The city of Oakland, California, on Tuesday July 20th 2010, made a tall leap and legalized the cultivation of large scale marijuana for medical purposes and issue permits up to 4 “industrial” culture of next year.

San Francisco Bay is looking to increase outdoor medical marijuana and allow the city to take advantage of taxing the farmers that do cultivate marijuana.

There was a 4 hour debate before the resolution of the board to pass the law, that pitted small-scale “backyard” producers against the supporters of a larger industrial system.

“Marijuana is going to grow as an industry. And someone is going to be a producer of high technology,” Council member Jean Quan said during the debate.

Oakland has already had taxes in place on the sale of medical marijuana, but the cultivation of the prduct was still in a legal gray area. Members of the Council have a plan to levy new taxes on producers.

The decision of the city is a separate ballot initiative across the state to legalize marijuana for recreational use of adult Californians will vote in November.

marijuana

The polls put support for the measure in November to legalize state approximately 50 percent of voters, and if approved, would be the first state to legalize all use. Many jurisdictions allow some personal use and sales of small, but not allow the cultivation of large-scale sales and recreation.

Federal law prohibits U.S. marijuana of any kind, but police have closed their eyes blind to the virtual medical marijuana.

large-scale cultivation in California so far has been dominated by criminals who are growing marijuana in national forests or groups of houses of culture, police say.

The toughest opposition to Tuesday’s meeting of the Council of the City of Oakland to the producers of marijuana sit on a small scale, he will be out of business by the new agro-industry. Outright opponents of marijuana use have remained silent.