Law California

[Baron23]

How California leaders are fighting back against Sessions' marijuana crackdown

California legislators are fighting back against U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ attempt to crack down on state cannabis programs, launching letter-writing campaigns, proposing new laws and discussing federal lawsuits to safeguard legal marijuana.

“The genie is out of the bottle, so to speak,” said Rep. Lou Correa, D-Santa Ana, who’s calling for federal legislators to block Department of Justice appointments until the Trump administration changes its stance on marijuana.

“It is time that we address cannabis as adults.”

That defiance is tinged with concern: If an amendment that protects the state’s medical cannabis businesses expires Friday, along with the federal budget, it could give Sessions and other marijuana opponents a window to go after California’s emerging, multibillion-dollar legal industry.

But California lawmakers on both sides of the aisle say they don’t believe federal authorities have the resources or — aside from Sessions himself — the political will to target businesses and consumers in states where marijuana is legal.

In fact, they said Sessions’ efforts may be fueling a bipartisan push to support state rights on this issue, and to end the war on drugs once and for all.

“Not only are we fighting back, but we’re moving forward,” said Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, in a press call Wednesday in which she announced a proposed bill to legalize marijuana at the federal level.

Eight states, including California, have legalized recreational cannabis. And 29 states permit medical marijuana. But marijuana remains illegal under federal law, which still lists it as a Schedule I drug, on par with heroin.

For the past five years, an Obama-era policy has offered legal marijuana states some protection from federal prosecution. The Cole Memo, issued by Deputy Attorney General James Cole in August 2013, stopped federal officials from going after individuals and businesses in legal marijuana states if they were taking certain steps to keep cannabis from getting to kids and the black market.

Customers line up at the counter to purchase marijuana at Harborside in Oakland, Calif., on Monday, Jan. 1, 2018. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)

But on Jan. 4, just three days after California launched legal recreational marijuana sales, Sessions repealed the Cole Memo.

That decision didn’t trigger raids on California marijuana stores, and evidence of a federal crackdown on state-legal cannabis businesses has yet to emerge. But Sessions’ move did give U.S. Attorneys in each state the authority to prosecute residents for marijuana crimes as they see fit.

Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia and San Leandro Mayor Pauline Cutter joined 10 mayors from across the country in writing a letter to Sessions condemning his repeal of the Cole Memo, calling the decision “neither tough nor smart.”

“Reversing course now is a misguided legal overreach and an attack on cities where legal, safe, and high(ly) regulated recreational sale and use occurs, and on the majority of states where the voters have made their voices hears loud and clear on this issue,” the letter reads.

The mayors pledged to “do everything we can within the rule of law” to protect their residents and businesses from this “overreach.”

Garcia said the most important thing local leaders can do is to implement “safe and smart policies.” He said they plan to do just that in Long Beach, where three permitted medical marijuana dispensaries are already open under a voter-approved ballot measure, and more are coming soon.

“The push from the attorney general is difficult, and it certainly doesn’t give us clarity,” Garcia said. “But we’re doing the best that we can to implement the will of our local voters.”

In Washington, D.C., Correa is recruiting fellow House members from California to sign a letter he wrote to Senators Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris, asking them to block all Department of Justice nominations until Sessions reverses his decision on the Cole Memo. He hopes to get the attention of the Trump administration and President Donald Trump himself, who can be heard in video released Wednesday by the Colorado Springs Gazette pledging to support state-legal medical marijuana programs while he was on the campaign trail.

“This is not a partisan issue. It’s a states’ rights issue,” Correa said.

“Are we going to go back to the days of arresting people for smoking a joint? For self-medicating? I just think that that’s not a plausible public policy perspective.”

One thing still helps keep U.S. Attorneys in check: a budget rider that blocks DOJ funds from being used to prosecute medical marijuana cases that are legal under state law.

That rider, the Rohrabacher-Blumenauer amendment (originally known as the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment), has been renewed along with the federal budget each year since it passed in 2014. But with federal lawmakers at a standoff over this year’s funding bill, there’s a chance the Rohrabacher-Blumenauer amendment could expire along with the current budget extension on Friday.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, left, gets a tour of Bud and Bloom dispensary in Santa Ana from Kyle Kazan, a partner and board member, on Friday, May 5, 2017. (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Costa Mesa, who authored the amendment, said he hopes to avoid a government shutdown Friday for many reasons. But he said he’s not too concerned over how that would impact state legal marijuana programs, since authorities wouldn’t have any funding or staff to go after marijuana cases while the government was shuttered.

Rohrabacher said he signed Correa’s letter calling for a block on DOJ appointments. And he’s pushing for legislation that would make it clear that federal law can’t supersede state law when it comes to marijuana.

Lee, the Congresswoman from Oakland, on Jan. 11 introduced a bill that would make the Rohrabacher-Blumenauer amendment obsolete. It would block not only the DOJ but any federal agency from using funds to go after state-legal marijuana programs. It would cover not just medical marijuana, but also recreational marijuana. And it would cover states indefinitely, without having to be renewed each year like the current budget rider.

The bill — called HR 4779 or the REFER Act of 2018 — would also prevent banks from being penalized if they serve the cannabis industry.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra on Tuesday joined a bipartisan group of 18 colleagues who are urging Congress to pass legislation that would let banks handle marijuana money.

Since marijuana remains federally illegal, most banks won’t do businesses with the industry out of fear they’ll be prosecuted for money laundering. That makes cash-oriented marijuana businesses prime targets for crime, Becerra said. Also, he added, the current situation makes it difficult for law enforcement to track cannabis payments, and for businesses to pay their taxes.

“The future of small and local licensed businesses has been clouded by the Trump Administration’s relentless attacks on progress, in conflict with the will of voters,” Becerra said.

Lee — with support from Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Silicon Valley — on Wednesday also introduced the House version of a bill Senator Cory Booker, D-New Jersey, authored in August called the Marijuana Justice Act.

The bill would legalize cannabis at the federal level. It would also let people with federal marijuana convictions apply for resentencing or expungement. And it would reinvest funds into communities hardest hit by drug policies that have disproportionately impacted low-income and minority populations.

“This legislation will end this destructive war on drugs,” Lee said.

The bill already drew 12 cosigners, she said, even before it received an official bill number.

In the meantime, Correa is advising cannabis businesses to “lawyer up.”

“We all thought that we would be moving beyond a treacherous legal environment and now we’re back into a situation where you have to fear whether you’ll be arrested or not,” he said.

“All bets are off.”

 

[ataxian]

How California leaders are fighting back against Sessions' marijuana crackdown

California legislators are fighting back against U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ attempt to crack down on state cannabis programs, launching letter-writing campaigns, proposing new laws and discussing federal lawsuits to safeguard legal marijuana.

“The genie is out of the bottle, so to speak,” said Rep. Lou Correa, D-Santa Ana, who’s calling for federal legislators to block Department of Justice appointments until the Trump administration changes its stance on marijuana.

“It is time that we address cannabis as adults.”

That defiance is tinged with concern: If an amendment that protects the state’s medical cannabis businesses expires Friday, along with the federal budget, it could give Sessions and other marijuana opponents a window to go after California’s emerging, multibillion-dollar legal industry.

But California lawmakers on both sides of the aisle say they don’t believe federal authorities have the resources or — aside from Sessions himself — the political will to target businesses and consumers in states where marijuana is legal.

In fact, they said Sessions’ efforts may be fueling a bipartisan push to support state rights on this issue, and to end the war on drugs once and for all.

“Not only are we fighting back, but we’re moving forward,” said Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, in a press call Wednesday in which she announced a proposed bill to legalize marijuana at the federal level.

Eight states, including California, have legalized recreational cannabis. And 29 states permit medical marijuana. But marijuana remains illegal under federal law, which still lists it as a Schedule I drug, on par with heroin.

For the past five years, an Obama-era policy has offered legal marijuana states some protection from federal prosecution. The Cole Memo, issued by Deputy Attorney General James Cole in August 2013, stopped federal officials from going after individuals and businesses in legal marijuana states if they were taking certain steps to keep cannabis from getting to kids and the black market.

Customers line up at the counter to purchase marijuana at Harborside in Oakland, Calif., on Monday, Jan. 1, 2018. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)

But on Jan. 4, just three days after California launched legal recreational marijuana sales, Sessions repealed the Cole Memo.

That decision didn’t trigger raids on California marijuana stores, and evidence of a federal crackdown on state-legal cannabis businesses has yet to emerge. But Sessions’ move did give U.S. Attorneys in each state the authority to prosecute residents for marijuana crimes as they see fit.

Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia and San Leandro Mayor Pauline Cutter joined 10 mayors from across the country in writing a letter to Sessions condemning his repeal of the Cole Memo, calling the decision “neither tough nor smart.”

“Reversing course now is a misguided legal overreach and an attack on cities where legal, safe, and high(ly) regulated recreational sale and use occurs, and on the majority of states where the voters have made their voices hears loud and clear on this issue,” the letter reads.

The mayors pledged to “do everything we can within the rule of law” to protect their residents and businesses from this “overreach.”

Garcia said the most important thing local leaders can do is to implement “safe and smart policies.” He said they plan to do just that in Long Beach, where three permitted medical marijuana dispensaries are already open under a voter-approved ballot measure, and more are coming soon.

“The push from the attorney general is difficult, and it certainly doesn’t give us clarity,” Garcia said. “But we’re doing the best that we can to implement the will of our local voters.”

In Washington, D.C., Correa is recruiting fellow House members from California to sign a letter he wrote to Senators Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris, asking them to block all Department of Justice nominations until Sessions reverses his decision on the Cole Memo. He hopes to get the attention of the Trump administration and President Donald Trump himself, who can be heard in video released Wednesday by the Colorado Springs Gazette pledging to support state-legal medical marijuana programs while he was on the campaign trail.

“This is not a partisan issue. It’s a states’ rights issue,” Correa said.

“Are we going to go back to the days of arresting people for smoking a joint? For self-medicating? I just think that that’s not a plausible public policy perspective.”

One thing still helps keep U.S. Attorneys in check: a budget rider that blocks DOJ funds from being used to prosecute medical marijuana cases that are legal under state law.

That rider, the Rohrabacher-Blumenauer amendment (originally known as the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment), has been renewed along with the federal budget each year since it passed in 2014. But with federal lawmakers at a standoff over this year’s funding bill, there’s a chance the Rohrabacher-Blumenauer amendment could expire along with the current budget extension on Friday.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, left, gets a tour of Bud and Bloom dispensary in Santa Ana from Kyle Kazan, a partner and board member, on Friday, May 5, 2017. (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Costa Mesa, who authored the amendment, said he hopes to avoid a government shutdown Friday for many reasons. But he said he’s not too concerned over how that would impact state legal marijuana programs, since authorities wouldn’t have any funding or staff to go after marijuana cases while the government was shuttered.

Rohrabacher said he signed Correa’s letter calling for a block on DOJ appointments. And he’s pushing for legislation that would make it clear that federal law can’t supersede state law when it comes to marijuana.

Lee, the Congresswoman from Oakland, on Jan. 11 introduced a bill that would make the Rohrabacher-Blumenauer amendment obsolete. It would block not only the DOJ but any federal agency from using funds to go after state-legal marijuana programs. It would cover not just medical marijuana, but also recreational marijuana. And it would cover states indefinitely, without having to be renewed each year like the current budget rider.

The bill — called HR 4779 or the REFER Act of 2018 — would also prevent banks from being penalized if they serve the cannabis industry.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra on Tuesday joined a bipartisan group of 18 colleagues who are urging Congress to pass legislation that would let banks handle marijuana money.

Since marijuana remains federally illegal, most banks won’t do businesses with the industry out of fear they’ll be prosecuted for money laundering. That makes cash-oriented marijuana businesses prime targets for crime, Becerra said. Also, he added, the current situation makes it difficult for law enforcement to track cannabis payments, and for businesses to pay their taxes.

“The future of small and local licensed businesses has been clouded by the Trump Administration’s relentless attacks on progress, in conflict with the will of voters,” Becerra said.

Lee — with support from Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Silicon Valley — on Wednesday also introduced the House version of a bill Senator Cory Booker, D-New Jersey, authored in August called the Marijuana Justice Act.

