The first major addition to California’s medical marijuana laws took place last Friday – the CA Assembly and the Senate passed Assembly Bill 243, Assembly Bill 266, and Senate Bill 643. This is a huge step forward for the MMJ industry and will provide teeth to the original Prop 215. Governor Brown’s office worked on the drafting of these bills and he is expected to sign these into law in the upcoming weeks.
Patients should benefit from these bills as medicine/flowers will be subject to quality standards. Cities will retain the right to ban dispensaries but delivery services will continue to thrive as they have been during the last couple years (which will expand to areas in CA currently un-served). There will be 12 medical marijuana licenses available including specialty, small, and medium indoor, outdoor, and mixed-light commercial grows; manufacturers, testers, transporters, distributors, and dispensaries.
One of the Bills' main objectives is to proved guidance to law enforcement. The bills also move away from the original “not-for-profit” model and allow dispensary owners to actually seek financial gain. In the past prosecutors often used the seeking of profit to identify individuals that were operating outside the law. The current mutual-benefit Corporation and collective model will be phased out in favor of the new licensing model (which will likely allow for a variety of entities).
Dale Gieringer, the director of California NORML said "This is an important and inevitable step forward. It finally lays the groundwork for a legally regulated medical cannabis distribution and production system in California,"
There are hardly any jurisdictions in the state that recognize commercial cultivation, but there are probably 40,000 people doing that now. How many cities and counties are going to act to recognize and ally themselves already harboring”
Growers are happy that the legislation outlines specific policy tools to license mainly small and medium producers, while restricting huge marijuana grows. Vertical integration is not allowed and “big pharma” style models will not take over under these laws.
"We think the regulatory bills are mostly good," said ASA press secretary Chris Brown. "We've researched licensing and regulation in the past and found it perfectly compatible with patient access. We also think it's very important to have a system in place for medical marijuana before adult use comes in, so it won't be seen as the unregulated part of a broader market."
There are a couple items ASA doesn’t approve of though, including limiting the grow space per patient to 100 sqft.
Theses new laws aren’t expected to come into effect for a couple years and it will be interesting to see how the upcoming 2016 legalization effort is tweaked by these current changes. Regardless it looks like some major changes are in the works for our CA medical marijuana industry.
Check back soon to keep up ont the latest progress of these laws.