California - The Next Green World Order

[CanniDo Cowboy]

First, a little reading...The below article is IMO, probably the most on point prediction, and I use the word prediction somewhat generously, in attempting to help looking ahead as to what the Green Cali landscape will look like after the 3 medical marijuana related bills, already signed by our gov, is joined soon there after with the on-the-horizon recreational bill. I imagine it will be something in the realm of our standard society order format -The penthouse for some, the outhouse for others...cc


BY PETER HECHT
[email protected]
A new world of weed is coming to the largest marijuana marketplace on the planet.

Gov. Jerry Brown this month signed regulations he said would bring “robust controls” to govern California’s long untamed medical marijuana industry, with clear standards for “local government, law enforcement, businesses, patients and health providers.”

His signature also may bring something else: a decidedly robust new era for cannabis commerce. By 2018 or sooner, marijuana businesses – from small pot farms to cannabis superstores – effectively can begin earning legal profits under the nation’s most diverse state licensing scheme for pot.

Until now, California’s vast pot economy has flourished with nebulous state guidelines enacted by lawmakers after voters in 1996 approved Proposition 215 to legalize marijuana for medical use. Purportedly nonprofit medical marijuana providers currently take in millions of dollars under a legal notion of patients cultivating and sharing cannabis in collectives with other medical users.

Now marijuana is set to be a regulated business activity, governed as a unique agricultural product in an industry that will be transparent and, soon, unabashedly for-profit.

Medical marijuana dispensaries annually ring up more than $1 billion in sales, and about 1 million Californians now have physicians’ recommendations for pot use to address a range of conditions, including nerve pain, cancer and anxiety. With a ballot initiative to legalize adult recreational pot use looming for 2016, investors are poised to get in on this new era of marijuana regulation.

“You’re going to see the emergence of a California medical marijuana commodities market,” said Sebastopol attorney Omar Figueroa, who represents marijuana dispensaries and venture capitalists. “Investors will be coming in and betting on the future price of marijuana. There is going to be a full-blown marijuana casino.”

Steve DeAngelo, executive director of Oakland’s Harborside Health Center medical marijuana dispensary, said the new rules signal that “we’re going to move from a nonprofit service model to a for-profit service model.”

Harborside, which already bills its Oakland dispensary as the largest marijuana provider in the world, has a second dispensary in San Jose and plans for a third in San Leandro. DeAngelo also heads a national marijuana industry investment group, Arc View, that envisions new opportunities in California as “medical marijuana companies and stores begin to look a lot like other businesses.”

But if regulated marijuana commerce is indeed California’s next burgeoning business sector, it remains to be seen who gets to play and where.

“I’m a little wistful,” Figueroa said. “There was romanticism in the peaceful cannabis growers rebelling against conformity. Now the suits are coming in and taking over.”

California’s pot governance, to be headed by a yet-to-be-staffed Bureau of Medical Marijuana Regulation, will be funded by $10 million loaned by the state and repaid in still-to-be specified taxes and fees on cannabis businesses.

Detailed regulations are to be drafted and implemented between now and Jan. 1, 2018. In addition to the new Bureau of Medical Marijuana Regulation, state agencies on public health, taxation, consumer affairs, water, fish and wildlife and pesticide control all will play a part in regulating cannabis. In addition, 58 counties and 482 cities will decide on local rules, including whether to accept or ban pot businesses.

The three medical marijuana regulation bills signed by Brown – Assembly bills 266 and 243 and Senate Bill 643 – will create 17 different marijuana business licenses. There will be 10 licensing and fee tiers for pot cultivation alone, two licenses for manufacturing, one for laboratory testing, two for retail sales and one each for transportation and distribution.

From seed to sale

The market structure that California is attempting to implement is far different from that of Colorado, which in 2010 became the first state to impose strict medical cannabis regulations. Under the Colorado model, now expanded to include recreational marijuana, licensed stores largely grow their own pot in cavernous state-inspected warehouses or buy product from other licensed retailers in an integrated production system. Would-be independent marijuana farmers were effectively frozen out.

As its rules are formalized over the next two years, California seeks a sweeping approach to open the entire marijuana supply line for businesses large and small – and to regulate each step in the journey from pot seed to pot sale. The system takes inspiration from alcohol rules that create separate licenses for producers, distributors and retailers to prevent big players from colluding or dominating the market.