The bill would legalize cannabis at the federal level. It would also let people with federal marijuana convictions apply for resentencing or expungement. And it would reinvest funds into communities hardest hit by drug policies that have disproportionately impacted low-income and minority populations.

“This legislation will end this destructive war on drugs,” Lee said.

The bill already drew 12 cosigners, she said, even before it received an official bill number.

In the meantime, Correa is advising cannabis businesses to “lawyer up.”

“We all thought that we would be moving beyond a treacherous legal environment and now we’re back into a situation where you have to fear whether you’ll be arrested or not,” he said.

“All bets are off.”

Delivery is the way to receive CANNABIS. (civilized)

Water path is the way some like to MEDICATE!

 

[Baron23]

Wow, is this messed up or what. So....I just wonder what other legal crops in CA are subject to a requirement to have both state AND local licensing and approval. I mean, can a county board of supervisors ban broccoli cultivation? Can they ban, county wide, liquor stores (not zoning restrictions but actually banning the liquor industry). I wonder about these things.

How a Cannabis Ban Turned One California County Into 'Ground Zero for Chaos'

On Jan. 10, supervisors in this historic county—where Gold Rush mining camps flourished in 1850—voted to kill off the Green Rush that exploded here in 2016. By a 3–2 tally, the Calaveras County Board of Supervisors declared all commercial cannabis farms illegal. The county planning department estimated that as many as 1,600 commercial cannabis growers were operating in the region in mid-2017. Many of them were licensed by the county. Now, the move to ban cannabis businesses means every one of those growers must cease operations by May 1. Millions of dollars in tax money will vanish from the economically beleaguered county of 45,000 residents.


In the vote’s aftermath, protests have stirred amid fears over devastating cuts to the county workforce. Lawsuits appear certain.

“It is just ground zero for chaos,” says Paul Smith, vice president of governmental affairs for the Rural County Representatives of California, an organization focusing on the Golden State’s sparsely populated inland and northern coastal counties.


RELATED STORY
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Calaveras has long been known for its dysfunctional politics. Even before its explosion of cannabis farming, there were frictions between a local “hippie culture and strong pockets of old ranchers and their constituency groups,” Smith said. Against that backdrop, the county’s move to regulate commercial cannabis production in 2016 was sure to strike a raw nerve.

“You have to go through wars in these types of communities before you reach consensus,” Smith said. “Calaveras is kind of on steroids on this.”

Prapanna Smith, a former school administrator, tends to his cannabis plants during what’s likely to be his last permitted growing cycle in Calaveras County. (Peter Hecht for Leafly)
In the late summer of 2015, Calaveras, nestled in the Sierra Nevada foothills 70 miles east of Sacramento, suffered a devastating blaze—the Butte Fire. The following spring, unauthorized marijuana farms bloomed beneath scorched oaks and pines as cannabis speculators snatched up cheap properties devalued by the fire that had destroyed 860 homes.

“You’re talking about losing hundreds of farm families and layoffs this county has never seen. It’s mind-numbing.”
Mark Bolger, cannabis farmer
Urged on by local medical marijuana advocates, supervisors in the conservative county passed an ordinance to regulate the local cannabis industry. It promised strict rules for licensees, enforcement resources to drive out unwanted criminal growers, and some decidedly liberal cultivation rules: The county allowed commercial cannabis farming on parcels as small as two acres and gardens of up to a half-acre on parcels of five acres or larger.

In June 2016, Calaveras collected $3.7 million in $5,000-per-farm registration fees from more than 700 cannabis cultivators. Five months later, voters heartily approved an initiative, Measure C, to impose cultivation taxes of $2 per square foot on outdoor farms and $5 per square foot on indoor gardens.

Yet the election also revealed a significant portion of the local citizenry that hated cannabis liberalization. Another initiative, Measure D, which would’ve further sweetened cultivation rules and permitted cannabis concentrate manufacturing, was defeated. Although California’s Nov. 2016 adult-use measure, Proposition 64, passed easily statewide, 53% of Calaveras County voters cast ballots against it.

Two supervisors who backed the cultivation ordinance were due to retire after the Nov. 2016 election. Two others were drummed out by voters. In their place, voters chose a new board majority openly hostile to cannabis farms.

“This county has repeatedly spoken out against this,” said Dennis Mills, who won a seat on the board after championing a cultivation ban, Measure B, that was blocked from the ballot by legal challenges. “My district solidly voted down Proposition 64. They solidly voted down Measure D. They wanted an initiative to ban.”

“I won my seat in a landslide, sir,” Mills told me recently. “Marijuana was one of the issues. People asked me how I felt about it. And I told them outright.”


RELATED STORY
The Great Cannabis Clash of Calaveras County
Mills, a former member of the Calaveras County Water District, saw cannabis farming as both an affront to the county’s character and, worse, an environmental disaster that fouled streams and water supplies with illicit dams, sediment, fertilizers. and pesticides. He made little distinction between permitted growers and criminal cultivators.

After his proposed ban failed in October, Mills pushed through a new ban this month with the backing of two other recently elected supervisors, Gary Tofanelli and Clyde Clapp.

Burch Shufeld, who bought up properties and secured two local licenses on a promise of participating in the legal cannabis economy, looks over vacant greenhouses that may stay that way (Peter Hecht for Leafly)
Calaveras County has so far collected $7.5 million in Measure C cultivation taxes in 2017, with more revenue due from tax bills that went out in November. The total two-year haul—including permit fees and renewals to cover costs of cannabis regulation, policing, and code enforcement—approaches $12 million. The county has a $63 million annual budget.

Since 2016, Calaveras has granted some 200 permits for commercial marijuana farms, with roughly 300 applications still pending and 200 denied or withdrawn.

One of those permittees was Burch Shufeldt, 34, an environmental studies major at University of California Santa Cruz who dropped out to grow in Calaveras for a Santa Cruz dispensary in 2006. At the time, with state and local rules ill-defined, he chose a secluded indoor growing location.

After Calaveras embraced regulated cultivation, Shufeldt made a major investment: $1 million for two sprawling properties, a total of 220 acres, with the landowner providing financing for the purchase. Shufeldt paid $88,000 in cultivation taxes plus $15,000 in fees in 2016 and 2017 for two permitted outdoor sites, with one renewal permit fee due.

“It seemed like Calaveras had decided to stick to its conservative and libertarian ideas when it came to property rights— even if many of its people were older and didn’t like cannabis,” he said.

Now, in the face of ban, he is looking to get by on income from cattle grazing and growing kale. That is unlikely, he says, “to keep us out of poverty.”

When supervisors took up the vote on Jan. 10, locally-licensed cannabis farmer Mark Bolger had just paid his November tax bill, bringing his two-year cultivation payments to the county to $54,0o0.

“You’ve given people a privilege. You’ve taken their taxes and fees. And now you’re taking that privilege back.”
Khurshid Khoja, former CCIA general counsel
Bolger, 30, the son of an agricultural industry investment broker in the nearby San Joaquin Valley farming belt, invested in Calaveras cannabis on a forested 20-acre parcel he dubbed Rimrock Farms. He invited county officers, sheriff’s deputies, and state water officials for walking tours though lush plants that flowered on terraces framed by security fencing and rock beds, with netting and straw for erosion control.

On Jan. 10, Bolger was one of a number of licensed cannabis farmers seated before the Board of Supervisors, watching his investment drain away.

Supervisors had directed staff to draft two ordinances – one to regulate the industry and another to ban it. The staff proposal to regulate would have allowed commercial cultivation on certain properties over 20 acres, but Bolger’s site didn’t meet the specific zoning requirements. In recent months, Supervisor Tofanelli also advanced a plan to set the standard at 50 acres or more. He later pushed for a 100-acre minimum.

Bolger had made an aggressive move to stay in business, buying 196 acres with plans to relocate his farm. A title company representative handling the last 80 acres of his purchase reached out as he was sitting in the supervisors’ boardroom.

“I got a text saying we just closed on the sale,” he said. “The title is transferred in my name. There is no turning back.”

Then he watched as supervisors banned his business.

The vote, effective next month, requires cannabis farms to cease operations within 90 days, meaning they will be out of business by May. For Bolger, it means no 2018 growing season.

“I’ve got six employees, people with young children, people from multigenerational families in this area,” Bolger said. “That tumultuous feeling I got in my stomach wasn’t just for our livelihoods—it was for the livelihood of our county.”

“When three people on the Board of Supervisors tank the economic driver of this county, you’re talking about losing hundreds of farm families and layoffs this county has never seen. It’s mind-numbing.”

Prapanna Smith, 56, a former school administrator in San Diego County who moved to Calaveras for its proximity to the Pacific Crest Trail and apparent amenability to cannabis, invested $300,000 in a county-permitted indoor cultivation business.

Smith, who recently also secured a state license to grow adult-use cannabis, paid Calaveras $10,000 in permit fees and $25,0o0 in cultivation taxes. He hopes to harvest a final indoor crop before May and, after that, seek retribution in a lawsuit over a breach of trust.

“If they succeed in shutting us down, they owe me for all my investment,” Smith said of the county. “They owe me for my loss of income. And they owe me for the cost of having to move, because what they’re doing is bullshit.”

Since 2016, Calaveras has granted some 200 permits for commercial cannabis farms, with roughly 300 applications still pending.
Ban supporters argue the county owes nothing to growers who gambled on local cannabis regulation. They assert the county’s ordinance that opened the door to the industry was a temporary measure that specifically offered no promise of permanency. The ordinance was to be replaced by a standing regulatory measure—until the new Board of Supervisors majority opted for a ban instead.

“You’ve given people a privilege. You’ve taken their taxes and fees. And now you’re taking that privilege back,” said Khurshid Khoja, former general counsel for the California Cannabis Industry Association. “That leads to the questions: Do these (cultivation) licenses now have a property right? And is this a taking? Has Calaveras taken away the value of that property?”

While Khoja was uncertain on the answers, he suggested Calaveras may be liable for refunding cultivation taxes, particularly recently paid taxes funding county operations after the ban.

Robert Reich, an attorney who represented some Calaveras growers in the licensing process, took a harder view. He says the county is now on the financial hook “for a misguided decision.”

“There was hard-earned money (from growers) that was put into paying those taxes,” Reich said. “The government just can’t take that money away.”

In December, prominent Oakland cannabis attorney William Panzer filed a legal claim—a precursor to a potential class-action lawsuit. It argued that the county never had the right to pocket taxes from growers under the voter-approved Measure C.

While numerous California cities and county have enacted voter-approved taxes on medical marijuana businesses, Panzer argued that new state rules—which require both California and local cannabis business licenses—prohibit anyone but dual licensees from being taxed. Most permitted Calaveras growers are still in the application process for state licenses.

“I’m going to assume that litigation will ensue,” said Smith of the Rural County Representatives. “I have to believe that those (cannabis) operators will find some leg to stand on for a case. That may lead to more chaos. Or it may lead to a settlement. This is just really tough for Calaveras.”

A Calaveras County cannabis farm during the 2017 growing season. (Courtesy of Ron Ervin)
Faced with no 2018 growing season—and now on the financial hook for large properties he fears will plummet in value—Bolger says things are hard enough already.

“The county is saying … you gambled by investing your money. They look at it as if they have no liability, that this is on us,” he said. “No way.

“But we’re not looking to be awarded damages. We want our fucking jobs back.”


RELATED STORY
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Supervisor Mills says he wants the county’s pristine environment and rustic rural character back from unwanted marijuana growers—permitted or otherwise—that steamed into the county.

In a video posted Jan. 13, Mills walked the grounds of a cannabis grow raided by Calaveras authorities and cited for 23 environmental violations by state agencies. The wooded site was littered with pots, garbage, and fertilizer bags. A stream had been illegally diverted to provide water for the farm.

“We’re a tourist-oriented county and we have a lot of people retire here,” Mills says in the video. “We’re now seeing something very different, and this is a result.”

Mills produced a damning report—he called it Silent Poison—that cited general studies on environmental damage in California from marijuana growing in sensitive woodlands and watersheds. He argued that fertilizer and pesticide runoff from cannabis farms in Calaveras threatened a critical drinking water source, the Mokelumne River.

