California offers $100 million to rescue its struggling legal marijuana industry



Marijuana-growing businesses would get help in meeting environmental review requirements for state licenses under a $100-million proposal by Gov. Gavin Newsom that has been supported by legislative leaders.
(Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

SACRAMENTO —

The California Legislature on Monday approved a $100-million plan to bolster California’s legal marijuana industry, which continues to struggle to compete with the large illicit pot market nearly five years after voters approved sales for recreational use.

Los Angeles will be the biggest beneficiary of the money, which was proposed by Gov. Gavin Newsom to be provided as grants to cities and counties to help cannabis businesses transition from provisional to regular licenses.

“California voters approved Proposition 64 five years ago and entrusted the Legislature with creating a legal, well-regulated cannabis market,” said Assemblyman Phil Ting (D-San Francisco), the chairman of the Assembly Budget Committee. “We have yet to reach that goal.”

Many cannabis growers, retailers and manufacturers have struggled to make the transition from a provisional, temporary license to a permanent one renewed on an annual basis — a process that requires a costly, complicated and time-consuming review of the negative environmental effects involved in a business and a plan for reducing those harms.

As a result, about 82% of the state’s cannabis licensees still held provisional licenses as of April, according to the governor’s office.

The funds, including $22 million earmarked for L.A., would help cities hire experts and staff to assist businesses in completing the environmental studies and transitioning the licenses to "help legitimate businesses succeed," Ting said.

The grant program is endorsed by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who said in a letter to legislators that the money is “essential in supporting a well-regulated, equitable, and sustainable cannabis market."

Separately, the governor wants to give cannabis businesses a six-month extension beyond a Jan. 1 deadline to transition from provisional licenses by complying with mandates of the California Environmental Quality Act. That extension, which faces opposition for delaying promised environmental safeguards, was not included in the state budget bill approved Monday and is still being negotiated with lawmakers.

https://www.latimes.com/califo...y-cash-grants-budget

Centrally planned economies...why don't they work? Well, according to the bien-pensant, they just haven't done quite enough commanding!

So California, flush with Wuhan Flu windfall is going to double down on the spectacularly stupid and discredited policy of picking winners and losers in the grand game of economics. And of course, because this is California, they are choosing marijuana!

But it gets better! The reason -- according to the mandarins in Sacramento -- that the legal pot industry is failing is because of the byzantine and draconian rules governing pretty much everything in California, and the answer is to provide state money to municipalities to assist the pot sellers with the licensing requirements.

I swear I am not making this up!

So the state is gong to choose some businesses and provide assistance navigating the insanity that is the regulatory state in California. Instead of simply streamlining the regulations, or even better just getting rid of them, they are going to spend taxpayer money on their pet businesses!

It is a wonderful glimpse into the chaotic and mushy thinking of the 21st century bureaucrat. "We made this situation as bad as it is, so we are going to spend your money to make it slightly less bad but possibly even worse."

I was in California recently, and let me assure you, its problems have nothing to do with marijuana storefronts. Bums, filth, obscene regulatory schemes, ridiculous taxes, an out-of-control legislature and an even worse administration.

But maybe marijuana is the salvation of California. Everybody can get stoned and maybe they won't notice the decay of what once was the greatest economic engine in the country.

http://ace.mu.nu/archives/394270.php

California is certainly capable of legislating the dope business into insolvency.

quote:

Originally posted by bdylan:
California is certainly capable of legislating the dope business into insolvency.

That's hilarious.

I do wonder if the sudden push to legalize everywhere is to make people less likely to discover the politicians only did this for two self serving reasons. First to make more money that .gov could waste irresponsibly and second so people would be less likely to notice how much politicians have completely and totally failed us. If it’s really about the freedom why are they so eager to attack our 1st and 2nd amendments?

quote:

The California Legislature on Monday approved a $100-million plan to bolster California’s legal marijuana industry, which continues to struggle to compete with the large illicit pot market nearly five years after voters approved sales for recreational use.

Though that making pot legal recreational, was supposed to eliminate the illicit pot market?

^^^
stickman,
There's NO shortage of pot in California.

quote:

The California Legislature on Monday approved a $100-million plan to bolster California’s legal marijuana industry, which continues to struggle to compete with the large illicit pot market nearly five years after voters approved sales for recreational use.

It's just that California’s legal marijuana industry cannot compete with the large illicit pot market.

Who couldn’t see this coming?

Just shows that government control can screw up just about anything.

An unregulated, illicit business is able to outperform one with a lot of government intrusion? Who could ever have seen this coming!?

