The Game Has Changed
and It's Much More Difficult To Play

California has joined the rest of the medical and recreational marijuana states as the legislature finally passed and sent to the governor a comprehensive, strict and burdensome regulation and licensing scheme for California’s billion dollar a year medical marijuana industry.

It totally upends the current system as it eliminates the collective system created by SB 420 and now allows marijuana to be sold for profit. With a multi-tiered licensing system regulating cultivation, transportation, processing, testing, labeling and distribution, it is about as complete a regulation system as can be imagined with multiple government agencies, multiple licenses, gazillion regulations and lots of anything goes fees and taxes.

As convoluted and treacherous as it is, this complex and overreaching licensing and regulating scheme should keep the DOJ away – at least as long as President Obama is president – I hope.

Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, cities have now been given statutory authority to ban any and all marijuana production, distribution and so on and as far as I can tell to also ban patient and caregiver cultivation. Although the bill specifically exempts patients and caregivers from the requirements of the bill, it also exempts cities and counties from the exemptions it grant patients and caregivers.

"Exemption from the requirements of this section does not limit or prevent a city, county, or city and county from regulating or banning the cultivation, storage, manufacture, transport, provision, or other activity by the exempt person, or impair the enforcement of that regulation or ban.”

I am not exactly sure how far this exemption from the exemption can go – not only does it seem to apply to allowing cities and counties to ban any and all cultivation by patients, it also seems to allow cities to ban even the possession of marijuana by patients due to the phrase “or other activity.” Patients could then be subject to an infraction with a $100 fine and who knows what for more than an ounce plus any civil fines imposed by the city for being in violation of their zoning ordinance.

I am not 100% sure on this and will be watching carefully over the next few weeks to see how the dust settles. In any case, this portion is extremely unfortunate as the police will now move as forcefully as ever to browbeat local governments into banning whatever it turns out that cities are now empowered to ban.

It’s going to be an interesting tug of war between elected officials genuflecting to police and wanting to feed at the pig trough of unlimited license fees and taxes that these bills allow cities and counties to impose.

In any case these bills absolutely guarantee that the price of marijuana will remain exorbitant and may even go higher as the wild-west free-for-all atmosphere that collectives operated under comes to an end. Competition will decrease and cultivators, transporters, manufacturers and dispensaries will now have to pay state license fees in addition to local license fees and taxes.

Many counties and cities have already banned cultivation claiming the Supreme Court’s Riverside decision empowered them to do so. A court battle was brewing to test it, but now the California legislature has given cities the ability to ban patient cultivation by statutory law. Although it could be challenged as an infringement of the rights of patients under Prop. 215, I wouldn’t hold my breath on that one.

If it is true that cities and counties can ban ALL cultivation, then patients will have no choice but to buy their marijuana at what I believe will be even more exorbitant prices then are currently being charged.

Of course the commercial growers and distributors of medical marijuana will not be privately upset to see bans on personal cultivation now that they can legally make as much profit as they can squeeze out of patients. Not that they didn’t make a profit nominally operating non-profit collectives - just now they can say so with a straight face.

Thank goodness that the criminal market remains and will probably grow bigger than ever. They will not have to pay all those usurious fees and taxes so they should be able to undercut the legal market significantly. I wonder if there is any compassionate criminal distributors that will provide patients living on social security or minimum wage, medicinal marijuana at a price they can afford. The licensed ones certainly won’t be able to do it.

Join Us at the Palm Springs Gay Pride Festival and Parade

It’s the Most Fabulous Not-to-be-Missed Event of the Year

One of the most fun, if not the most fun, outreach to the public that MAPP and BMDC makes every year is our participation in the Palm Springs Gay Pride Parade and Festival. If you have joined us before, you know it is the ultimate hoot – if not then you should join us this year and find out for yourself.

PS Gay Pride is one of the largest LGBT events in California attracting upwards of 50,000 people. There is the fabulous and glorious Gay Pride Parade and a two day Pride festival and it’s all FREE. For the two day festival Palm Springs closes down Palm Canyon Drive which is the main drag through downtown Palm Springs. Hundreds of booths line the street with original and not-so-original art works of every media, businesses and organizations wanting to sign you up, street entertainers, food booths and “beverage gardens” of all kinds, chotchkies galore and yes our marijuana booth. For more information on PS Gay Pride, CLICK HERE.

I will be providing more information in future emails, but if you would like to be a member of the PS Gay Pride Planning Committee, please send me an email and let me know. We will be holding a teleconference in the next week or so to start the planning process and your help would be greatly appreciated.

Chef-to-the-Stars Fred Nesbitt III and the International Medicinal Cannabis Cooking Competition and Natural Living Author Robyn Lawrence’s new Cannabis Kitchen Cookbook on Internet Radio Show

Exciting interviews and my relatively off-the-wall take on the latest marijuana news makes every edition of Marijuana Compassion and Common Sense the perfect audio event to kick back on your own or with friends, light up, vaporize or nibble and enjoy a few moments of something truly different. Hear the latest show with Chef Fred and Robyn or any of the past shows whenever you want 24/7 –
Just CLICK HERE to listen to the show.