So, one day soon, a licensed medical marijuana farmer in the backwoods of Humboldt County may harvest a crop and then contract with a registered delivery driver to bring buds to a state-sanctioned cannabis distributor in San Francisco. The distributor then might send samples to a licensed testing lab in Oakland and later ship product to a state-inspected cannabis foods kitchen in Berkeley and a regulated marijuana store in Los Angeles.

Under the California legislation, the Department of Food and Agriculture and the new marijuana regulation bureau are to construct a “track and trace program” to govern the movement of pot throughout the distribution chain.

“I think we’re going to see a bit of culture shock, just like transitioning California from the Wild West to statehood,” said Dale Sky Jones, executive chancellor of Oaksterdam University, a cannabis institute in Oakland. “With regulation comes things like inspections and measuring and fees and audits. And from that, hopefully, structure and confidence.”

In California’s north coast pot-growing region, home to a long illicit cannabis culture, the new rules are creating excitement and anxiety.

“Everyone is afraid, wary – and hopeful,” said Casey O’Neill, a medical marijuana grower in Mendocino County who cultivates 25 cannabis plants under county guidelines. “It does feel like a new era. We are now farmers. We are no longer criminals.”

Small outdoor cannabis growers such as O’Neill, with 50 plants or fewer and no more than 5,000 square feet of cultivation space, will be at the lowest tier of California’s licensing structure. State rules will allow for outdoor pot nurseries of up to an acre and indoor production of half an acre.

O’Neill said some small farmers are worried about being squeezed out by bigger players in a California market “on a fast track to conglomeration.” Under the new regulations, the Department of Agriculture is expected to set limits on the number of licenses for larger pot-cultivation ventures.

In Humboldt County, where marijuana fuels the economy, local advocates are debating strategies to retain market share as a state-regulated medical marijuana trade – and potentially expanded legalization – are expected to spur competition across California.

“What is going to carry Humboldt County through the day is that we grow the best cannabis in the world,” said Andy Powell of California Cannabis Voice Humboldt, an advocacy group for local growers. “It’s a question of how we protect it. Can we brand it? Can we maintain control of farms that are growing craft or boutique cannabis?

“We want to grow the fine wine, whereas Fresno is welcome to the two-buck chuck.”

‘A clear and certain signal’

So far, the Central Valley, California’s most renowned agricultural region, has been mostly hostile to the notion of commercial cannabis production. Medical marijuana cultivation is banned in unincorporated Fresno County, and the city of Fresno allows only four-plant indoor grows for medical marijuana users.

According to Americans for Safe Access, a medical marijuana advocacy group, 193 California cities and 20 counties, including Sacramento County, ban cannabis stores or commercial cultivation. But other jurisdictions, enticed by the prospects of local tax revenues, are expected to welcome pot business expansion.

Oakland may be at the top of the list. That city in 2010 set out to become the Silicon Valley of weed with an ambitious plan to license four indoor marijuana farms, each with up to 100,000 square feet. Oakland expected to reap a tax bonanza from the project under a voter-approved 5 percent local levy on medical cannabis sales.

The city’s plan riled the U.S. Department of Justice, which in 2011 launched sweeping raids on California cannabis businesses. The federal actions included a still-pending 2012 civil suit that seeks to shutter the Harborside Health Center dispensary. Harborside and Oakland officials argue that California’s new medical cannabis regulations are grounds for the Justice Department to drop the suit.

In 2013, after Colorado and Washington legalized recreational marijuana use, Deputy Attorney General James Cole issued a memo saying the Justice Department wouldn’t intervene in states legalizing pot if those states enacted “robust controls” regulating marijuana sales and distribution.

Federal authorities said they want safeguards against marijuana sales to minors and illegal pot diversions into criminal markets and to states where marijuana use remains illegal.

In his signing statement, Brown said California’s new regulations send “a clear and certain signal to our federal counterparts that California is implementing robust controls not only on paper, but in practice.”

Medical cannabis lawyer Figueroa said the state’s regulatory framework is “just the scaffolding on the house and there are rules to be worked out.” He said there likely will be a lot of “lobbying and sausage-making” in follow-up legislation.

