When CA wrote it’s enabling legislation and regulatory rules after passing Prop 64 enabling a legal regulated cannabis market, it looked pretty good. Sure, it was heavy in red-tape and annoying fees, but this is California. And, coming in late to the game, they had the benefit of experiences from other states which had to be retrofitted in those states. I was optimistic that they’d come up with a bunch of great ideas.
But just days before the legislation was passed, a clause to protect and encourage small illegal growers to jump on the legal program was eliminated. Most states recognized that the best strategy for bringing up a new regulated market was to make it easy to “capture” the small grower operating “up in the hills”. Instead, CA just kept going with the rule-making minutia that added complexity and expenses which strongly (deliberately?) favored those with money and busloads of attorneys. Two years later, they might have captured 1% of the renegade growers in the state. 99% of the illegal growers have yet to get a license pay any fees or submit any taxes to the state.
As I wrote the other day, the mess that is temporary licenses is getting worse by the day as those licenses expire. Without a valid state license you are prohibited from operating at all. In the Emerald Triangle it’s seed planting time, and they grow the bulk of the state’s crop, in addition to the seed stock for next year.
Meanwhile, the governor has thrown $10 million dollars at law enforcement to go after the illegal growers, and Los Angeles has put emphasis on shutting down the operators there without allocating resources to implement their license system.
Even San Francisco has installed an uninformed political appointee in charge of their program. SF needs a bureaucrat to sell pot?
Mostly, the growers and sellers are ignoring all of this and continuing on as they have been, being quite used to such bullshit. There are those that are trying to play the game, though. The few that have opened stores have very thin inventory of legal weed. One store in Humboldt County did not offer any product from the region, instead relying on factory-grown machine processed product grown in Desert Hot Springs.
So for those very few putting up with the double-dealing and capricious red tape, business is very confusing. Yet those that are willing to take the risks are continuing on illegally as before.
Yesterday the Assembly passed SB67 to extend the expire dates of the temporary licenses. That’s a good thing, sorta, but no one can say California has implemented a “well-regulated legal marketplace” in cannabis.