is also the first African-American-owned pot shop in the state.

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Boston’s first recreational marijuana shop will open Monday morning in Dorchester, bringing access to adult-use sales to into the city more than three years after voters approved recreational weed sales.

Pure Oasis will open its doors at 11 a.m. Monday at 430 Blue Hill Ave. in Dorchester’s Grove Hall neighborhood.

The shop is owned by Kobie Evans and Kevin Hart, both African-American, representing the first “economic empowerment” candidates in Massachusetts — marijuana companies where minorities make up over half of the staff or meet other criteria.

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The first Boston pot shop has the green light to open up Monday.

Pure Oasis will begin selling recreational marijuana products at 430 Blue Hill Ave. in Dorchester at 11 a.m. after the state gave final approval on Thursday.

Owners Kobie Evans and Kevin Hart said in a statement, “On behalf of the entire team at Pure Oasis, we are excited to reach this important moment where we will open our doors as the first retail cannabis business in Boston and as the first economic empowerment candidate in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. We want to thank the Cannabis Control Commission for their ongoing support every step of the way, Mayor Walsh and the City of Boston for their willingness to assist us through this process since day one, the City Council and the community who has embraced us.

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OAKLAND — A man suspected of conspiring with others to ship marijuana from Pittsburg to Atlanta, Georgia, was arrested in the Bay Area last week on an arrest warrant for money laundering charges, court records show.

Alhaji Jewru Touray was arrested in connection with a federal conspiracy and money laundering case based in Georgia. The complaint against Touray says that a confidential federal informant confessed to helping Touray vacuum-seal bags of marijuana in a home on Springhill Drive in Pittsburg to prepare them for shipment to Atlanta.

During the course of the two-year investigation, authorities seized more than to $400,000 in cash, according to court records.

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Less than a month after Cambridge’s attempt to ban a medical marijuana dispensary from selling to all adults for two years was ruled unconstitutional in superior court, the city announced that it has filed an emergency motion to halt the ruling — a decision ripped by the local pot shop.

“The City’s actions in pursuing an appeal reflect a contempt for the Court and the rule of law,” Revolutionary Clinics, one of the shops hit by Cambridge’s moratorium, said in a statement. “Rather than working toward solutions and sound policy that can have a tangible impact, the City continues to play politics.”

The announcement comes after a Middlesex Superior Court judge ruled on Jan. 24 that the moratorium on Revolutionary Clinics opening a retail pot shop violated the Home Rule Amendment to the Massachusetts Constitution and state cannabis law.

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Two Boston entrepreneurs’ plans to open the state’s third independent testing laboratory to check the safety of cannabis products — including vape cartridges — are being slow-walked as the city works to roll out a brand new marijuana licensing board amid an already slow-moving pot industry.

“There is a dire need for marijuana testing and that’s where we are putting 99 percent of our attention … but we need to make sure we don’t get bogged down in the politics,” said Dimitri Pelekoudas, CEO of Assured Testing Laboratories.

Pelekoudas and his partner Kris Nykbakken want to open a lab at 43 Freeport St. in Dorchester that would test the safety of marijuana flower, products and concentrates that can contain dangerous solvents and chemicals. State law requires all legally sold marijuana products to be tested for potency and safety prior to sale.

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A New York man was arrested Wednesday night during a traffic stop in Sturbridge, where more than 360 pounds of marijuana were found in the minivan he was driving, State Police said.

Trooper Michael Barrera was on patrol shortly after 8:30 p.m.in the area of Exit 3A on Interstate 84 when he saw a 2017 Toyota Sienna minivan merge onto the off-ramp at a clocked speed of 50 mph – 20 mph over the ramp’s speed limit, police said.

Barrera activated his cruiser’s lights and stopped the minivan on Route 20 East, police said.

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By STEVE LeBLANC

BOSTON (AP) — Massachusetts House lawmakers approved a bill Wednesday that would tighten oversight of payments made by marijuana companies to the cities and towns that host them.

The bill, which passed by a 121-33 vote, would give the state’s Cannabis Control Commission the power to review, regulate and enforce “host community agreements” following criticism that some local officials have used the contracts to demand more money from companies than is allowed under state law.

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