“Now we have 100 years of implementation to do in two years,” said Hezakiah Allen, a former medical marijuana farmer from Humboldt County who heads the Emerald Growers Association lobbying group.

“I don’t know of a lot of people who are saying, ‘Hooray, we get to do a bunch of paperwork now,’ ” he added. “But this marks the beginning of the inspections-not-raids era. ... A lot of (marijuana) business owners are ready to be legitimate and fully participating members in their local economies.”

 

[CanniDo Cowboy]

So, there you have it folks, heavy things being said by heavy hitters in our game. My only question at this point is - While in the fields, will suits and ties be optional work wear...?" cc

 

[CanniDo Cowboy]

Note to readers - I'm posting various articles in word form as apposed to attaching links as somewhat of a "right to passage" task. If you take time to read the entire articles, you earn a " I really want to know and understand WTF is going on" badge....

That thing I said referencing the heavy hitters? In that regard, the following article gives you the who's who. A bunch of big guys smelling big money and I dont think, at this point it really matters whether they truly believe society should be granted recreational weed access. To them, money and weed are the same color and when it comes to the money part, theyre akin to the Terminator - "Its what they do, it's all they do..." cc



BY PETER HECHT
[email protected]
Big donors, led by former Facebook president Sean Parker, are lining up to fund a 2016 California initiative to legalize marijuana for recreational use.

But behind the scenes, legalization efforts are splitting California marijuana advocates with national drug-policy groups over such things as including initiative language to protect marijuana users from job discrimination or over how tightly to restrict pot cultivation or cannabis industry operations.

With billionaires now readying to fund legalization efforts, some cannabis activists fear they will be left on the sidelines on an issue they pioneered and elevated to political relevance.

Parker, supported by other would-be major funders, has hired Sacramento political consultant Gale Kaufman and the capital political law firm Olson Hagel & Fishburn to draft a 2016 initiative and lead the marijuana legalization effort, according to five sources affiliated with cannabis advocacy groups or the marijuana industry.

Kaufman and Olson Hagel senior partner Lance Olson declined to return calls for comment, and Parker couldn’t be reached.

In the cannabis community, the Parker effort is considered the most likely to reach the ballot due to its financial clout alone. Marijuana advocacy groups such as Reform California and the Drug Policy Alliance, which until now have been pursuing initiatives of their own, are uncertain over what influence – if any – they will have on the 2016 measure.

Besides Parker, a billionaire tech executive who co-founded the file-sharing music service Napster, other likely initiative investors include wealthy heirs to the Hyatt hotel chain and Progressive insurance, according to multiple sources.

Previously, Justin Hartfield, an Irvine venture capitalist who founded Weedmaps Media, a website and mobile app that guides consumers to marijuana dispensaries, put up $1 million on April 20 for a separate committee backing legalization efforts. Hartfield also donated another $1 million to support marijuana-friendly political candidates.

Yet disputes persist between political camps over how broadly or narrowly to set marijuana market rules for California, which already boasts America’s largest pot economy with medical marijuana alone.

A coalition called Reform California, whose partners include many long-standing California marijuana advocates, is backing its own initiative to legalize possession of an ounce of pot and personal cultivation of 100 square feet of marijuana for adult recreational use.

The Reform initiative also proposes a tiered taxation system on the marijuana supply line from cultivation to retail sales. It also would require voter approval for city or county bans on marijuana dispensaries and other cannabis businesses, a step considered worrisome for some local government advocates.

The group says it has amassed an 80,000-name crowd-funding list of small donors and some unspecified larger donors, but acknowledges it had hoped to work with Parker or similar major financial players.

A national group, the Drug Policy Alliance, differs with Reform California over marijuana industry and cultivation rules as well as over initiative language on anti-discrimination protections for workers who have doctor’s recommendations for medical marijuana or use marijuana during nonworking hours.

THERE IS CERTAINLY FRICTION FOR A VARIETY OF REASONS. SOME OF IT HAS TO DO WITH CONTENT. SOME OF IT HAS TO DO WITH APPROACH.
Lynne Lyman, Drug Policy Alliance

Meanwhile, early drafts of initiative language from the Parker group – seen as too restrictive by some Reform California advocates – have added to tensions, according to people familiar with the different camps.

