Recently, State Senator Mike McGuire has proposed regulating the medical marijuana industry. He has introduced a bill which aims to legalize as well as regulate the said industry. This bill would encompass all processes starting from cultivation to consumption and all processes in between.
On April 20, the California Medical Marijuana Law, SB 643, has been already passed by the Senate’s Business and Professions Committee. It has also received a hearing in the Senate’s Governance and Finance Committee. The Compassionate Use Act of 1996 and ensuing state enactment exempted qualified restorative patients and their care giving figures from state criminal authorizations identified with ownership, development and transportation of restricted measures of marijuana. In any case, an absence of statewide regulation has brought about some legal questions about some restorative marijuana cultivation and circulation exercises.
“California needs a statewide comprehensive regulatory program for medical marijuana,” McGuire stated. “Since the voters of California passed Proposition 215, medical marijuana cultivation and consumption has exploded across the Golden State and the country. This legislation would put into place what should have been implemented two decades ago.” He also said, “In fact, marijuana grows are the No. 1 source of sediment and nutrient loads in Northern California rivers and stream.” According to him, unauthorized cultivators are additionally occupying water from draught stricken streams and rivers.
Besides Marin County, McGuire’s administrative area also includes Mendocino, Humboldt and Trinity counties. It is in these areas that approximately 70 percent of the marijuana is grown in the western part of the United States of America. McGuire, D-Healdsburg, said unlawful cultivators who frequently trespass on national parks have already managed to chop down a huge number of trees and discarded pesticides, rodenticides, manures and colossal measures of sediments into the rivers and streams of the area.
“They are literally sucking our rivers and streams dry,” McGuire stated.
McGuire’s California Medical Marijuana Law would lead to the creation of a Bureau of Medical Marijuana Regulation inside of the state’s current Department of Consumer Affairs. The bureau will be given until Jan. 1, 2018, to create strategies for issuing restrictive licenses for cultivation, manufacturing, haulage, stockpiling, delivery and sale of restorative marijuana inside of the state.
The bureau, in conference with the State Water Resources Control Board, would also be required adopt certain regulations to guarantee that authorized therapeutic marijuana cultivators don’t pose a threat to the state’s environment in any way.