COMPLIANCE
Title: Attorneys, Consultants Navigate ‘Wild West’ of Marijuana Regulation Compliance
Author: Marijuana.com
Date: 13 June 2018
Extract:
Things are changing fast in the cannabis industry, particularly in California, where Meister owns and operates Meister Law Offices, a criminal defense legal firm whose clients include cannabis businesses.
Meister works with cannabis businesses’ attorneys and consultants to assess compliance from a criminal law perspective, helping these experts navigate the emerging twists and turns in the unfolding cannabis regulation landscape – as well as potentially keeping cannabis business owners out of jail.
“It’s the wild west in the wild west,” said Meister, a criminal defense attorney and a former Los Angeles County prosecutor.
Meister began building up his expertise on the cannabis industry when he started consulting with health care companies to ensure those practices were working within the law. That’s where he developed a process by which he would visit medical practices to help them evaluate their operation and make sure they remained compliant. He also worked with doctors around marijuana recommendation issues, eventually making a natural transition to the cannabis industry.
ARROYO GRANDE
Title: Arroyo Grande to allow more cannabis deliveries — but no warehouses or other businesses
Author: The Tribune
Date: 13 June 2018
URL: http://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/article213097089.html#storylink=cpy
Extract:
Arroyo Grande is making moves to allow more medical cannabis deliveries into the city, but it won’t immediately help the county’sfirst state-licensed marijuana business, which saw its license revoked this month due to a dispute over where it could store its goods.
In a tense meeting Tuesday night, City Council members stressed that they understand the importance of medical cannabis deliveries in the city, but also expressed frustration at the difficulty in meshing conflicting local and state marijuana regulations.
“I think we can all agree, and I think probably the council agrees, that medical cannabis is absolutely effective; it works for all different kinds of diseases, anxiety, etc. I’m not here to argue that, and I don’t think any of us doubt that,” Councilwoman Kristen Barneich said. “My goal when creating ordinances is to do what is best for the citizens of Arroyo Grande — it’s not to do what is best for a couple of people or one business.”
The City Council voted 3-2 — with Mayor Jim Hill and Councilwoman Caren Ray dissenting — to remove the medical cannabis delivery permitting system the city put in place last year, and instead allow any service that obtains a state license to make deliveries into the city. The amendment will have to come back to the council for final approval at a later date.
OCEANSIDE
Title: New cannabis initiative proposed in Oceanside
Author: San Diego Union Tribune
Date: 12 June 2018
Extract:
new group seeking to legalize recreational marijuana sales in Oceanside has filed an initiative that, if approved by voters, would supersede a medical marijuana ordinance the city approved March 28.
Members of Oceanside Advocates for Safe Access held a news conference Tuesday afternoon outside City Hall to announce the initiative. They need to collect the signatures of at least 10,000 Oceanside registered voters to place the measure on the ballot in 2020.
“We are left with no other option than to fully support this initiative,” said Amber Newman, an Oceanside medical marijuana activist.
She and her husband, David Newman, are owners of a nonprofit cannabis nursery in Oceanside. They suspended their own medical marijuana initiative effort last year to help craft the city’s ordinance.
But the Newmans and other residents were disappointed by the adopted ordinance.
“It was a worthy jumping off point,” Amber Newman said of the city’s effort.
SACRAMENTO
Title: Stifling the ‘green rush’ Sacramento is a leader in the cannabis-cultivation business, despite the city’s efforts
Author: News Review.com
Date: 14 June 2018
URL: https://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/stifling-the-green-rush/content?oid=26402340
Extract:
Why, then, is the city of Sacramento putting the brakes on cannabis cultivation?
The City Council voted in mid-May to limit cultivation in the southeast industrial area and plans to consider restrictions in other parts of town. Cannabis can only be grown in industrial areas, generally limiting it to the southeast and northern parts of the city. While council members say the limits are needed to protect other businesses from collateral impacts, the decision is also shaping up as yet another example of the hardships faced by cannabis entrepreneurs in the state’s new and unsettled market.
Responding to concerns from a business association, the Power Inn Alliance, the council voted to declare an “undue concentration” when cannabis cultivation takes up 2.5 million square feet of the area’s industrial space. The city has already received applications for 2.8 million square feet and approved 1.2 million. That means some applicants are likely to get turned down by the city.
According to the Power Inn Alliance, Sacramento’s “Green Rush” has caused havoc in the area’s industrial real estate: higher rents and fewer vacancies are creating hardships for other industries.