“We have all been in negotiations with each other both separately and independently,” said Dale Sky Jones, the chairwoman of the Reform California campaign, who said she has personally spoken with Kaufman as well as representatives for Parker. “It’s currently a disjointed effort. We are still talking and trying to find a path to one initiative.”

Reform California has hired Sacramento political strategist Jim Gonzalez, who managed the campaign for California’s 1996 Proposition 215 medical marijuana initiative. Also working with the group is Joe Trippi, who ran the presidential campaign of former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean in 2004.

The Drug Policy Alliance has been privately circulating a proposed California legalization initiative of its own but hasn’t submitted a measure for the ballot. The group, funded by liberal philanthropist George Soros, helped lead Oregon’s 2014 successful recreational marijuana initiative and backed winning 2012 legalization votes in Colorado and Washington.

Lynne Lyman, the Drug Policy Alliance’s California state director, said the DPA still hopes to influence efforts by “the funders’ group,” including Parker, so that a consensus initiative may emerge. But that prospect is far from certain.

“There is certainly friction for a variety of reasons,” Lyman said. “Some of it has to do with content. Some of it has to do with approach. For DPA, it’s primarily a social justice issue: This is about rolling back the war on drugs and reducing the hardships for people of color” from unequal marijuana enforcement.

She added: “Other people are more concerned about industry issues. It’s not trivial that we all come from different approaches and areas of priority.”

According to sources, other would-be donors aligning with the Parker Group include New Approach PAC, a Washington, D.C.-based political action committee tied to the family of late billionaire Peter Lewis, former chairman of Progressive Corp. New Approach PAC was a major campaign contributor to Oregon’s Measure 91 recreational marijuana initiative in 2014.

Also part of the effort are investment executives Joby and Nicholas Pritzker, descendants of the Hyatt Hotels founder. Joby Pritzker has been a board member for the Marijuana Policy Project.

Previously, Hartfield of Weedmaps announced his cash infusion into the recreational marijuana cause in April with the formation of a political action committee called Californians for Sensible Reform.

In his April 20 statement, he said he was putting his money behind “a generational cause and an economic imperative ... to get this billion-dollar industry out of the shadows and to fully monitor it and regulate it.”

The Parker group is said to be working on an initiative that seeks to appeal to a broader audience than constituencies of marijuana advocacy or business interests. Their effort follows a July report by a Commission on Marijuana Policy headed by Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom that he said he hoped would influence authors of marijuana legalization measures.

The commission’s 93-page policy document didn’t spell out specific regulations or taxes on recreational marijuana. But it expressed support for “a new licensed market” for small and midsize cannabis businesses so that “the industry and regulatory system are not dominated by large, corporate interests.”

When the report was released, Newsom said he would “work hard” to defeat any marijuana initiative he sees “as looking to capitalize on the next California Gold Rush.”

Dale Gieringer, California director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said he saw recent ballot language for the initiative expected to be funded by the Parker group. After helping draft the Reform California initiative, Gieringer said he disliked the measure’s marijuana industry governing plan and said it fell short in rolling back criminal penalties for marijuana and in protecting medical cannabis users. “We have issues with it,” he said.

The frictions worry many marijuana advocates, who blame intense divisions within the cannabis community for helping defeat a previous legalization measure, Proposition 19, in 2010. “I think we can ill afford to lose another election we should win,” said Steve DeAngelo, executive director of Oakland’s Harborside Heath Center medical marijuana dispensary and an influential California advocate.

Until Parker apparently decided to take his checkbook in a different direction, Reform California sought to position itself as the group with the broadest political support to lead the initiative effort.

The Reform California coalition includes Richard Lee, a former Oakland medical marijuana entrepreneur who bankrolled Proposition 19 effort in 2010. Its initiative emerged after months of meetings with California labor and cannabis advocacy groups as well as the state NAACP, whose president, Alice Huffman, endorsed the measure.

But the Drug Policy Alliance and Marijuana Policy Project, which also participated in general policy discussions, notably walked away after Reform California filed the actual measure.

“Now everybody is waiting to see what the Weedmaps guy and Sean Parker are going to come up with,” said Omar Figueroa, a Sebastopol attorney for medical marijuana businesses. “This is a time of uncertainty.”

Figueroa is supporting two other legalization initiatives that have been submitted for the 2016, including one led by Dave Hodges, a former operator of the All-American Cannabis Club dispensary in San Jose.