While cannabis advocates argue that licensed and inspected cannabis farm offer a solution—and revenue stream—to protect the environment, Mills and his campaign consultant depict a cultural assault by growers compliant and criminal alike.

“I don’t agree that the legal sites are any better than the non-legal sites,” said Calaveras resident Jack Cox, a former Los Angeles broadcast journalist who worked on Mills’ 2016 campaign. “By and large, it is bringing out the same character. These are people that don’t particularly care. I’m sure there are some doing the job properly. But the bad guys are hiding in with the legal ones.”

During the 2017 outdoor growing season, the Calaveras County Sheriff’s Department, including a nine-member cannabis compliance team funded by fees from permitted county growers, eradicated 52,000 plants from unlicensed growers.

The county, with three code enforcement officers also funded by cannabis fees, filed abatement notices against 159 illegal gardens and issued 244 citations, seeking fines of $551,000.

A sign along historic Highway 49 in California’s Gold Country warns that a ban would cut tax revenues that fund critical operations like law enforcement. (Peter Hecht for Leafly)
Prapanna Smith says Calaveras is now carrying out a fool’s errand if supervisors think they can drive off illegal marijuana farms and protect the environment without the taxes and permit fees from licensed growers.

“They’re not going to be able to eradicate. They’re not going to be able to have code enforcement officers look for illegal grows. They’re shutting down their ability to control cannabis in Calaveras County and, instead, will allow unregulated growers to come in unabated.”

There may be more challenges. Bill Petrone, regional director for the Service Employees International Union, representing 275 county workers, fired off a letter to supervisors a day after the ban vote.

Petrone said the action, and the resulting loss of Measure C cannabis tax revenues, could undercut the county’s ability to pay negotiated raises of 2% for most employees and 5% for planning department workers—including those working on marijuana code enforcement. He said the ban should be withdrawn because the board broke an agreement to consult with the union.

“We believe that the Board of Supervisors is making a decision that impacts our members, either financially or regarding keeping their jobs,” Petrone told me. “They have a responsibility to negotiate with us over the impacts.”

Mills scoffs at claims the county is due for catastrophic staff cuts. He insists there will be no cuts in law enforcement personnel, who are covered by a different bargaining group, and says the cultivation ban means Calaveras can get by with fewer code enforcement officers. He says the county may well avoid any financial hit for cutting off cannabis revenues, reasoning that a ban would cut considerable expenses and staff time required to regulate and police marijuana.

“I have been asking for a full and complete financial accounting for all the expenses associated with this activity,” he said. “We have been making some very blatant assumptions.”

After the board voted to ban, Supervisor Michael Oliveira, a retired Oakland police officer and Calaveras sheriff’s deputy who favors regulation, characterized the vote as blatant and rash. Addressing the boardroom audience, including speakers who railed against the ban, he called on supervisors to put pro-regulation and ban initiatives before voters and let them decide.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve sat here and listened to you and we’ve done you a great injustice,” Oliveira said. “We’ve still got your money. We talked about re-registration. Is that bait-and-switch? We didn’t give you an opportunity to vote on this. I want to propose an immediate moratorium from this moment until we can put this item on the June ballot with the ban and the regulation proposition. … The only people who can fix this are you, the voters.”

Other board members weren’t keen on kicking the matter back to constituents. And distrustful cannabis advocates suggested that they preferred to write their own initiative, with Bolger calling for reasonable cultivation rules that can sustain the industry and assure skeptical voters.

“If we run another initiative and that fails, we’re done,” Bolger told me. “It’s got to be well-thought-out, well-funded, and with broad support—not just in the cannabis community.”

In a surreal exercise, the Board of Supervisors has continued to hear appeals from cannabis farmers who were earlier denied county cultivation permits. A week after the ban vote, the board referred one grower’s application back to the planning commission for consideration after getting proof the farmer had received a required state water permit.

Despite the ban, Mills told the audience, the growers appealing earlier permit denials would get hearings as scheduled. But, amid reports of cultivators burning off remnants of outdoor gardens, some cannabis farmers didn’t bother showing up. One who did, Elizabeth Denhart, turned out to tell supervisors that she was withdrawing her application because she was done with Calaveras.

“I don’t see any purpose in pursuing this, given that the county has decided to ban,” she said. “I am selling my property. I am pulling my children out of school and leaving.”

Ron Ervin, who spent 35 years in the trucking business before entering the legal cannabis industry, stands in his garden during the 2017 growing season. (Courtesy of Ron Ervin)
On his Calaveras cannabis farm, Ron Ervin, 57, drove an all-terrain vehicle past some 800 planting beds for his half-acre cultivation. It is barren, the season is in serious doubt, and yet he has hope.

Ervin quit a 35-year-career in the trucking business to become a cannabis farmer on acreage that has been in his wife’s family since the 1930s.

He paid $42,000 in taxes and $5,000 in permit fees to the county. His family invested $300,000 in the venture, making land improvements and hiring biologists to recommend a cultivation regimen that prevented harm to sensitive flora and fauna. “We did everything we were asked,” Ervin said.

As the Calaveras cannabis controversy roils on, Erwin says he is counting on still another shift in the political winds so that his garden may bloom again.

“We think we have some of the best ground here and best temperatures to grow,” Ervin said, looking over his property. “This is phenomenal. For us not to be part of California’s economic future, well, that kind of sucks.”

 

[Baron23]

Court challenge seeks to block vast California pot farms


LOS ANGELES (AP) — An alliance of California marijuana growers filed a lawsuit Tuesday to block state rules that they fear could open the way for vast farms that would drive smaller cultivators out of business or send them into the black market.

The lawsuit, filed in Sacramento County Superior Court by the California Growers Association, comes just weeks after the nation’s most populous state began allowing legal pot sales.

It argues that state regulations would allow businesses to acquire an unlimited number of certain growing licenses, creating the potential for large operations that would have a “devastating effect” on smaller operations.

It says those rules conflict with state law that intended the new pot market to be built around small- and medium-sized growers during its early years.

“Approving large cultivation operations in 2018 will significantly reduce the ability of small and medium cultivators to compete economically in the regulated market,” the lawsuit said.

It also warned that smaller growers pushed out of the market could turn to illegal sales, undercutting the effort to establish a new legal marketplace in the state.

The California Department of Food and Agriculture, which issues cannabis cultivator licenses, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The lawsuit asks the court to block the state from issuing licenses that could be used to create vast pot farms.

It wasn’t immediately clear if any business had attempted to accumulate multiple licenses to establish a huge pot farm.

The state kicked off legal recreational sales on Jan. 1, part of a sprawling plan to transform California’s long-standing medical and illegal markets into a multibillion-dollar regulated economy, the nation’s largest legal pot market.

So far it has been a bumpy rollout.

Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco are among the cities that embraced legal sales, but others have banned them. There have been complaints about hefty tax rates. Meanwhile, there are concerns many businesses may remain in the illegal market, or that pot supplies could dry up in the legal market. And the licenses issued by the state so far are temporary and will have to be reissued later this year.

 

[Baron23]

This article is disturbing on a few levels:

1. How do they come up with 15% tax when his pre-tax tab came to $450. After taxes, the final bill was $587.25. I come up with 30% total tax

2. "policy analysts who argue that the tariffs will keep the state’s massive black market for marijuana alive and well". Dat's a fact, Jack. sigh

3. Another fucking academic who likes to get quoted for articles:

But Keith Humphreys, a psychiatry professor at Harvard University who studies marijuana policy, is urging the state not to cave to pressure to reduce taxes rates just a few weeks after the legal market opened.
“I hope the state holds its nerve because this problem — if it even is a problem — will correct itself,” he said."​

Yeah, Keith....how will it correct itself....please see item #2 above.

IMO, this is the result of the community using politicians greed in order to pass legalization. In MA, the politicians overruled the electorate and their direct vote and jacked taxes up to 20% from referendum max of 12%. MA legislature....now there is a swamp that can use some draining.


High taxes spark sticker shock for marijuana customers in California

A picture recently posted to Instagram shows a receipt for a shopping trip to Cookies LA, a licensed marijuana store in Maywood.

The receipt shows that the shopper bought an ounce of high-end cannabis, the maximum allowed under state law and enough to roll perhaps 40 joints.

His pre-tax tab came to $450. After taxes, the final bill was $587.25.

That receipt, and the posting on social media, are signs of the wave of sticker shock being felt among cannabis consumers.

Many shoppers have been surprised by the tax rates that have taken effect since Jan. 1, when recreational cannabis sales became legal. Some of the receipts shared online include bright red circles around the tax line and are posted with hashtags like “#californiaisscrewingus” and “ididntvoteforit.”

The hefty taxes are also drawing complaints from some business owners and policy analysts who argue that the tariffs will keep the state’s massive black market for marijuana alive and well.

During a recent meeting in Sacramento, the state’s new Cannabis Advisory Committee agreed to discuss taxes at a future session. And Rich Miller, president of the American Alliance for Medical Cannabis, asked the state to consider reducing the tax rate for seniors and medical patients.

But Keith Humphreys, a psychiatry professor at Harvard University who studies marijuana policy, is urging the state not to cave to pressure to reduce taxes rates just a few weeks after the legal market opened.
“I hope the state holds its nerve because this problem — if it even is a problem — will correct itself,” he said.

WHERE THE TAXES GO

All cannabis legally sold in California now comes with a 15 percent excise tax. On its own, that rate is in line with, or below, the tax imposed in most other states that have legalized recreational cannabis.

 

[Baron23]

California bill seeks to legalize banking for cannabis businesses

California’s fast-rising cannabis industry, which has been forced by federal law to conduct almost all its business in cash, got a boost Thursday when legislation was introduced to allow banks to open accounts for people involved in the field.


State Sen. Robert Hertzberg, D-Van Nuys, introduced a bill that would allow California-chartered banks, credit unions and other financial institutions to open checking and savings accounts and issue checks for marijuana retailers.


The proposed law, known as SB930, is an attempt to deal with U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration rules that still classify cannabis as a Schedule I drug, and therefore put banks opening accounts for marijuana businesses in a precarious position.

California and eight other states have legalized adult recreational use of marijuana, but the laws don’t trump federal rules that make banks that accept deposits from such businesses liable for penalties. It means cannabis merchants must pay their taxes and employees with huge wads of cash — putting them in the crosshairs of robbers and thieves.

“These businesses handle significant economic activity, yet they are forced to operate under the table and with little government oversight, as if they’re a black-market operation,” Hertzberg said. His bill “will integrate these businesses into the fabric of the California economy.”

Fiona Ma, a member of the California State Board of Equalization, said the bill would authorize privately insured financial firms to open accounts, issue checks and take deposits. It would allow marijuana merchants to pay employees with checks and make electronic and wire payments. Employers could thereby more easily withhold and remit taxes.

Ma said there will probably be a special license and colored checks.

The cannabis industry “is the biggest underground economy we have, so we’re trying to bring them into the light, and having some kind of banking is important,” Ma said. “Paying your taxes with duffel bags full of cash isn’t safe or efficient for anyone involved.”

Offices of the California Department of Taxes and Fee Administration, which oversees tax collection, make an exception to take tax payments in cash from marijuana businesses, requiring additional security.

Ma acknowledged there will be some opposition to the bill but that it would ultimately be good for the government because it would “provide a paper trail so the government can make sure everybody is paying their fair share of taxes.”


Peter Fimrite is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: pfimrite@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @pfimrite

 

[Baron23]

"the patchwork of local regulations — some cities and counties have banned all commercial activity — has erected barriers to getting pot from place to place."

This was really stupid and the result was foreseeable. Yeah, I get it....give all of this respect to small town/county governments to make them feel safe about MJ and get regulations in place....but then you end up with a bunch of small town/county governments saying and doing some pretty ridiculous things.

Oh, well....give it five years and it will all sort itself out....as there will be nothing but large corporate growers left in CA.

After California pot stockpiles go up in smoke, what’s next?

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Like many pot shops in California, the Urbn Leaf in San Diego bulked up its inventory before legal sales began on Jan. 1, stockpiling enough marijuana to last for months because no one knew what the era of legal pot would bring.

