Business

Conflict between state and federal laws over the legality of medical marijuana has left owners of medical marijuana dispensaries finding that their financial services can go up in smoke. They're caught in a legal gray area that makes big banks wary or downright hostile. Last spring, Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo., and 14 other members of Congress sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner seeking reassurance for financial institutions. The letter to Geithner asks his office to "issue formal written guidance for financial institutions assuring that Department priorities do not include targeting or pursuing institutions whose account holders are involved in a business ostensibly operating in compliance with a state medical marijuana law." No response has been received.

A notorious Mexican drug trafficking organization has been selling counterfeit Microsoft software on the streets and has been shoving it in authorities' faces by stamping fake Office 2007 discs, for instance, with the familiar "FMM" logo of the Familia organization.

In a sign of the growing professionalization of the medical cannabis industry, Mark Rhoades and Ali Kashani, the owners of the Berkeley development company Citycentric Investments, have teamed up with Debby Goldsberry, a founder of the Berkeley Patients Group, to open a number of medical marijuana facilities around the East Bay. Goldsberry, Rhoades, and Kashani represent a new breed of medical marijuana entrepreneurs: people expert in land use policy, non-profit work, and running cannabis collectives. It’s a set of services that is growing in demand as more states adopt medical marijuana laws and as more people try to navigate the byzantine laws permitting medical marijuana in California.