Meanwhile, Gieringer, who said other initiatives may still emerge, said he expects “there is going to be discussion and negotiations and probably some polling done” before ballot language is settled.

“Hopefully, people will agree. I suspect they won’t,” Gieringer said. “And I think the funders will make a choice.”

 

[stoned-trout]

we have shitload of dispensaries already..theres like 25 pages of em in the back of the san diego reader..prices have crashed....very cheap low prices now....yeehaw....

 

[SocalNugz]

Dont sound good to me....
Sounds like they are trying to make the mj industry just like big pharma....
What should be our ulitmate example of what not to do is whats being done....
Just wait the price drops wont last.
Big pharma produces cancer drugs for pennies an sells em for hundreds per dose....
Mj will be no different once they get their strangle hold.
Just another way for the government to get in our pockets.
So basically take an idustry that is makin lots of normal people better off an fuck them an hand it off to the 1%ers just like everything else so they can ruin it.
Just glad i can grow my own, i feel sorry for the end user in a few years.
Something tells me the black market is gonna come back strong.

 

[CanniDo Cowboy]

A different and probably more accurate assessment of the "Terrible Trio" of bills we just had shoved down our throats by convincing us it was 'good medicine"...Actually, the not so good medicine, as it turns out, wasnt given orally, more of a bendover, anal application...cc

by Mickey Martin Jan 10, 2016

"It is just a harmless little bunny," they said.

I tried to tell them that the rabbit they were negotiating with was the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent they had ever set eyes on... That the rabbit had a vicious streak a mile wide, and was a killer! But none of them wanted to listen. They were so bold in their miscalculated predictions that the Medical Marijuana Regulation and Safety Act (MMRSA) was going to be great, finally providing some structure to the cannabis industry in California. They have wandered around for months since the passage of these three laws patting themselves on the back for helping create this “revolutionary” new regime of regulations that will govern the unique cannabis industry here in California.

But apparently none of them, or the lawmakers who voted on the damn thing, actually read the law in its entirety or contemplated the repercussions of setting arbitrary deadlines; and trying to create a whole new State government agency that forces a dozen already established agencies to figure out how to all work together in harmony to regulate an existing billion plus dollar industry that has existed here for decades.

The most egregious issue that we see is the decimating of patients’ rights to cultivate their own cannabis in the State due to the March 1st deadline put into the law, apparently as a “mistake” (rolls eyes). The result was obviously not a mistake to the League of Cities or CA Police chiefs Association who immediately began encouraging municipalities across the State to incorporate a ban on cultivation to get ahead of the looming deadline. They even provided them with sample ordinance language to help them get moving in that direction… and the results have been catastrophic.

What has resulted is cities and counties across the State moving to ban cannabis cultivation altogether in an effort to get something on the books before the erroneous deadline passes. They are not banning “commercial cannabis activity.” No… They are banning patients’ right to cultivate their own cannabis, as well. Tens of thousands of patients, often in remote areas with little options for access, are now forced to be outlaws for growing a few plants for their personal use. In an effort to comply with the new laws (which a bunch of jackasses promised the community would be a positive thing), what we are seeing is a sweeping effort to outright make cultivating all cannabis illegal. Way to go.

It is humorous to see the people who have been touting this as an amazing evolution for the cannabis community now backpedal as patients, activists, and citizens sharpen their pitchforks and light their torches. The likes of Nate Bradley with the California Cannabis Industry Association who called the laws a “significant victory for the industry” and who gave the Governor a virtual reach around upon signing the laws is nowhere to be found as these municipalities ban cultivation, which will ultimately limit supply, increase prices, and create a vast new era of prohibition in the State. His most current statements in the press have suddenly acknowledged that there are “a lot of negatives” in the law, and now refers to it as a “mixed bag.” Funny… It wasn’t such a mixed bag when you were blowing smoke up everyone’s ass about how great it was, and how your work was instrumental in its development. Good to know you have seen CCIA paying membership numbers spike tenfold since the inception of your lie and complicity in the destruction of the cannabis industry in the State. You are a real hero.