The shop, along with others involved in the state’s fledgling cannabis economy, are now concerned that too few operators have been licensed to support a pot pipeline of state-approved growers, distributors and retailers.

In some cases, they say, bottlenecks have already slowed the supply chain from fields to storefronts.

“They are going to have to come online with more producers in the next 12 months to keep up with the demand,” said Will Senn, the founder of Urbn Leaf who operates three dispensaries and plans to open three more, including one in Los Angeles.

“The black market will balloon if we can’t get legal, licensed producers to step into the industry. That’s the biggest risk,” he said.

Nearly a month after legal sales began for adults in the nation’s most populous state, the longstanding medicinal and illegal marijuana markets are still transitioning to a multibillion-dollar regulated system, estimated to eventually reach $7 billion in value.

Questions about the supply chain represent just one example of early obstacles that range from complaints about hefty taxes to the refusal of most banks to do business with pot companies because the drug remains illegal on the federal level.

In one way, the arrival of legal sales has been a story about borrowed time.

Most of the pot now being legally sold in California comes from plants that were harvested last year, and those reserves can be sold until July 1, provided they have required labeling.

Lori Ajax, the state’s top pot regulator, said officials are aware that those initial supplies will eventually dry up but it’s too early to tell how the legal supply chain will work.

“We legalized cannabis — you want to have that product available,” she said. “We don’t want people going to the black market because they can’t get product from the legal market.”

In Santa Cruz County, TreeHouse dispensary CEO Bryce Berryessa is already having trouble keeping some popular brands on his shelves.

The problem, he says, is smaller producers haven’t been able to obtain licenses, either because they are in an area where growing is banned by local government or they haven’t been able to obtain a license from their hometown government.

Operators are required to have state and local licenses to conduct business, but must get the local one first.

Without money to relocate to a pot-friendly community, “they are going to be unable to find a pathway to legally sell their products,” said Berryessa, who sits on the board of the California Cannabis Industry Association.

“I think this affects a large portion of California cannabis businesses throughout the state,” he said.

For now, legal sales for adults appear to be robust in San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

But the patchwork of local regulations — some cities and counties have banned all commercial activity — has erected barriers to getting pot from place to place.

Some longtime growers are marooned in counties that don’t allow pot or have imposed regulations so tight it’s tantamount to prohibition. In some cases, investors are backing away.

For example, in previously pot-friendly Calaveras County, officials reversed course and banned commercial marijuana farms, leaving growers in a bind.

Without a local license, “it doesn’t matter how incredible their products are,” Berryessa said.

Indeed, the once-shadowy business of pot distribution is no longer about sending a text message to a friend. Regulators have come with complex procedures to keep a tight leash on the market, though some say it’s bringing more confusion than efficiency.

In general, a retailer who needs to stock shelves must contact a distributor, who in turn picks up cannabis from a grower.

The marijuana is then sent to a warehouse, where a testing company picks up a sample and analyzes it for pesticides and other contaminants, as well as potency. It cannot be sent to the retailer for sale until it clears that check. The distributor can also do packaging, with taxes assessed along the way.

Pot that fails testing goes back to the grower. If the problem can’t be fixed, it must be destroyed, further tightening supplies.

So far, one of the biggest challenges is having enough growers and distributors to do the job.

In total, the state has issued about 1,900 licenses in all categories so far. By comparison, there are an estimated 15,000 illegal marijuana farms in Humboldt County alone.

Only about 20 licenses have been issued for testing statewide.

Berryessa said what once could be done with a phone call could now takes days or weeks as pot moves through the supply chain, each step with added costs that will inevitably drive up prices.

And when a product isn’t on his shelves, business suffers.

“The time from production ... to market is going to increase significantly,” he said.

 

[Baron23]

I'm hoping that this will also be the case for my home state of Maryland with its two month old medical program. Prices are already starting to drop slightly but are still way to high. Just a phenomenon of a newly opened market.

Relax, Californians: Cheaper weed is coming

The excitement that marijuana devotees felt as California initiated legal, recreational sales this month was tempered by sticker shock from prices as high as $40 per eighth of an ounce. These prices included state and local taxes totaling up to 45 percent. Commentators are warning that high taxes will strengthen the black market, advocates are calling for marijuana tax cuts, and angry customers are posting their receipts online with the taxes circled in red.

Everyone needs to chill.

Nothing raises the price of a drug like making the industry that produces it illegal, and nothing causes those prices to collapse like legalization. However, transitory price spikes in the early days of legalization are common because the supply chain and the regulatory structure are immature and disorganized.

Act Four newsletter

The intersection of culture and politics.



The experience of Colorado, now four years into its recreational marijuana legalization, is illustrative. Supply shortages caused a price spike in the industry’s stumbling first year, driving wholesale marijuana flower to $2,865 per pound. But as the industry matured, prices tumbled 56 percent and have not hit bottom yet. A virtually identical price change pattern occurred in Washington state’s legal market.

Because most states tax marijuana based on a percentage of price, the amount of tax collected per sale drops as marijuana’s price falls. In California, this economic effect will be tempered by the state’s wise decision to make its tax structure include a flat charge on harvested flower that does not vary with price. But the bulk of California state and local taxes are price-linked, and will therefore fall in tandem with the cost of the marijuana plant.

California’s policymakers should resist any effort to cut taxes based on a transitory price spike. Consumers will be appeased without tax cuts as prices tumble in the years ahead. And restoring taxes to a healthy level once prices fall would be politically challenging because a deep-pocketed, mature industry will be ready to oppose it.

Keith Humphreys is a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University and is an affiliated faculty member at Stanford Law School and the Stanford Neurosciences Institute. He served as a drug policy adviser in the Bush and Obama White Houses, and advises many state and national governments on how scientific evidence can inform policies regarding addiction and other psychiatric disorders.

 

[ataxian]

I'm hoping that this will also be the case for my home state of Maryland with its two month old medical program. Prices are already starting to drop slightly but are still way to high. Just a phenomenon of a newly opened market.

Relax, Californians: Cheaper weed is coming

The excitement that marijuana devotees felt as California initiated legal, recreational sales this month was tempered by sticker shock from prices as high as $40 per eighth of an ounce. These prices included state and local taxes totaling up to 45 percent. Commentators are warning that high taxes will strengthen the black market, advocates are calling for marijuana tax cuts, and angry customers are posting their receipts online with the taxes circled in red.

Everyone needs to chill.

Nothing raises the price of a drug like making the industry that produces it illegal, and nothing causes those prices to collapse like legalization. However, transitory price spikes in the early days of legalization are common because the supply chain and the regulatory structure are immature and disorganized.

Act Four newsletter

The intersection of culture and politics.



The experience of Colorado, now four years into its recreational marijuana legalization, is illustrative. Supply shortages caused a price spike in the industry’s stumbling first year, driving wholesale marijuana flower to $2,865 per pound. But as the industry matured, prices tumbled 56 percent and have not hit bottom yet. A virtually identical price change pattern occurred in Washington state’s legal market.

Because most states tax marijuana based on a percentage of price, the amount of tax collected per sale drops as marijuana’s price falls. In California, this economic effect will be tempered by the state’s wise decision to make its tax structure include a flat charge on harvested flower that does not vary with price. But the bulk of California state and local taxes are price-linked, and will therefore fall in tandem with the cost of the marijuana plant.

California’s policymakers should resist any effort to cut taxes based on a transitory price spike. Consumers will be appeased without tax cuts as prices tumble in the years ahead. And restoring taxes to a healthy level once prices fall would be politically challenging because a deep-pocketed, mature industry will be ready to oppose it.

Keith Humphreys is a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University and is an affiliated faculty member at Stanford Law School and the Stanford Neurosciences Institute. He served as a drug policy adviser in the Bush and Obama White Houses, and advises many state and national governments on how scientific evidence can inform policies regarding addiction and other psychiatric disorders.

GUAVA from the COOKIE BROS is out!
$200 per oz (TAX INCLUDED)

 

[Baron23]

GUAVA from the COOKIE BROS is out!
$200 per oz (TAX INCLUDED)

hahahaha....you're killing me. LOL

But check THIS out!

https://vaporasylum.com/threads/oregon.189/#post-13818

 

[Baron23]

California makes Marijuana a wellness industry

By the time recreational marijuana usage became legal in California, on New Year’s Day, the government’s official permission seemed, for many Californians, like a belated, nearly irrelevant formality.

Twenty-two years of ready access to medical marijuana had made casual consumption—a pull off a vape pen on the walk to dinner, post-prandial pot chocolates circulating in the living room, a THC strip tucked under the tongue—no more remarkable than an aperitif.

Actually, less remarkable than a drink, because everyone knows that alcohol is bad for you (kills your stem cells, gives you cancer, makes you grouchy, paunchy, gray), whereas, increasingly, the industry is equating conscious marijuana use with sublime good health.

In the state of California, in recent years, thousands of people—disproportionately people of color—have been arrested or jailed on marijuana-related charges. (Under a provision in the state's marijuana law, Prop 64, many may be able to have their sentences reduced or convictions overturned.)

But among an affluent demographic of Californians—heavily invested in optimizing personal experience, micro-regulating moods and appetites, states of pain and creative flow—cannabis is part of a booming wellness industry. Gone are the purple bongs, sexy nurses, dancing bears.

In place of these skanky, skunky holdovers is an array of alluring products whose seduction lies in their eminently rational design. Dosist, formerly Hmblt (motto: “delivering health and happiness”), has released a collection of disposable vape pens preloaded with marijuana concentrate (available individually or in a gift set) targeting different desired states: bliss, calm, relief, and so on.

The pen itself, Cupertino white and tampon-esque, vibrates when its user has inhaled 2.25 milligrams of THC. Marijuana, in this new form, is a therapeutic aid in the life of an active, productive professional—like fish oil, with better dreams.

The new consumer (or the old consumer, reimagined) is not zonked in a La-Z-Boy watching “Wayne’s World” with a bag of chips. She is making a vision board for the startup she’s launching, lightly high on a strain promising to connect her to her intuition without stimulating binge-eating.

CBD offers a “body high” that doesn’t affect cognition.

Colorado legalized recreational marijuana in 2014. This past fall, after a spate of accidental overdoses, the state banned pot gummy bears and other shapes alluring to children. California learned from Colorado’s mistake; California regulations prohibit animal- and fruit-shaped edibles.

At the edibles brand Lord Jones—the brain child of a marketing executive who popularized Lärabar, the nutrition-bar company, with the goal of “making good nutrition relevant and chic”—small-batch, high-potency confections are presented in luxurious boxes lined with golden foil and stamped with a heraldic crest.

Think gold-tipped pastel-colored cocktail cigarettes, fancy candies, and, in the case of these CBD-heavy gummies, a “body high” that doesn’t affect cognition.

A CBD cocktail at an Altered Plates party in Los Angeles.

The chef Holden Jagger, of the events company Altered Plates, considers marijuana a vegetable—from the pollen to the male plants, which he pickles, to the dehydrated leaves. He makes a cannabis rub for tri-tip, togarashi cannabis chips, and a medicated chimichurri.

At a recent cocktail party in Los Angeles, he served his guests a non-alcoholic cocktail made from coconut water, lemon juice, and simple syrup infused with CBD, a non-psychoactive cannabis compound with anti-inflammatory properties available at juice bars and coffee shops around the state.

“I have a rough day at work and pour myself a finger of my favorite single-malt Scotch,” a canna-businessman told me. “I’m self-medicating. How is that any different from using cannabis?”

Live resin is jarred at Humboldt Legends’ state-licensed facility in Arcata. A joint-rolling machine at the facility, made by the Dutch company Futurola. The company recently upgraded to a higher-capacity machine to meet demand.

California is the country’s largest legal marketplace for pot. Governor Jerry Brown’s latest budget anticipates six hundred and forty-three million dollars in tax revenue in the first full year of legalization; a study by the agricultural school at University of California, Davis, predicts five billion dollars in annual sales, on par with beer sales in the state.

In North America at large, according to the research firm Arcview Group, sales of legal marijuana are expected to reach twenty-three billion dollars by 2021.

