TAX
Title: As Smaller Marijuana Businesses Get Squeezed, State Revenue Takes A Hit
Author: Huffington Post
Date: 21 June 2018
Extract:
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Tyler Kearns, owner of the cannabis cultivation company Seven Leaves, stood in one of his half-dozen temperature-controlled grow rooms on a recent day, surveying a crop derived from the same mother plant.
“We have really tried to educate the general public through talks, tours, communication and presentations,” Kearns said, “to bring a better understanding of the legal California cannabis industry.”
But winning public favor is only half the battle for operations such as Seven Leaves. The other challenge is trying to survive as a small business in the state’s increasingly crowded cannabis industry. At about 10,000 square feet of indoor marijuana canopy, Seven Leaves is small for a California cultivator — the kind of business the new law was supposed to help.
The ballot measure legalizing recreational marijuana in California, which voters approved in 2016, promised that the recreational marijuana industry would “be built around small and medium-sized businesses.” Lawmakers placed size limits on cannabis cultivators and prohibited monopolies in the recreational market.
LA COUNTY
Title: LA County Keeps Marijuana Ban in Unincorporated Areas
Author: NBC Los Angeles
Date: 19 June 2018
Extract:
A ban on commercial cannabis remains in place in unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County, with the Board of Supervisors Tuesday opting not to take any action on the issue, even as new legal dispensaries open with state and local licenses in other parts of the county.
The county’s Department of Consumer and Business Affairs presented three options to the Board of Supervisors for moving forward: allow and regulate all types of medical and recreational commercial cannabis activity; limit the types of cannabis businesses that can open, for example, only allow medical dispensaries; or keep the ban in place.
SAN LUIS OBISPO
Title: Industrial hemp allowed to stay in San Luis Obispo County
Author: KCPX
Date: 21 June 2018
URL: http://kcbx.org/post/industrial-hemp-allowed-stay-san-luis-obispo-county
Extract:
Hemp production won’t be banned in San Luis Obispo County. The Board of Supervisors had been considering an urgency ordinance that would put a moratorium on industrial hemp.
Megan Rose Dutra was just one of many hemp growers and advocates who spoke to the Board of Supervisors this week. “I think the most notable thing is how little seems to be known on the bureaucratic end about hemp,” Dutra said. “CBD versus cannabis. And that seems like the biggest bit of information you guys need to make these decisions. The separation of the two needs to be distinct and swift.”
To the officials’ credit, the distinction can be a little confusing. Cannabis the drug and industrial hemp both come from the species Cannabis sativa. They they both have the psychoactive component tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), which is known for causing the high people feel when they take cannabis as a drug. But the two plants are not the same. Hemp has much lower THC levels and more cannabidiol (CBD), which counteracts the psychoactive effects. And, according to hemp advocates, the plant has a long list of uses: Rope, jewelry, animal feed, biofuels and more.
