There is no one in this whole wide world that does not describe California’s legal cannabis bureaucracy as a “disaster, a mess”. I concur entirely.
It didn’t have to be that way at all. When they started writing the rules after passage of Prop 64, it looked like they were going to pretty much copy the work other states had done. But that was draft 1, and by the next draft, every CA department had a hand in the rules on licenses and taxes. I’m in Arcata, Humboldt county, as I write this and the local public radio station described it as a “clusterfuck”. So keep that in mind whenever I talk about the CA cannabis situation.
One of the stupidest things CA did was allow local control over the industry. They were entirely aware of the issues this caused in other states, and made the chicken decision to allow it. First to jump into the mess were counties, followed by cities.
The maze of regulations, permits, and fees to have anything to do with cannabis are devastating. It’s a shame.