Historically, California’s marijuana industry was based in the Emerald Triangle formed by the northern counties of Humboldt, Mendocino, and Trinity. Humboldt Legends, a group of “heritage” cannabis farmers in Humboldt County, piloted a “track and trace” program, using QR codes and a Swiss security company, to bring transparency to the supply chain in anticipation of regulations that would accompany legalization.

Among their products is live resin, created by freezing flowers within half an hour of harvest to preserve the intensity of aromatic terpenes and lead to a more potent psychoactive experience.

The some thirty farms that sell under the Humboldt Legends name subscribe to environmentally sustainable cultivation practices. Under the regulations laid out by California’s Bureau of Cannabis Control, marijuana sold in the state must be lab-tested for pesticides, heavy metals, solvents, mycotoxins, and other impurities. Products will be labelled according to cannabinoid concentration and monitored for consistency.

A photogram of a Beboe vape pen. The company makes elegant rose-gold vaporizer pens and artisanal edibles. The tattoo artist behind Beboe characterizes his products as “mommy’s little helper.” His target forum: upscale dinner parties.

Lori Ajax, California’s marijuana czar, is tasked with bringing the industry out of the shadows.

Lori Ajax runs the Bureau of Cannabis Control, a new regulatory agency overseeing medical and recreational marijuana licensing. Republican, cannabis-naïve, and a veteran of the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, Ajax told me, “I came on my post in late February, bureau of one.” Ajax, who went on a learning tour, visiting growers, dispensaries, and factories, is tasked with bringing the industry out of the shadows.

In recent years, as the state has prepared for legalization—which passed by ballot measure in November, 2016—numerous businesses focussing on marijuana distribution have emerged. California rules dictate that distributors, which deal with transportation, quality control, and tax collection, get licensed.

One question that keeps Ajax up at night: Is the distribution infrastructure robust enough to keep the product flowing to the retail stores?

The future of cannabis is female: the business, which is unusually open to female entrepreneurs, has begun catering to female consumers.

A harvested stalk of Headband at Full Moon Farms, in Dinsmore, California. According to Leafly, an online resource for pot research, Headband is the “love-child of cannabis’ power couple, OG Kush and Sour Diesel,” known to promote relaxation and alleviate stress. Workers at Winterbourne Farms inspect Jack Herer, a spicy, earthy strain whose aroma is reminiscent of wood floors and lemon zest, before a harvest. Leafly describes Jack Herer, which is also known as “writer’s weed,” as making users feel “blissful, clear-headed, and creative.”

An Eaze employee at the company’s headquarters, in San Francisco’s financial district.

Eaze, a San Francisco-based tech company that provides delivery-service technology to dispensaries, tracks cannabis use across its markets. Flowers are down; vape pens are up. In 2016, the number of women using Eaze went up thirty-two per cent.

The company reports that “the modern marijuana consumer spends more on cannabis per year than the average American spends on personal care, alcohol, and tobacco combined.” According to the same study, thirteen per cent of female Californian weed users surveyed had stopped drinking entirely, replacing alcohol with cannabis.

At Med Men’s Hollywood dispensary, iPads provide detailed information about cannabinoid ratios, plant lineage, typical effects on users’ mental and physical states, and pricing.

The Los Angeles dispensary Med Men distributes “Cannabis 101: A Practical Guide for the New Consumer.” On the first day of legalization, the line extended two blocks out the door. Customers entering the store must show I.D., proving that they are at least twenty-one years old.

The shop, airy and open, with large glass windows and walnut cabinetry, is reminiscent of a high-end makeup store. It was designed specifically to counteract the image of the head shop, with barred windows and a waiting area presided over by an armed guard.

Med Men, which has expanded to Nevada and New York (where it is still medical-only), wants marijuana to be mainstream. It offers high-intensity drinks, for medical patients only; topical creams for aging athletes; cannabis for dogs.

A few weeks ago, the company launched a half-million-dollar billboard campaign. The ads don’t show joints, plants, edibles, or bongs, but they don’t have to. “Mom, is that for pot?” my friend’s twelve-year-old son asked as they passed a sign. He knew.

At Altered Plates, multi-course meals, paired with joints selected for their flavors and flavor-enhancing profiles, aim to cultivate élite pot consumers and educate a class of connoisseurs. On the menu: tangerine-carrot soup topped with pink pepper blossoms, burrata-quenelle potato chips with artichoke, pork-shoulder sopa, and rustic berry cobbler.

On January 4th, Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a memo reversing the Obama-era instructions to prosecutors and law enforcement not to interfere with the marijuana business in states where it is legal.

California Democratic Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom joined Cory Gardner, a Republican senator from Colorado, in condemning Sessions’s move, saying that it infringes on states’ rights and jeopardizes a thriving and lucrative industry and a valuable new tax stream.

A new campaign by the California Highway Patrol features signs announcing, “Drive High, Get a D.U.I.”

 

[Baron23]

Stoned Security: How Cannabis farmers protect themselves in the Emerald Triangle

While the original NorCal cannabis growers used big dogs, fake cameras, booby traps, and prayers to safeguard their crops, things are changing and legalization is making self-defense complicated.

"The best protection we have in these hills is our neighbors," a seasoned cannabis grower from Northern California told us the other day. "It's always been that way. If the Sheriff is headed your way, someone calls and lets everyone know way before he gets there."

Then the local community radio station would broadcast the warning so that you could hide in the woods while they cut and wood-chipped your crop.

That's how it's been in the Emerald Triangle for decades, when growers' primary security concern was a police raid, followed by trouble caused by "marijuana rustlers" (looters) and wild animals. The fear was generally mild, though.

As the same farmer put it: "I moved up here years ago to get away from the paranoid city. I refuse to give up my trusting nature — I'd rather get ripped off."



There have always been two schools of thought about protecting your garden up in the marijuana mecca of California. While the original hippies who started growing up north during the back-to-the-land movement believed in using big guard dogs, fake cameras, growing under protective/decoy plants, and prayers to safeguard their crops, they will now need to take regulated security measures due to adult-use legalization.

Yet dedicated farmers and cannabis activists such as Justin Calvino, founder of the Mendocino Appellations Project and the Emerald Exchange, are sticking to their beliefs. "The best defense is simply acceptance of what is," he declared with a mindful glint in his eyes.

The opposite view is the guerilla route, with protection defined by firearms and booby traps straight out of a funky war movie. Clever growers with the gangster twist have been known to come up with some ingenious methods to protect their crops. One friend always propped up a rifle connected to a hidden string to set off a warning shot and hopefully scare away intruders. However, he was busted a few years ago when cops were passing through his land to another grow site. Since cannabis users are prohibited from owning firearms by the feds, the gun, not the grow, got him in the most trouble.

That remains a problem despite the new state regulations. Countless cannabis users are still bewildered that their gun ownership rights could be denied in a country that's given citizens the right to bear arms since 1791. This is especially frustrating to cannabis farmers, who are clearly at risk as their crop is extremely valuable and their farms are often in remote places.



According to Kevin Jodrey, an internationally-respected cannabis expert and owner of Wonderland Nursery in Humboldt County, "Even before the new rules, our storefronts and nurseries all had round-the-clock security guards.

On the farm, if you didn't have live security, you might as well have had no security." In the past, though, "security" meant hiring a few strong guys with guns to hunker in the bushes around your grow site every night — and they were prepared to shoot. So what would those guards be carrying now for defense? Shovels?

The truth is, this is a sacred plant that probably doesn't want a gun battle in her garden. But with human nature being what it is, there will always be some bad buds in the bag who want to rip you off — whether it is a legal grow or not.

Perhaps thieves and other threats will be put off by security fencing, surveillance cameras, guard dogs, and even martial arts masters in urban areas, but up here in the wilderness of Northern California, they seem kind of pointless.

Who's going to come and save you? Most cannabis farms are at the end of long dirt roads and generally off-the-grid, hence the skepticism: If an alarm rings in the woods, will a bear come to save us?

The use of surveillance cameras in processing areas — e.g. a giant greenhouse or manufacturing plant — makes sense to keep an eye on where the product is going, but transparency could lead to neuroses if we are expected to have cameras going 24/7 in the gardens. This is a concern for those of us who live on solar power. I guess we better get used to batteries and powerstrips.



Over the years, there have been some horrific home intrusions and busts which make your stomach turn. With only dirt roads and nature as our first defense, cannabis farmers can be sitting ducks.

Honestly, if someone chose to rob a garden in the Emerald Triangle, which can sometimes feel like the middle-of-nowhere, by the time security footage is observed and the police come to investigate, it will be way too late. It appears that the newly-required cameras are more for surveillance of the farmers than ill-intended intruders.

It's almost like it's part of a game. Local lore is that about 5% of the growers in the Emerald Triangle get busted every season, and probably another 5% get robbed. It's always been the accepted price of working in this business.

In true poetic Mendo style, Justin Calvino again spouted spontaneous philosophy when asked if he'd ever been ripped off. "The biggest thief I've ever known is my own expectations." Now that's the cannabis talking!



Kristen Nevedal, board chair of the International Cannabis Farmers Association, told us, "I'll do like I've always done: A good fence and a locked gate with security cameras to monitor ingress and egress. ICFA has asked for clarification of security regulations required of cultivators, so we are hoping they are better than we think."

The days of draping Tibetan flags over the gate and planting Ganesh statues outside the front door as our main defense are over. They won't be enough to meet the demands of the new regulations or the authorities.

Insurance options are limited, but the state is working on it. Perhaps it will prove to be our best protection in the end. At the very least, it will certainly be better than a 24-hour camera shooting the life cycle of a cannabis garden, with occasional people popping in. Actually, at high speed, that could be kind of cool. OK, we'll start stocking up on batteries.

 

[Baron23]

Ok, you CA MJ felons....double header articles here may be of interest to you.

San Francisco will wipe out thousands of marijuana convictions dating to 1975

San Francisco will retroactively apply California's new marijuana legalization laws to prior convictions, expunging or reducing misdemeanors and felonies dating to 1975, the district attorney's office announced Wednesday.

Nearly 5,000 felony marijuana convictions will be reviewed, recalled and resentenced, and more than 3,000 misdemeanors that were sentenced prior to Proposition 64's passage will be dismissed and sealed, Dist. Atty. George Gascón said. The move will clear people's records of crimes that can be barriers to employment and housing.

San Francisco's move could be the beginning of a larger movement to address old pot convictions, though it's still far from clear how many other counties will follow the famously liberal city's lead.

Proposition 64 legalizes, among other things, the possession and purchase of up to an ounce of marijuana and allows individuals to grow up to six plants for personal use. The measure also allows people convicted of marijuana possession crimes eliminated by Proposition 64 to petition the courts to have those convictions expunged from their records as long as the person does not pose a risk to public safety.


They also can petition to have some crimes reduced from a felony to a misdemeanor, including possession of more than an ounce of marijuana by a person who is 18 or older.

"While drug policy on the federal level is going backwards, San Francisco is once again taking the lead to undo the damage that this country's disastrous, failed drug war has had on our nation and on communities of color in particular," Gascón said in a statement. "Long ago we lost our ability to distinguish the dangerous from the nuisance, and it has broken our pocketbooks, the fabric of our communities, and we are no safer for it."

• la-pol-ca-essential-politics-updates-2018

California lawmaker wants to make it easier to clear marijuana convictions from criminal records
Jan 09, 2018 | 12:02 PM

About 75% of San Franciscans voted to legalize marijuana, the highest margin among all of California's 58 counties. But only 23 petitions for Proposition 64 reduction, dismissal or expungement have been filed over the last year, the district attorney's office said, adding that it does not have any active marijuana prosecutions.

As of September, 4,885 Californians have petitioned the courts to have marijuana convictions expunged or reclassified, but many people don't know about the process, which can be difficult, according to the Drug Policy Alliance, which supported Proposition 64.

"So instead of waiting for the community to take action, we're taking action for the community," Gascón said.

Gascón's announcement came with special resonance in the city's Castro District, a center of efforts to legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes in California. One of the biggest advocates of medical marijuana, Dennis Peron, died Saturday at 72 after a battle with cancer; Peron was considered a central figure in promoting the use of marijuana for AIDS patients, and in 1991 he co-founded the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers' Club, the first public marijuana dispensary in the country.

