Its January 1st 2018 and cannabis is now legal to sell, grow and consume cannabis as an adult without a medical recommendation.
Last month the state of California began issuing temporary licenses, but only about 90 businesses have managed to acquire one of the temporary licenses, so actually finding “legal” cannabis to purchase in California will still be a challenge for quite some time. Then add in the fact that many cities have enacted laws that forbid the sale of recreational marijuana on top of the many cities that currently have complete bans in place such as our city of Oceanside and all of North County San Diego.
With the passage of Prop 64 in November 2016 we have seen the law be completely rewritten into something that many wouldn’t recognize as what they approved one year ago. Now that the state has taken control of the cannabis industry, it requires that all new marijuana going to be put on the shelves for sale comes from a state licensed provider, or risk losing their license.
All nonprofits that had been operating under the states SB420 rules will have one year to either convert their nonprofit to a for profit state licensed cannabis entity, or don’t reopen at all.
In the meantime anyone that wishes to obtain a state license must be licensed in their local jurisdiction first. As mentioned above, considering all of the bans in place, this tends to make things more difficult for those who have been a contributor to the industry for years, and now may lose their business completely.
We drew inspiration for this article from a time.com article written by Brian Melley’s article, California Turns Over a New Leaf as Legalization of Marijuana Takes Effect
