Anticipation high as Calif. rolls out retail pot sales

LOS ANGELES — Californians may awake on New Year’s Day to a strongerthan-normal whiff of marijuana as America’s cannabis king lights up to celebrate the state’s first legal retail pot sales.

The historic day comes more than two decades after California paved the way for legal weed by passing the nation’s first medical marijuana law, though other states were quicker to allow the drug’s recreational use.

From the small town of Shasta Lake just south of Oregon to San Diego on the Mexican border, the first of about six dozen shops licensed by the state will open Monday to customers who previously needed a medical reason or a dope dealer to score pot.

In November 2016, California voters legalized recreational marijuana for adults 21 and older, making it legal to grow six plants and possess an ounce of pot. The state was given a year to set retail market regulations that are still being formalized and will be phased in over the next year.

“We’re thrilled,” said Khalil Moutawakkil, founder of KindPeoples, which grows, manufactures and sells weed in Santa Cruz. “We can talk about the good, the bad and the ugly of the specific regulations, but at the end of the day it’s a giant step forward, and we’ll have to work out the kinks as we go.”

After the state approved medical marijuana in 1996, the law led to wider acceptance.

“The heavens didn’t fall,” said Dale Gieringer, director of California NORML. “We didn’t see increased youth drug abuse or increased accidents or crazy things happening as our opponents predicted.” David Zalubowski / AP

David Morgan of Highlands Ranch, Colo., holds an American flag as a procession of law enforcement vehicles accompany a hearse carrying the body of a sheriff’s deputy shot and killed while responding to a domestic disturbance Sunday.