"God knows how many convictions Dennis had," said San Francisco Supervisor Jeff Sheehy, who represents the Castro. Had Peron lived longer, "he'd have had many of his convictions expunged."

Sheehy said Gascón's plan takes the burden off those convicted of marijuana-related offenses to ask the court to review their case. "People recognize that this really is not a crime," Sheehy said.

"I'm totally in favor of that," Paul Greenbaum, 72, said of automatic expungement after he walked out of the Apothecarium, a medical and recreational cannabis dispensary in the Castro. "If it's not a crime now, what's the sense in continuing to stigmatize people?"

Greenbaum said he has been regularly smoking pot since he moved to San Francisco when he was 30 years old.

State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) said there is historical meaning in San Francisco taking this step.

The Castro "was so deeply impacted by the AIDS epidemic. So many people were getting sick and dying, and medical cannabis was a lifeline for many people living with AIDS — a way for people to help with the side effects of the medication, to help with nausea, to help improve their appetite," Wiener said.

Some noted that the district attorney's move could help people with prior convictions improve their livelihoods.

Convictions "really can hold you back from getting a good job," said Redding-area resident Tom Savasta, 32, adding that the move would help people "become more proactive members of society."

A 2016 study by New Frontier Data, a data analytics firm focused on the cannabis industry, found "stark racial disparities in California's marijuana-related jail population." Black, Latino and white people all consume and sell marijuana at similar rates, the research found, but black Californians are jailed for marijuana-only offenses at much higher rates — nearly one-quarter of people jailed for those offenses are black.

In a statement, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom said San Francisco's move provides "new hope and opportunities to Californians, primarily people of color, whose lives were long ago derailed by a costly, broken and racially discriminatory system of marijuana criminalization."

Gascón said the disparities outlined in the study "weighed very heavily" in his decision to review people's convictions.

"We know there were tremendous failures in the war on drugs, and we criminalized large sections of our community," he told The Times. "The African American and Latino communities were the most harmed by this."

The district attorney said he hopes other counties will follow in San Francisco's footsteps. Some lawmakers have already started to pursue or support similar measures, including state Assemblyman Rob Bonta (D-Oakland), who has proposed legislation that would require criminal convictions for marijuana-related offenses to be automatically expunged, placing the burden on the courts.

Proposition 64 was opposed by many law enforcement groups in California, including the California Police Chiefs Assn., the California District Attorneys Assn., the California Narcotic Officers' Assn., the California Peace Officers Assn. and the California State Sheriffs' Assn. They expressed concern about the impact of legalization and question whether the state was prepared for all the implications the law would bring.

In Colorado, where voters legalized pot, prosecutors have been reluctant to erase prior marijuana convictions, said Sam Kamin, professor of marijuana law and policy at the University of Denver's Sturm College of Law.

Often, defendants have pleaded guilty to a lesser crime, and prosecutors do not want to wipe their records clean when they may have committed more severe offenses than marijuana possession, Kamin said.

Eric Shevin, a Los Angeles defense attorney who specializes in marijuana law, said many people don't know they can wipe out their convictions or can't afford a lawyer to help with the process.

Shevin has already done a few hundred Proposition 64 petitions, which require preparing a motion and appearing in court several times. He said that process would go much more quickly with prosecutors taking the lead.

"District attorneys certainly have the right to research their own records and dismiss these cases on their own, en masse," Shevin said. "I applaud this D.A. for taking the initiative, and I hope others will follow."


San Francisco Will Clear Thousands of Marijuana Convictions

Thousands of people with misdemeanor convictions for marijuana possession dating back 40 years will have their criminal records cleared, the San Francisco district attorney’s office said Wednesday. San Diego is also forgiving old convictions.

Recreational marijuana became legal in California this year, and the law allowed those with prior low-level offenses to petition for expungement, a process that can be costly.

But in San Francisco and San Diego, people need not ask. George Gascón, San Francisco’s district attorney, said his office would automatically erase convictions there, which total about 3,000.

An additional 4,900 felony marijuana charges will be examined by prosecutors to determine if they should be retroactively reduced to misdemeanors.

San Diego has identified 4,700 cases, both felonies and misdemeanors, that will be cleared or downgraded.

Continue reading the main story


California was far from the first state to legalize recreational marijuana, but it is at the forefront of offering relief to people convicted of offenses that would not get them in trouble today.

A number of cities even decided to give preference to those who have previous marijuana convictions when giving out licenses to sell it legally. Oakland reserved at least half of its eight annual dispensary licenses for what it calls equity applicants, which include not only those convicted of marijuana-related crimes, but those who live in neighborhoods that had a disproportionately higher number of cannabis-related arrests. On Wednesday, officials there used a bingo machine to choose the four winners among 36 applicants.

Other places have taken a different tack. In Nevada, Gov. Brian Sandoval vetoed legislation last year that would have allowed people convicted of possessing one ounce or less of marijuana to have their convictions vacated, even though that is no longer a criminal offense.

And in Colorado, it took five years after voters approved recreational marijuana use before the state passed legislation last year that allows people with pot convictions to apply to have their records cleared. That did not occur until after California voters approved their law.

The result has been legal limbo: People whose behavior would not now be considered illegal are sometimes unable to find work, get college loans, obtain professional licenses, or find decent housing because of the blot on their record.

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Those who argue against expunging criminal records say people who violated the law should live with the consequences, regardless of subsequent legal changes.

“In all the other states, the process has been messy,” said Robert Mikos, a professor at Vanderbilt University who studies marijuana law and policy. “But whether people agree with what they did or not, California at least addressed it and there’s value in that.”

Even in California, there is significant variation in how counties are handling misdemeanor marijuana convictions. Some, like Fresno County, are dealing with them on a case-by-case basis, said Steve E. Wright, the county’s assistant district attorney. Jeff Rosen, district attorney of Santa Clara County, said he was working with the local public defender’s office to identify cases. And prosecutors in San Francisco and San Diego have been more proactive, with both cities planning to automatically dismiss misdemeanor convictions and to reduce felony convictions to misdemeanors.

In San Francisco, Mr. Gascón said he wanted to avoid putting people through a process that he said violates the spirit of legalization.

“A lot of people don’t even know they qualify, and I don’t think it’s the right thing to do to make people pay lawyers’ fees and jump through a bunch of hoops to get something they should be getting anyway,” he said.

In November 2016, California voters approved Proposition 64, which allowed adults 21 and older to buy or possess 28.5 grams of marijuana — about one ounce — or grow up to six plants at a private residence.

California, where cannabis shops began opening Jan. 1, was the sixth state to allow recreational marijuana, following Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Alaska and Nevada. Voters in Massachusetts and Maine have approved recreational marijuana, though sales have not started in either state. Vermont legalized pot earlier on Jan. 22.

In Washington, D.C., cannabis use is legal, but it cannot be sold commercially.

In Canada, which is moving toward legalization of recreational marijuana this year, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has warned that for now, the police and prosecutors will continue to treat pot sales as a crime.

“We recognize that anyone who is currently purchasing marijuana is participating in illegal activity that is funding criminal organizations and street gangs, and therefore we do not want to encourage, in any way, people to engage in that behavior until the law has changed,” Mr. Trudeau told reporters.

 

[Baron23]

In my state of MD, our new MMJ program is restricted to 15 licensed cultivators. Compliance regs pretty much make it a given that all will be indoor grown with table stakes to get into this business of a minimum of $10M. So, yes....big money operations.

I personally feel that it is VERY important for industry...both in CA and in MD...to have a place for small, innovative, boutique growers. In wine there is room for Gallo and Sonoma-Cutrer and nobody would want just Gallo. Same with MJ.

Wrt to CA, to me the regulatory structure to allow chaining multiple grow licenses into a mega-corp grow is directly in violation of Prop 64 and I hope these folks are successful in their suit.


California Weed Farmers Are Challenging State Grow Regulations
Could the cannabis industry fall prey to corporate agricultural business? California weed farmers are challenging state grow regulations to avoid just that.

In an effort to fight against the looming threat of cannabis corporatization, California weed farmers are challenging state grow regulations. Small-scale growers were dismayed when the regulations overseeing the legal cannabis economy were released by California state authorities last year, placing no effective limits on acreage that can be used by a single grower.

This led to fears that agribusiness could convert huge holdings in the Salinas and Central valleys to cannabis cultivation, and force the traditional small growers of the Emerald Triangle off the market.

Now the California Growers Association is challenging the regulations in the courts, demanding a one-acre cannabis grow cap.

The California Growers Association
Representing more than 1,000 cannabis cultivators and businesses in communities throughout the state, the California Growers Association filed its suit against the Department of Food & Agriculture regulations in Sacramento County Superior Court on Jan. 24.

The group’s press release cites the text of Proposition 64, the 2016 initiative to establish a legal cannabis market in California. Prop 64 stated that it “ensures the nonmedical marijuana industry in California will be built around small and medium-sized businesses…”


Prop 64, formally the Adult Use of Marijuana Act, and its enabling legislation, the Medicinal and Adult-Use Cannabis Regulation and Safety Act, establish a five-year transition period during which small and medium-size growers are to be protected before the state may issue large-scale cultivation licenses.

But the California Growers Association argues that the new regulations include a loophole that allows a single corporation “to obtain and aggregate unlimited smaller cultivation licenses to operate a cultivation site larger than the legal limit.”

The regulations do limit the number of one-acre grow licenses to one per person or entity—but also allow an individual to apply for multiple licenses for smaller plots, making nonsense of that one-acre limit.

Growers Association director Hezekiah Allen said Food & Agriculture violated the intent of the law. Its lawsuit calls upon the court to prohibit the state from issuing small cultivation licenses in cases in which the applicant’s total size would exceed one acre. The suit is also calling for the court to award attorneys’ fees to the Growers Association.


The association’s director Hezekiah Allen said they had exhausted every other option after meeting with state regulators and staff from Governor Jerry Brown’s office over the past months.

Allen emphasized, “Generally we think the agency is doing a good job, this is not a broad complaint. Our concern is very narrow in scope, but the implications are huge.”

Final Hit: California Weed Farmers Are Challenging State Grow Regulations
The specter of “corporate cannabis” was part of what led to the defeat of the 2010 legalization initiative in California, Prop 19, and also won Prop 64 its skeptics—including the recently departed Dennis Peron, arguably the state’s most prominent cannabis activist.

At least keeping a market niche for the small producers of the plant that gives us THC will clearly now be a challenge for growers, advocates and policy-makers alike.

California weed farmers are challenging state grow regulations, and if they do so successfully, it could help the industry keep true to its grassroots foundation.

 

[Baron23]

And the shit storm of anti's digging in their heels is still ongoing.


Mendocino Cannabis Company In Showdown With Authorities
A Mendocino Cannabis company in showdown with authorities is anxiously awaiting to find out their fate.


Barely a month after California implemented legal weed, a Mendocino cannabis company in showdown with authorities has caught our attention.

Just little over a week before legalization took effect in California on January 1, state police stopped a truck hauling 1,875 pounds of cannabis in Mendocino County, seizing the goods and slapping the two occupants with misdemeanor possession charges.

This despite the fact that they were hauling for their employer, Ukiah-based Old Kai Logistics, and had paperwork showing the firm is licensed by county authorities. Now that cannabis is recreationally legal, the Mendocino cannabis company in showdown with authorities is wondering where they stand.

It remains to be seen if prosecutors will pursue the case in light of legalization, and the affair has enflamed suspicions between growers and authorities at a critical moment.


Supply Chain Problems
Old Kai, the Mendocino cannabis company in showdown with authorities, is a cannabis industry logistic company that offers “supply-chain solutions” including testing, processing and distribution to area cultivators. The truck was hauling product for six growers in the Covelo/Round Valley area of the county.

During the December 22 traffic stop, the two employees presented law enforcement with documentation that the company was licensed as of December 19—to no avail.

Old Kai founder Lucas Seymour told the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat: “We’re a licensed entity. We have all the paperwork. All of our employees are aboveboard. We have payroll, pay stubs, workers’ comp. We’re not trying to scam anyone.”

