Guest Commentary, CalMatters

Camille Serrano is the Southern California Fellow for IGNITE, a young women's political leadership program based in Oakland.

As a woman with dual Asian and Pacific Islander heritage, I saw an uptick in hate crimes during the COVID-19 pandemic. It happened to me while I was walking a few minutes to the bus stop in Koreatown in Los Angeles. People shouted at and threatened me on my way to work.

Nicole Potter, High Times

The California Department of Cannabis Control (DCC) announced on March 4 that it was releasing a list of changes to the state’s regulations on cannabis. According to a press release, these changes intend to “streamline and simplify” existing cannabis regulations, as well as “enhance consumer protections and make permanent changes that are currently in effect as emergency regulations.”

An amendment to the California Surplus Lands Act that went into effect in January 2020 brought long-term leasing and land sales at Alameda Point to a screeching halt for two years.  The new law mandated that no government-owned land could be sold, or leased for more than a year, without first offering the land to affordable housing providers on a state clearinghouse.  After the city listed six initial sites on the clearinghouse, the process ended in January 2022 without yielding one single unit of additional housing of any type.

California would set new deadlines to dismiss and seal many cannabis convictions under a bill introduced Wednesday aimed at redressing anti-drug laws that disproportionately targeted communities of color.