TAXATION / BLACK MARKET
Title: Study: Calif. Pot Industry Staying Illegal to Escape State’s High Taxes, Onerous Regulations
Author: CNS News
Date: 8 March 2018
Extract:
California’s trademark high taxes and overwhelming, onerous, costly and confusing regulations are preventing the state from reaping the revenue benefits of legalizing the $7 billion marijuana market, a new study by the California Growers Association concludes.
As of Thursday, California’s Bureau of Cannabis Control has sent about 980 warning letters to unlicensed pot sellers and ordered a marketing company to stop advertising vendors who don’t have permits, Bureau Chief of Communications Alex Traverso told CNSNews.com.
Less than one percent (0.78%) of the state’s 68,150 marijuana growers have obtained licenses, and as little as 25 percent of the cannabis consumed in California is currently being purchased from licensed retailers, “An Emerging Crisis: Barriers to Entry in California Cannabis – California Growers Association,” finds.
PDF- The Report
An_Emerging_CrisisSTATE
Title: California Has Already Issued More than 2,000 Cannabis Cultivation Licenses. Are Growers Being Set Up to Fail?
Author: Lost Coast Outpost
Date: 8 March
URL: https://lostcoastoutpost.com/2018/mar/7/are-cannabis-growers-being-set-fail/
Extract:
Is California setting marijuana growers up to fail?
With the state’s adult-use cannabis market barely two months old, CalCannabis, a division of the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA), has issued more than 2,000 temporary cultivation licenses, sanctioning 400-plus acres of pot gardens.
Collectively these state license holders could produce nearly 4.2 million pounds of weed per year — more than double the amount Californians are expected to consume, according to estimates by the CDFA. More licenses are being approved every day as aspiring growers up and down the state rush to get in on a $5 billion market.
And in Humboldt County, only a small fraction of our local growers have gained access to the legal marketplace.
“This should scare the shit out of any growers,” said former Humboldt County Supervisor Mark Lovelace, who’s now working with local governments around the state as a cannabis policy advisor for HdL Companies. He’s been watching would-be cultivators flood into the state’s new regulatory system, and now he’s warning growers that California’s legal weed marketplace will be overcrowded and extremely competitive — and likely to have a sky-high failure rate.
“It’s just gonna be a tough industry, a really tough industry,” Lovelace said.
SANTA BARBARA
Title: Santa Barbara’s Cannabis Laws Are Still Dazed and ConfusedUpdate on the City and County’s Efforts to Accommodate Recreational Marijuana
Author: Independent.com
Date: 8 March 2018
URL: https://www.independent.com/news/2018/mar/08/santa-barbaras-cannabis-laws-are-still-dazed-and-c/
Extract:
Keeping up with evolving cannabis laws in Santa Barbara is proving more difficult than deciding between Blue Dream and OG Kush. But the end is in sight.
City and county lawmakers are wrapping up a yearlong effort to draft regulations governing the marijuana industry across the supply chain. They are trying to balance the concerns of worried neighbors and those eager to get involved in the green rush. After all, the tax revenue is expected to relieve strapped county coffers.
In the city, the main question for hopeful consumers is where the retail shops will be located. The S.B. City Council voted to allow three storefronts, but not within 600 feet of a school or youth center, and they must have security guards on-site. Manufacturing labs will be confined to a pocket of properties on the city’s Eastside. The City Council voted to ban marijuana smoking lounges, and it’s already illegal to smoke in public places, just like the city’s tobacco laws.