Angry county residents packed a Jan 22 Board of Supervisors meeting to protest the bust in the public-comment period, local radio reports. Joe Rogoway, attorney for Old Kai, told the Supervisors he contacted both the California Highway Patrol and the sheriff’s office as soon as he knew the bust was underway and was “rebuffed” by both. He called the affair a “grave injustice.”

Authorities Claim Haul Was Still Illegal

Officer Jake Slates, a spokesman for the Highway Patrol’s Ukiah office, told the Press-Democrat he couldn’t comment on the case. The reason being, the investigating officer was out of the office. But Slates did say, “Let’s say they went through and got all the documentation and it’s 100 percent legal — it’s still illegal because it’s before Jan. 1, 2018.”


The participation of the Mendocino Sheriff’s department in the bust is particularly disconcerting. It indicates that the county’s own law enforcement is at odds with the county’s regulatory bureaucracy. Mendo Supervisors passed an ordinance to license and regulate cannabis in the county in April 2017. But Sheriff Tom Allman is a leader of the right-wing “Constitutional Sheriffs” movement, as the Press-Democrat has reported.

Legalization has been law in California since New Year’s Day. But the charges against the two Old Kai employees haven’t been dropped. Worst of all, the cannabis is still being held as evidence. Or, perhaps it has been destroyed.

And just 17 days after the bust, local officers, acting on a “probation search” linked to a 2015 misdemeanor cannabis conviction for Old Kai co-owner Lucas Seymour, entered the firm’s place of business and removed boxloads of financial documents.

The case is being watched closely by those who fear that a continued heavy police hand will discourage growers from joining California’s newly established legal and regulated market.

As attorney Rogoway told the Supervisors: “What I hear from a lot of operators in Mendocino County is, ‘Why should I participate in the system, put myself at risk? Why bother? If this is what happens to Old Kai, what will happen to me?'”


Final Hit: Mendocino Cannabis Company In Showdown With Authorities
Mendocino has approved more than 400 cannabis permits. But even licensed growers are clearly worried. Joshua Artman, one of the cultivators whose product was seized in the bust, told the Press-Democrat: “If I lose my crop… what do I tell my wife and kids? It’s tough. Honestly, I’m not sure what to do. Hopefully some good will come out of this; we can set a precedent and it won’t happen again. But this has massive repercussions for the county of Mendocino.”

And for what the legal cannabis economy is going to look like in the state of California.

 

[Baron23]

Well, I wouldn't call an inadequate or incomplete supply chain a "successful rollout" but on the other hand...run out of herb in CA. I don't think so. Run out of regulated legal herb....yeah, quite possible


California’s marijuana czar predicts supply will be “depleted” at some point


By Brad Branan, The Sacramento Bee

California’s top cannabis regulator said the state deserves credit for a successful rollout of retail marijuana sales, but acknowledged that significant issues loom in the near future.

One month after the start of recreational marijuana sales, Lori Ajax, chief of the state Bureau of Cannabis Control, gave an assessment of the state’s performance for a few hundred people at the International Cannabis Business Conference.

She praised her employees, who worked through the weekend before the Monday, Jan. 1 beginning of legal sales, granting licenses to dispensaries eager to start. Employees continued to work on Jan. 1, expecting to receive complaints from license applicants and holders, but they never came, Ajax said.

The bureau has granted about 2,400 temporary licenses for retail sales, delivery, distribution, testing and other parts of the cannabis supply system. The bureau is one of three state agencies licensing marijuana businesses, with the Department of Public Health permitting manufacturers and the Department of Food and Agriculture handling growers.

While dispensaries are selling marijuana in many parts of the state, Ajax cautioned that the system is still under construction.

“The supply chain has not been completely tested,” she said. “At some point we’re going to see the supply depleted.”

Related stories

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• Oakland awards special “equity” dispensary permits in public drawing
• San Francisco plans to erase thousands of marijuana convictions

Anticipating possible shortages under the new regulated system, many retailers stocked up on cannabis and cannabis-infused products late last year, she said. Once that supply runs out, things could get tight.

The bureau had issued 214 retail licenses as of Feb. 2. Those stores can only do business with other permitted businesses, including growers and distributors.

One pinch point in the system is distribution. Cannabis products can only be shipped from growers and manufacturers to retailers through licensed distributors. But there are only 129 licensed distributors in the state, not enough to meet demand, Ajax said.

Another problem – there are only 21 licensed testing facilities in California. Starting in July, marijuana will have to be tested for pesticides and other materials before it can be sold.

“We always knew there would be pinch points,” Ajax said.

One reason more distributors and testing companies haven’t gotten into the business is because many parts of California are not open for the retail cannabis market, she said.

Proposition 64, which legalized retail sales in November 2016, gave local governments the authority to ban or regulate commercial marijuana activity.

Ajax said the bureau has worked closely with local governments to inform them about the industry and regulations. But ultimately it’s up to the cities to decide if they want to enter the market or not, she said.

She said the bureau’s approach to the problem is simple. “We are licensing as many businesses as quickly as possible,” she said.

“We want to make this work,” she said. “We want California to be a leader.”

 

[Baron23]

California Could Dismiss ALL Marijuana Convictions Dating Back To 1975
Starting with San Francisco, California could dismiss all marijuana convictions dating back to the 1970s.

Here’s some groundbreaking and optimistic news: California could dismiss all marijuana convictions from the past 40 years.

Californians with convictions for marijuana-related misdemeanors will see their records cleared, as prosecutors up and down the Golden State begin dismissing convictions going all the way back to 1975. Others with felony convictions could see their offenses reduced to misdemeanors.

The News From San Francisco
In San Francisco last week, District Attorney George Gascon announced that his office will be automatically applying provisions of Prop 64 to remove convictions going back to 1975 for activities that are now legal under state law. Gascon noted that policies of the past were unevenly enforced, and disproportionally affected minorities.

“We want to address the wrongs that were caused by the failures of the war on drugs for many years in this country and begin to fix some of the harm that was done not only to the entire nation but specifically to communities of color,” said Gascon.

Prop 64, passed by California voters in 2016, legalized the recreational adult-use of cannabis and provides for a regulated commercial market for marijuana products. It also allows those with convictions for offenses that are no longer illegal to clear their records.


But under the law, those provisions aren’t automatic and can be costly. Those wishing to have their convictions removed are required to petition the court, usually requiring the services of an attorney to create and file their paperwork. District Attorney Gascon said that his action will remove that burden and allow the law to benefit all people equally.

“While this relief is already available pursuant to Proposition 64 for anyone with a conviction, it requires that they know it is available and to retain an attorney to file the expungement paperwork. A criminal conviction can be a barrier to employment, housing, and other benefits, so instead of waiting for the community to take action, we’re taking action for the community,” he said.

Final Hit: California Could Dismiss ALL Marijuana Convictions Dating Back To 1975
The San Francisco District Attorney’s office has identified 3,038 misdemeanor convictions that will be expunged, and 4,094 felonies that will be reviewed and re-sentenced.

Authorities in San Diego County are also working to help those with marijuana convictions clean up their records. Summer Stephan, interim District Attorney, said her office is working with county public defenders to identify those who stand to benefit. That partnership has already seen relief for 55 people who were either behind bars or on formal probation.

“We wanted to be pro-active. It’s clear to us that the law was written to allow this relief, and it’s important that we give full effect to the will of the people, especially for those who are most immediately affected,” said Stephan.


But San Diego’s efforts won’t be as comprehensive as the program undertaken in San Francisco. The computer records San Diego officials are using only go back about 15 years. That means it’s still up to people with convictions older than that to take matters into their own hands.

Other California counties haven’t been as quick to retroactively apply the provisions of Prop 64. A bill introduced in the state assembly by Oakland Democrat Rob Bonta in January would require eligible convictions statewide be automatically expunged or reduced by the courts.

 

[Baron23]

Wow, what a mess and how predictable.

Handful of California cannabis growers control 30% of 'small' grower licenses

A disproportionately small group of cannabis cultivation businesses in California control a large share of the licenses intended for “small” farming operations, a Business Journal review of state data has found.

Since Jan. 1, the California Department of Food and Agriculture has awarded about 540 temporary licenses for so-called “small” operations — that is, for cultivation that takes place on less than one quarter of an acre outdoors or less than 10,000 square feet indoors or in "mixed-light" settings. These temporary licenses last four months and are seen as a first step toward a permanent license.

Approximately 250 businesses have been awarded licenses for small cultivation. However, 10 of those businesses control about 30 percent of the licenses awarded. Two cultivators — Honeydew Farms LLC and Central Coast Farmer’s Market Management LLC — have been awarded about 30 licenses each.


Cultivators that hold a large number of licenses may be stacking them to run large operations. A trade association that represents the cannabis industry has filed a lawsuit arguing that this is a threat to the new recreational marijuana industry that voters meant to encourage when they passed Proposition 64.

“We’re trying to ensure that as many cultivators as possible can succeed in the regulated market,” said Hezekiah Allen, executive director of the California Growers Association, which represents about 900 cannabis cultivators statewide. “There’s a practical and moral imperative to ensuring as many farmers as possible participate.”

The Growers Association argues that Proposition 64 — the 2016 ballot measure that legalized recreational use of marijuana in California — was passed with the intention of supporting small and medium-sized cannabis businesses. However, a regulatory loophole has allowed large farming operations to proliferate at the expense of smaller ones, the association claims in its lawsuit.

Larger cultivators, meanwhile, say that they are simply following the regulations imposed by the state. Additionally, some cultivators who were able to expand in previous years under medical marijuana permits issued at the county level argue that it would be unfair if the state required them to scale back their operations.

“All of the sudden, we (would) have to scale back to an acre,” said Alex Moore, founder and owner of Honeydew Farms in Ferndale. “That would be a tremendous loss to us.”

In November, the state Department of Food and Agriculture published final regulations for cannabis cultivation licenses under Proposition 64. They specified how the state would award licenses based on the size of the cultivator. Licenses for “medium” cultivators — which measure up to 1 acre outdoors or up to 22,000 square feet indoors — would be limited to one per person or entity. Licenses for “large” cultivators — which measure over 1 acre outdoors or over 22,000 feet indoors — would not be awarded until 2023.

The regulations, however, specified no limitations for accruing licenses for small cultivation.

In late January, the California Growers Association filed its lawsuit against the state Department of Food and Agriculture, claiming that the regulations violate Proposition 64.


“One of Proposition 64’s expressly stated purposes is to ‘ensure the nonmedical marijuana industry in California will be built around small and medium sized businesses by prohibiting large-scale cultivation,’” the lawsuit states.

The loophole regarding small licenses, the Growers Association argues, “eviscerates” this provision of the ballot measure by allowing cultivators to accrue small licenses and effectively run large operations.

“Authorizing large cultivation operations prior to 2023 will have a devastating effect on small and medium cannabis businesses,” the Growers Association argues in its lawsuit.

The association cited a report commissioned by the Department of Food and Agriculture that found small cultivators would be at an unreasonable disadvantage if forced to compete with large cultivators when recreational marijuana became legal at the start of 2018. The Growers Association adds that smaller cultivators may opt to operate in the illegal market instead, which would deprive the state of tax revenue.

In Sacramento County, approximately 20 small cultivation licenses — all for indoor growing — have been issued to cultivators. The business with the most licenses has only three.

Moore, of Honeydew Farms, said that limiting the number of licenses held by an individual business would hurt established cultivators and choke the product supply to manufacturers and distributors. This echoes warnings recently voiced by Lori Ajax, the chief of the California Bureau of Cannabis Control.

In July 2016, Humboldt County awarded a permit to Honeydew Farms to cultivate on over 6 acres of land. Today, Honeydew Farms is growing on about 3 acres and plans to expand to over 6 acres by the summer.

If the state imposes limits on stacking small cultivation licenses, according to Moore, his business would be forced to reverse course.

Moore said he and other established cultivators were caught off guard by the Growers Association’s effort to compel the state to limit small licenses. Last summer, according to Moore, the association had been pushing the state to implement a 4-acre limit on cultivators until 2023, which would allow established growers to stack several licenses and not have to scale back operations.

