At the same time, he said, the neighborhood council has worked with licensed cannabis stores to get them involved in improving the community and has asked the Los Angeles City Council to devote some of the tax revenue from Van Nuys shops to solving local problems, including homelessness and crime.
Meanwhile, despite concerns from law enforcement, the state is finalizing a proposal to allow deliveries throughout California — including in cities that ban retail stores. The new rule by Lori Ajax, chief of the state Bureau of Cannabis Control, is expected to be implemented in January.
Ajax says she believes that as the system is refined and is shown to operate successfully in some cities, other local governments will allow retail pot sales. But opponents of pot legalization, including Kevin Sabet, president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, are happy that most cities are saying “no” to selling the drug.
“The residents of Compton and these other cities have seen the ills that come with allowing marijuana in the door,” Sabet said, “including skyrocketing drugged driving; the promise, then failure of social justice; and the targeting of children through the use of colorful and deceptive candies, gummies and sodas.”
Even in cities that allow cannabis sales, businesses face big hurdles.
The various taxes and fees could drive up the cost of legal cannabis in parts of California by 45%, according to the global credit ratings firm Fitch Ratings.
There is less of a tax burden in Oregon, where voters legalized recreational pot in 2014, and state and local taxes are capped at 20%. With nearly a tenth of the population of California, that state has more licensed cannabis shops — 601. On a per capita basis, Alaska has also approved more pot shop licenses than California, — 94 so far. The state imposes a tax on cultivation, but there is no retail excise tax on pot.
Assemblyman Rob Bonta (D-Alameda) tried and failed this year to push for a temporary reduction in California’s pot taxes to help the industry get on its feet.
“It’s a work in progress,” Bonta said of the current regulatory system. “We knew we weren’t going to get it exactly right on Day 1, and so we’re always looking for ways to achieve the original intentions and goal.”
Bonta said he may revisit the taxation issue in 2019 and is exploring the idea of having the state do more to get cities to approve businesses, possibly by providing advisory guidelines for local legalization that address cities’ concerns.
California cannabis businesses, like their counterparts in Colorado and Oregon, also face costs to test marijuana for harmful chemicals.
“The testing costs are excessive — $500 to $1,000 per batch, and most crops involve multiple batches,” said Gieringer, the director of California NORML. “No other agricultural product is required to undergo such costly or sensitive tests.”
Another problem hampering the legal market is a lack of banking for cannabis businesses. Federally regulated banks are reluctant to handle cash from pot, which remains an illegal drug under federal law.
“Banking continues to be an issue in terms of creating a real public safety problem with significant amounts of cash being moved for transactions,” said Bonta, who co-wrote a bill this year that would have created a state-sanctioned bank to handle money from pot sellers. It failed to pass after legislative analysts said the proposal faced “significant obstacles,” including no protection from federal law enforcement.
Industry leaders and activists said they knew it would be a slow process to establish a strong legal market, noting other states with legal pot, including Colorado, Washington and Oregon, also faced growing pains and problems along the way.
But Ajax, the state pot czar, says her agency has had a productive first year, issuing initial licenses, refining the rules and stepping up action against unlicensed operations, including partnering with the Los Angeles Police Department to seize $2 million worth of marijuana products from an unlicensed shop in Sylmar in October.
“I am optimistic about the coming year, where our focus will be primarily on getting more businesses licensed and increasing enforcement efforts on the illegal market,” Ajax said.
By Kurtis Lee Oct 15, 2018
Source: http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-marijuana-year-anniversary-review-20181227-story.html