California may be the sixth biggest economy in the world, after the United States, China, Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom in that order. But, when it comes to implementing the wishes of its citizens insofar as recreational marijuana is concerned, we are behaving like a bunch of first-year boy scouts at a picnic.
If you thought there was a brain on down at the California State Legislature you may have got it sadly wrong. Nobody in government appears to have spared a thought of what would happen when democracy finally had its way. However, if you think the obfuscations come from law enforcement and the anti-marijuana brigade, you might be correct.
The Legal Complications Littering the Road Ahead
The situation is chaotic – we may have to wait until 2019 to get up to speed. The complications are that medical and recreational rules have different approaches to basic items like timelines, license categories, residency requirements, and business ownership.
“It is a very real challenge,” says Jim Wood, Democrat for Healdsburg. “Do we have two systems that move in parallel or one unitary system that combines the two? My hope is that we can all sit down and work out the differences.” And then there is the matter of significant taxation variances.
The latter is a tricky one. Medical marijuana only pays traditional sales tax. On top of this, the farmers pay cultivation tax on recreational marijuana of $9.25 per ounce for flowers and $2.75 per ounce for leaves and stems. To muddier the waters further, the admin is still working on the seed-to-sale/track-and-trace, and licensing software.
It would be simplistic to assume much-needed admin changes to Proposition 64 would necessarily obtain the required two-thirds majority in the legislature. Hence the governor is more likely to propose a bill that extends the January 1, 2018 deadline by one calendar year. But there is still one further issue that might “Trump” them all.
The Shaky Truce with Federal Law Enforcement
The Californian cast a shadow on December 11, 2016, when it alluded to the incoming president having chosen notorious cannabis opponent Senator Jeffrey Sessions, Republican for Alabama, as attorney general. We currently have an unwritten truce between federal law enforcement, and states with legalization which we do not yet have fully.
“The Trump element was a monkey-wrench no one saw coming. He is such a wild card,” adds Nate Bradley, executive director and co-founder of the California Cannabis Industry Association. Regardless, we need a state license program in place quite urgently to add more power to our negotiating elbow.