I’m assuming billions have died already from tainted marijuanas and the lack of .gov making sure it is safe? Because everyone knows the best business model is to kill your customers as quickly as possible with dangerous chemicals and stuff.

Until states can come up with a way to tag taxed pot ie liquor or cigarettes in such a manner they can trace illicit weed, it's never going to be a fully legal trade situation.

No way Mexican weed growers are going to just give up and walk away from the billions in sales. The Trump Border would have made it a bit more difficult to mule mexiweed over the border and made it better for domestic weed to sell, and raise prices with reduced supply.

Then again you'd be disenfranchising low income pot smokers as legal taxed weed is way more expensive than buying on the street...

Prices of "legal" pot here in the Yoop are outrageous. And we have a pot shop every hundred yards or so. Why buy legal pot when illegal is cheaper and for that matter, why not just grow your own.

And then the equity whiners would grouse about not getting their fair share, so CA will then implement weed reparations.

They have taxed and regulated the legal pot farmers to where they can't make a profit or compete with illegal weed

quote:

Originally posted by HRK:

quote:

The California Legislature on Monday approved a $100-million plan to bolster California’s legal marijuana industry, which continues to struggle to compete with the large illicit pot market nearly five years after voters approved sales for recreational use.

Thought that making pot legal recreational, was supposed to eliminate the illicit pot market?

That was the argument used to sell it to the voters. It would solve all the problems...

quote:

Many cannabis growers, retailers and manufacturers have struggled to make the transition from a provisional, temporary license to a permanent one renewed on an annual basis — a process that requires a costly, complicated and time-consuming review of the negative environmental effects involved in a business and a plan for reducing those harms.

"We've got a crappy bureaucratic process that harms business. We're gonna throw money after the problem without fixing the cause of the problem. Winner! Winner!"

I had dinner Saturday night near the capitol. I swear I came away with a lower IQ by just being near that building.

I was up near the northern coast two weeks ago. Plenty of greenhouses and water tanks along the roads. The growers seem to be doing just fine. The retailers appear to be taking it in the shorts!

California legalizes weed, feeding a nationwide trend for legalization.

California does not alter its byzantine and absurd regulations for small buisnesses.

California spends $100 million to put legal growers on "a level playing field" with illegal growers (and subsidize local and county Democratic Party machines).

Weed is grown in commercial quantities in other states.

California cannot keep weed from other legal states out of California under the Commerce Clause, just as Congress cannot keep it of California out under the Equal Protection clause.

Legal and illegal growers in California continue to be grossly undercut by legal and illegal growers in other states since the legal growers elsewhere aren't buried in California's regulatory morass and illegal growers elsewhere aren't facing the law enforcement pressure that California puts on its illegal growers in an effort to collect taxes and protect the environment.

California becomes a major importer of marijuana.

Californians go more and more broke while marijuana growers elsewhere grow richer and richer off of Californians buying their marijuana.

California slumps in a stupor and wonders what happened.

One hundred years from now, some brilliant graduate student at USC writes an enlightening dissertation on how California screwed itself over marijuana in exactly the same way (miraculus mirabilis!) it screwed itself over oil and associated fossil-based products.

The dissertation lies ignored in the stacks for as long as the Gaughan and Tiberti Library stands.

I guess the “tax the shit out of it” part of the plan didn’t work out like people thought.

I imagine it’ll be the same thing in Washington at some point. It’s taxed 75% before it ever hits the retail shelves. When the ballot initiative for it came down, I gave it a hard look and voted “no.”

This is comical. They need to use tax money to bail out the pot industry, because they over regulated the pot industry. Man those people can ruin anything.

Their regulations are literally keeping the cartels in business.

quote:

Originally posted by YooperSigs:
Prices of "legal" pot here in the Yoop are outrageous. And we have a pot shop every hundred yards or so. Why buy legal pot when illegal is cheaper and for that matter, why not just grow your own.

If there are pot shops every hundred yards someone must be buying it or they would go out of business.

There's a pot shop across the street from my credit union in an upper-middle class area. They do a very brisk business. I watched the people go in and out for about 15 minutes a few weeks ago. I was kind of surprised at the demographic. Many middle aged, upper middle class people going in and buying.

I have a friend who lives near downtown Denver and I watched some people go in and out of a shop a year or two ago. Definitely a different demographic than the shop near my credit union. Mostly 20-30 somethings who looked a little "rough".

How did they manage to fuck this up? It's beyond farcical.