Same goes for the self-inflated wannabe cannabis superhero, Hezekiah Allen, of the Cannabis Growers Association (formerly known as the Emerald growers Association). No sooner did the Governor’s pen hit the paper, when Hezekiah rebranded the EGA and set out on a statewide tour telling folks why they needed to give him money if they wanted to be a part of the new program. Yawn. Never saw that coming, player. I am never surprised when a slick-talking charlatan walks into town and starts shaking down the locals for cash to save them from themselves. The problem? The California Growers Association, and their fearless leader “Hez” have ZERO pull at any level of Government… Fed, State, or local. If anything, the lawmakers who they believe they are convincing find their arrogance amusing, while they disregard the approach completely and create laws to ban cannabis.

Good old Hezekiah has gone around for months telling everyone why the MMRSA is the greatest thing since OG Kush. He is quoted in the SF Chronicle after the Governor signed the bills saying “This is the single best thing that could have happened.” Yeah? Maybe you want to tell that to the gigantic part of the population who has just been banned from growing their own medicine; but I doubt it. Cowards never apologize for their mistakes, and it seems that Allen continues to double down on his lies. He is now promising that the “fixes” being put forth will right the wrongs. Fat chance, kid. Is this your first day? Have you ever dealt with local government outside of your little triangle? Once something is passed it is incredibly hard to reverse. Local officials are not known for their courage or willingness to spend political capital on weedheads. Don’t worry. We will be waiting for your apology. Chances are a ban put in today will stay a ban for years to come. But keep giving your hard earned outlaw money to these CGA hucksters to “protect” you.

Americans for Safe Access, and their California overlord, Don Duncan also touted the bills as “historic” and a “positive step” for the cannabis community. They went as far as stating, “ASA worked diligently with lawmakers for the last three years to win important concessions for patients. ASA made sure that the rights of individual patients to cultivate their own medicine without state licensing, regulation, or taxation was preserved.” Yet now that they see that their efforts in no way preserved the right of tens of thousands of patients, and instead supported a law that has resulted in their loss of rights to cultivate their own medicine, they still have yet to apologize. While the March 1 deadline was a glaring issue in my assessment of the laws, somehow the folks at ASA, and these other groups, seemingly just missed the “typo?” How? Why? What were you thinking? Now they want to cry that… “The deadline for local licensing of commercial medical cannabis in March has caused some cities to overreact,” Duncan said. “In some cases, local governments are even banning marijuana cultivation by individual patients. That was never the intent of the law, and it is unlikely that provision will remain in state law.” Anyone who read that part of the law with a critical eye could see that this would be the overwhelming result of the March 1st deadline, yet all of these geniuses just somehow missed it? In fact, I would go further to state that they even suggested it in an effort to overcome local opposition, and attempt to open areas of the state where lawmakers failed to act. It is certainly not an area that the League of Cities would have brought forth, even though they have used it to their strategic advantage by creating hysteria around it. The League of Cities would NEVER have made the State the “sole licensing authority” if a municipality failed to act by March 1.

But what you won’t see is any of these folks taking any responsibility for the major fuck up. Nope. They will continue to put lipstick on that pig until you get drunk enough to want to bang it again. I will continue to pass. Thanks.

CA NORML, and their leader Dale Gieringer also decided to support the MMRSA going as far as stating… “MMRSA is a helpful first step in what will be a lengthy legalization process.” Helpful how? To who? Here is another group who is supposed to be fighting for the cannabis community’s rights, and somehow they just “overlooked” the deadline mistake too. He is also hopeful that a meaningless letter from Jim Wood, one of the bills authors, will somehow “help cool down local officials who have been stampeding to restrict cultivation without adequate consideration.” Keep dreaming, man. You guys left the door wide open and are now surprised that public officials have driven a truckload of cultivation bans through it? Who left you in charge of anything again?

With friends like these….

The deadline that has not gotten as much fanfare has come and gone too. January 1, 2016 was the deadline for cannabis businesses to be in “good standing” with their local jurisdictions to receive priority licensing. The problem is that NO ONE on the production side of the industry is in good standing with shit. We have been left out in the cold all of these years, and now have no right to any priority over those who will certainly flock to the industry when licensing fires up. Nope… You are just another number in a sea of numbers. But when the other looming deadline of January 1, 2018 comes and there are not enough licensed producers to fill the shelves of the dispensaries just remember we had this conversation.

