San Francisco rejects limits on legal marijuana
SAN FRANCISCO — San Francisco officials adopted recreational marijuana rules favored by pot advocates, but not without heated discussions over local control in a tightly packed city where neighborhoods differ wildly in politics and character.
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors rejected attempts Tuesday to mandate a larger barrier between schools and pot shops as well as provisions allowing neighborhoods to limit the number of dispensaries or ban them outright.
The move could allow sales to start the first week of January, just after recreational pot becomes legal across California. But it had been surprisingly difficult for the pot-friendly city to adopt local rules required for growers and retailers to get a state permit to sell the drug.
San Francisco embraces its marijuana culture, celebrating the annual 4/20 holiday with a group smoke-out on Hippie Hill in Golden Gate Park, near the head shops of Haight-Ashbury district. Scoring a medical marijuana card to buy pot is cheap and easy.
Yet the city also deeply values neighborhood input. A well-organized group of Chinese immigrants strongly opposed to marijuana had lobbied supervisors for larger buffer zones and neighborhood prohibitions that pot advocates said would strangle the industry.
The board approved a 600foot buffer between pot shops and schools, rejecting attempts by Supervisor Katy Tang, who represents a heavily Asian district, for a 1,000-foot barrier. She also wanted the barrier to apply to child care centers.
San Francisco will not be ready for sales New Year’s Day, but if Mayor Ed Lee approves the rules quickly, the city could be open for recreational pot at midnight Jan. 5, said John Cote, spokesman for the city attorney’s office.
For that to happen, Lee would need to sign the legislation Dec. 5 after the board votes on it a second time. Spokeswoman Ellen Canale said he will sign when it comes to his desk.
The city has more than 40 authorized medical marijuana outlets that can start selling recreational weed in the new year. The bulk of them are clustered in the city’s gritty South of Market district near downtown.