When the state finalized its regulations, Moore said, the Growers Association did an about-face and began pushing for limitations on stacked licenses.

Allen acknowledges that the Growers Association initially supported a 4-acre limit for medical marijuana cultivation. But when the state released its new regulations in November, he said, the Growers Association advocated for a limit on licenses to give small cultivators a fair opportunity to succeed.

If license limits are imposed, according to Allen, established cultivators could utilize excess land for purposes other than cultivation. They would have the option of leasing the land to other growers or forming co-ops, according to Allen, that could cultivate on up to 4 acres.

Moore said that the licensing debate has left established cultivators feeling unfairly vilified.

“I have a lot of admiration and respect for these guys trying to help small farms navigate these changing laws,” Moore said. But "we’re being portrayed as ‘big ag,’ and that’s just not the case…We’re a single-family-owned company.”

Representatives of Central Coast Farmer's Market Management, the other business that's been awarded about 30 licenses, could not be reached for comment. Central Coast Farmer's is based in Buellton.

 

[Baron23]

Wow, another frakin mess brought to you by....yep, our government at work. sigh

Legal Cannabis stores in LA call for crackdown on illegal pop-ups

In California’s second month of legal adult-use cannabis sales, the nation’s largest retail cannabis scene, Los Angeles, is a mess.

Licensed dispensary owners say the opposite of what was supposed to happen has happened: As they hold on with limited revenues—many still awaiting city and state licenses—illegal storefronts and delivery services have cropped up to siphon sales.

Some owners of licensed dispensaries are exasperated. Those who aren’t losing money so far in 2018 say they’re just squeaking by, as new underground shops and illicit delivery services steal their customers with cut-rate prices made possible by the fact that they’re not paying taxes.

Why Am I Paying Taxes, Again?

Those taxes are no joke—they include a nearly 10 percent county sales tax, a 15 percent cut for the state of California and a 10 percent cut on receipts that go to City Hall.

“Due to the lack of enforcement and due to legalization, it has empowered illegal shops to start opening up,” says Virgil Grant, owner of Med EX Now, a licensed dispensary. Grant is also the co-founder and president of the Southern California Coalition, the city’s largest cannabis industry trade group.

Jared Kiloh, owner of the Higher Path dispensary in Sherman Oaks, said he had to sit on his hands in January, when he was awaiting a license from the city. Meanwhile, multiple illegal shops opened in the surrounding neighborhood and dozens of new delivery services set up shop.

“It’s gotten worse,” says Kiloh. “Come January an uneducated part of the market said, ‘I can buy weed anywhere now.’ Guess what they are doing? They are going anywhere. They’ve come out in droves to the illegal shops.”

The Los Angeles market has long been seen as the grand prize for legal cannabis in the United States and perhaps the world. Even during the era of medical pot the city of L.A. alone had as many tax-paying cannabis retailers as did the entire state of Colorado, which began adult-use sales in 2014. And that’s not counting the rest of the 88-city county of Los Angeles.

300+ Licensed Companies Expected

With recreational legalization and the coming of the city’s voter-approved Measure M, which overturned the loose framework of the past in favor of licensing, it’s expected that 300 or more retailers, not to mention manufacturers, delivery services and testing labs, will be blessed by City Hall.

But as the City of Los Angeles Department of Cannabis Regulations hustles to release the first batch of licenses to rule-following retailers, the most legitimate shops in town have had to serve a trickle of customers willing to pay their tax-enhanced higher prices, even as commerce rages at illegal storefronts, observers say. For some the dream of a green rush in America’s largest pot market has become a real let-down.

“The situation is unfair to the businesses that have been playing by the books,” says Carlos de la Torre who, with his wife, owns the Cornerstone Research Collective dispensary in Eagle Rock. “Measure M has enforcement issues. I’m actually competing with these businesses that aren’t paying all their taxes. They should have to play by the same rules.”

“With all the new regulations and taxation, and having to buy from only licensed producers, the margins become modest and it’s impossible to survive as long as there’s illegal competition,” adds Aaron Herzberg of CalCann Holdings, a California medical marijuana real estate company. “The legal operators are going to have to suffer financially until the illegal guys are shut down, and that’s going to take a lot of time.”

Illegal Delivery: The Unkindest Cut

The biggest sore spot for legit dispensaries is illegal delivery. Why drive to a shop, which may or may not be legal, and pay high taxes when a guy can come to your door? In conjunction with state law, the city is only poised to allow deliverers tied to licensed brick-and-mortar shops. And delivery licenses in L.A. have yet to be issued.

Kiloh, president of the UCBA (United Cannabis Business Alliance), a group of legit dispensaries in town that inspired Measure M, says he estimates that 200 new delivery services have popped up since the beginning of the year. “Delivery is not even legal in the city of Los Angeles,” he notes.

“None of us can deliver out of a storefront until we get our full license—so how is that fair?” asks De la Torre. “How many delivery services are there in the city of L.A.?”

Pre-ICOs and Measure M

Delivery was essentially outlawed under the city’s last regulation framework, Proposition D, which was approved by voters in 2013. The measure only allowed 135 or fewer shops to exist, although they were not expressly legalized. Instead they were offered limited legal immunity.

Those stores are often called “pre-ICOs,” because they’re supposed to have existed prior to a failed attempt in 2007 by the city to enact an “interim control ordinance” that intended to freeze the growth of dispensaries in town.

The state’s new legal cannabis framework requires local municipalities to license cannabis companies, and “limited legal immunity” wasn’t going to cut it. The City Council stepped in with Measure M, which is now responsible for licensing all of the city’s cannabis companies.

Delivery services tied to brick-and-mortar shops will be licensed, but the city is initially focused on those so-called pre-ICOs, like the shops owned by Grant, Kiloh and De la Torre, who received the first “priority” licenses.

Herb Wesson: Expecting 157 Licensed Stores

According to a spokeswoman for the office of City Council President Herb Wesson, “the current working number is around 157 dispensaries” that are expected to receive priority licenses from the city. While that number could be seen as fishy given the longtime assumption that there were fewer than 135 pre-ICOs still operating since 2007, the possibility that poseur shops will receive the much-coveted priority licenses has taken a backseat to support for enforcement against hundreds upon hundreds of fully illegal shops.

Those who now favor the issuance of 157 or so priority licenses say there were 187 pre-ICOs in 2007 and that some of those shops that are no longer around should be given a chance to become legal again, despite the survival of fewer than 135 dispensaries since then.

However, many observers agree that the figure of 157 could open the door to illegitimate shops that used doctored paperwork or other shenanigans—some pre-ICOs were split into multiple storefronts—to become legal. Those would-be pre-ICOs relied on documentation that many call “Frankenstein licenses,” backed by documents that included business tax registration certificates (BTRCs) that created the appearance of compliance, critics say.

“Plenty of people in the business for years have never done it right and will probably still get a license anyway,” says dispensary owner Kiloh. “There are [illegal] pre-ICOs that have six locations and change their address with the state of California every two weeks.”

“There are a lot of people who spend a lot of money to get creative to make something look pretty good on paper,” adds Adam Spiker, executive director of the Southern California Coalition. “Not all the pre-ICOs are clean as a whistle.”

License Means Nothing Without Enforcement

Both Kiloh and Spiker say licensing 157 or 158 dispensaries as good actors, even though some aren’t, is better than allowing fully illicit shops to operate without any enforcement.

Kiloh estimates there may be as many as 1,500 illegal dispensaries in Los Angeles, a figure echoed by other experts. Legal operators say they’re going through loopholes to stay open while illicit concerns take their business.

“The people who get the most scrutiny are the ones trying to be most legal,” Kiloh says. “They’re held accountable for paying taxes and enduring regulation paperwork.”

Three Staffers. Yes, Three.

The legit dispensaries are counting on the city’s Department of Cannabis Regulation to help weed out the fakes by withholding licenses. But the department, run by former Drug Policy Alliance coordinator Cat Packer, appears to be overwhelmed. The office has only three employees, including Packer. They’re tasked with weeding through thousands of cannabis industry hopefuls. It’s a daunting challenge for a city that does not even know precisely how many pre-ICOs exist or how many illicit stores exist.

“In order for the department to be successful the City Council has to allocate money,” says Herzberg of CalCann Holdings. Los Angeles, Herzberg adds, “is the largest legal marijuana market in the world. The city needs to make staffing a priority immediately.”

Says Kiloh: “You can’t run regulation in the largest marijuana market with only two employees.”

Press Conference Tomorrow?

Still, there’s faith among some legit retailers that Packer, the City Attorney’s Office and the Los Angeles Police Department will come to the rescue. The LAPD is expected to hold a news conference tomorrow (Feb. 13) regarding its enforcement efforts. Through department spokesman Josh Rubenstein, the captain of the LAPD’s gang and narcotics division, Stephen M. Carmona, declined to comment for this story. However, another high-ranking official in the department acknowledged that new dispensaries “are popping up fast all the time.”

“We’ve seen shootings surrounding marijuana business go up dramatically,” he added. “The new law has created a black market both for people who don’t want to pay the new taxes and for people who want to sell to those under 21. That black market poses a high potential for crime around a very valuable commodity. If what I’ve seen in the first weeks of the new year holds, it doesn’t portend well for the future.”

Officials: No Comment

The mayor’s office, the City Attorney’s Office and the Department of Cannabis Regulation did not make anyone available to comment on the record for this story. For now, the good actors in the local cannabis industry are eagerly awaiting the cavalry to come and shut down their illegal competitors. Cops can raid shops under state and local law. But the City Attorney’s Office also has tools, including daily $20,000 fines for illicit operators and the landlords who facilitate them.

“I could find 10 shops to close down just driving down the street,” Kiloh says. “But I have yet to hear one business being assessed those fines since January 1.”

“In order for any kind of regulated system to be a success you need to have vigorous enforcement,” says Herzberg. “A surge is going to have to happen if in fact the licenses are to mean anything or be financially viable.”

 

[Baron23]

California sends 'several hundred' warning letters to unlicensed cannabis businesses

California state cannabis regulators fired a warning shot this week, sending out hundreds of warning letters to businesses suspected of engaging in commercial cannabis activity without a state license.

Most of the letters, which threaten civil and criminal penalties, have gone out to retail storefronts and delivery services believed to be operating illegally, according to Alex Traverso, communications chief for the state Bureau of Cannabis Control.

“We’ve sent out several hundred of these letters in just the past couple days,” he told Leafly on Friday. “Much like we’ve been visiting licensees and doing compliance checks focused on education, these letters represent the first step in the Bureau’s efforts against unlicensed operators.”

California has long been considered the Wild West of cannabis regulation, with virtually zero state oversight of the legal industry until the beginning of 2018. As new state licensing requirements kicked in on Jan. 1, some existing businesses decided to forego licenses, citing high fees and onerous obligations.

In Los Angeles, local authorities have arrested at least 35 people during raids at eight unlicensed retail shops, Los Angeles Police Department Capt. Stephen Carmona said at an LAPD press conference on Thursday.

Officials have granted licenses to roughly 100 cannabis businesses but estimate that two to three times that number are currently operating in the city. Other cities, such as San Diego, are also cracking down on unlicensed cannabis businesses.

Here’s the full text of letters the Bureau of Cannabis Control has sent to businesses suspected of operating illegally:

The Bureau of Cannabis Control (Bureau) has reason to believe that you may be engaging in unlicensed commercial cannabis activity. Pursuant to the provisions of the Medicinal and Adult-Use Cannabis Regulation and Safety Act (MAUCRSA), a valid state license from a state licensing authority is required to legally operate a commercial cannabis business within the State of California. If you are in fact engaging in unlicensed commercial cannabis activity, you must cease all commercial cannabis operations until you obtain a valid state license to avoid further violations of state law. Please be aware that such violations may result in criminal and administrative penalties, as well as civil penalties totaling up to three times the amount of the license fee for each violation.

To apply for a license, please visit the Bureau’s website, www.bcc.ca.gov, or contact the Bureau at (833) 768-5880.

Sincerely,

Paul Tupy

Assistant Chief of Enforcement​