So what else did they forget or overlook? How many more “typos” are in these laws? How many times will these fools eat crow on their decision to support this effort, and in turn the overzealous regulatory regime they now want you to support in the Sean Parker Adult Use of Marijuana Act? As we get further down the rabbit hole and they begin to realize that they were accessories to this crime that will destroy the cannabis industry for years, will they ever apologize for their “mistakes?” No… No they will not. They will continue to talk out of the side of their mouths about how they had to make these concessions, and how the laws would have been so much worse without their public support for them.

But what about the word, “NO.” Did you ever think of that? The reason they even allowed certain “representatives” of the cannabis community (and I use that term loosely as none represent me, or any of the folks I work with) a seat at the drafting table was because we indeed do have a lot of power. If those who were charged with fighting for our rights actually grew a sack of nuts and simply said, “NO. We will not support this bullshit,” maybe there could have been a more sensible solution. But these folks, so enamored with their 15 minutes of fame on the big legislative stage, decided to roll over and play dead. They agreed to “do something” rather than doing nothing, even if that “something” will prove to be detrimental to most of those people they claim to represent. Don’t do me any favors. Thanks. Sometimes the best deal is no deal; but the sense of urgency to get something in place before the 2016 effort has proven do nothing more than shoot ourselves in the foot; and has now developed the framework for just as bad of a law for adult use as medical use. You guys are geniuses.

So as the hellfire and brimstone reigns down on the industry, and everyone wakes up to the fact that what they helped to do was literally shut down 90% of the current cannabis industry in favor of an overregulated mess that will severely limit who can pay to play, just watch as they run further and further away from their once full-throated support for this mess. The deed is done though. Your impatience and inexperience in government relations has left you wondering what the fuck happened and trying to figure out how to make lemonade out of the huge pile of lemons you left us with. The “harmless little bunny” just chewed your goddamn head off and all you have to say is it must have been a typo and that you hope it gets fixed. It is like playing cards with my sister’s kids. You folks are worse at this than even I could have imagined, and now we all get to pay for it… So RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY! Run far away and never come back…. Please. Thanks

 

[theJointedOne]

Excellent read.

Thanks for sharing CC.

 

[stoned-trout]

I am not paying too much to grow my own weed..then fees better be cheap or fuck em...now lets see what the hidden consequences bring out...somewhere in the fine print I bet we get screwed somehow...yeehaw...and 99 percent of the dispensaries have been for profit all along!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ...even harborside who???????????? the fuck do they think their kidding...so does that mean prices will rise????

 

[minds_I]

Hello all,

Should have been more aware of what they were doing...my bad.

Now, I am an outlaw again....bastards weren't happy I could grow my own without them getting their cut.

bastards

minds_I

 

[_tessarecting]

Wow I did not see this coming I was really hopeful for a minute now I'm not so sure about all this... it's fucked up

 

[mojave green]

Keep them prices high!

 

[CanniDo Cowboy]

Some actual "on the ground" and realtime blowback resulting from the recent bill signage. Butte is but one of many counties now rushing to ban....Jesus, whatever happened to that P215 deal and 420 Compassionate Act, both voted in as a done deal, way back when...? cc

Hasty decisions
Cities rush to ban medical marijuana—will Chico be next?

By Meredith J. Cooper
[email protected]
This article was published on 01.28.16.



In less than a month, dozens of counties and cities across California have taken what many believe to be a step backward when it comes to medical marijuana. In an effort to comply with new state laws that went into effect Jan. 1 and included a March 1 deadline for local governments to act in order to retain regulatory control, many chose the easiest, and strictest, route: Just ban the stuff.

Municipalities in Butte County have followed suit. Oroville adopted a ban on growing and delivery services, as did Biggs and Gridley. In Paradise, a similar ban was passed, with an amendment allowing primary caregivers to deliver medicine to patients but banning delivery services. Chico is next, with action set on the agenda for Feb. 2.

“As much as I’d like to say a lot of that was reflexive, in many it was not,” Chico City Councilman Randall Stone said about the bans. “There’s a desire to have this go away and if we ban it, that means it’s going to go away. But that’s just not the way it works.”

