Oakland approves plan to license medical marijuana farms

Oakland City Council voted Tuesday to license up to four large-scale marijuana farms in industrial areas to supply the city's four medical marijuana dispensaries, and promised to later review policies that could include smaller and medium-size farmers. Critics, many of them small growers or patient collectives who said they risked arrest to supply much of the $28 million worth of product sold at dispensaries last year, complained that the new cultivation ordinance will put them out of business in favor of big-box, big-money growers with deep pockets and political connections.