Here’s what has happened to prompt this recent scramble:

1. The state passed three bills, collectively known as the Medical Marijuana Regulation and Safety Act (MMRSA), that went into effect this month. They create a framework for the commercial sale of medical marijuana, including licensing and taxation. They also say that local governments that have laws relating to cultivation will retain local licensing and regulatory authority—but those that don’t will be preempted by the state. The deadline for putting a law on the books is March 1. Chico already has an ordinance regulating cultivation.

Making the issue stickier is the fact that even before MMRSA went into effect, the bills’ authors announced that the deadline had been a mistake, a holdover from a previous version. Assembly Bill 21, which would repeal that deadline, is on the fast track and was passed by the Senate on Monday (Jan. 25). It has widespread support in the Assembly and Gov. Jerry Brown has said he will sign it.

2. The League of California Cities—of which Stone is a member—went out on what Stone called a “road show” to educate municipalities about MMRSA and how to retain local control. The league outlines on its website (cacities.org) the most important aspects of MMRSA and what cities need to know or do. Among those recommendations is instituting a ban on cultivation in municipalities where there is no regulation currently, in order to provide ample time to create thoughtful legislation.

3. Cities across the state took those guidelines, along with the impending deadline, and many chose to ban cultivation, dispensaries and delivery services. (Note: The March 1 date, and the threat of state preemption, relates only to growing medical marijuana. Based on news reports, however, many cities’ staffs lumped dispensaries and delivery services in with a cultivation ban.)

“The league road show has caused a lot of panic in a lot of cities. I think that’s what you’re seeing in Paradise and Oroville,” Stone said. “But, look, this doesn’t have to be as draconian as you’re making it out to be. There’s no reason to ban everything or allow everything; there’s no reason to get so excited.”

Instituting a ban on cultivation and delivery—dispensaries already are not allowed throughout Butte County—has broad implications. For Jessica MacKenzie, a local medical marijuana advocate and director of the Inland Cannabis Farmers’ Association, three things come to mind: crime, the environment and loss of potential financial gain.

“[Bans] give up control and safety of a product people are going to use anyway,” she said during a recent interview. “Regulating it moves it from a black market into a legitimate market economy. Governmental oversight keeps us safe and looks out for the greater, common good.”

MacKenzie is concerned that bans force patients to turn to the black market for their medicine. The black market is not only illegal; it is less transparent as far as growing practices, pesticide use and the actual content of the medicine.

“The best place for a patient to get their medicine is a dispensary or delivery service,” she said. “The more we learn about cannabis as medicine, the more we learn it is combinations of strains; it’s a custom product for custom ailments.”

Brendan Jeffries, who requested his real name and business name not be used in this story, agrees. As someone who went through pharmacy training and now runs a delivery service that serves Northern California, including Chico, he sees firsthand the good medical marijuana does for patients. And he sees his service as a legitimate way for people in the area to get their medicine.

“They can kick us out—but they’re kicking out the legal outlets,” he said. “If they want a black market, then that’s what they’re creating. That’s essentially what it comes down to.”

Butte County has decided not to take further action regarding MMRSA. That means no ban on cultivation or deliveries. “We are comfortable with our present ban on dispensaries ordinance, amended marijuana cultivation ordinance and amended right to farm ordinance,” County Counsel Bruce Alpert wrote in an email. “Under applicable law, anyone delivering marijuana must still be a primary caregiver delivering to a qualified patient. Sale of medicinal marijuana for a profit is not legal in Butte County.”

In regard to next week’s Chico City Council meeting, it is still unclear exactly what City Attorney Vince Ewing will recommend. (Ewing did not respond to the CN&R’s requests for an interview.) One option could be a ban, and others likely will take time to fully study, Stone said.

“My job is to make sure we do this smartly and responsibly and in the best interest of the entire community,” he said. “And that doesn’t sound like a very quick ban in a few short days.”

 

[theJointedOne]

yea caught that yesterday at the taco truck

funny thing is, this "not in our county" attitude is fueling anger and motivation in the growers to go even bigger!

Many folks i know have no plans to go small and are planning to have things as usual, if not bigger

 

[stoned-trout]

they will ban growing except for those with funding and then force people to buy from them increasing revenue tax money for the state..i for one will not they can kiss my ass...then prices slowly will rise as it gets taxed to death like tobacco has!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!...then I will sell my product and under bid them and they wont get a dime in taxes...yeehaw...back under I go..glad I never registered as I bet some start getting visits from the man!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!