Pot dispensaries: Supervisors ease rules to allow them closer to schools.

Cannabis dispensaries in San Francisco will be allowed to operate closer to schools under rules the Board of Supervisors approved Tuesday.

The new regulations, passed on a 10-1 vote with Ahsha Safai in dissent, will reduce the school buffer zone from 1,000 to 600 feet, the amount recommended by the state. That revision signaled a remarkable shift in city lawmakers’ thinking on cannabis from the beginning of the month, when several supervisors were trying to push the industry out of their districts.

Supervisor Katy Tang, whose district has no dispensaries, wanted to keep the 1,000-foot school buffer and also apply it to day care facilities. She proposed several restrictions that all went down to defeat.

Israel Nieves-Rivera of the Department of Public Health said that such rules would cluster cannabis on the east side of San Francisco, which already has the highest concentration of dispensaries, and “place it in black and brown neighborhoods.”

And Supervisor Mark Farrell said he has no fears that his 5-year-old child is at risk of taking a time out from kindergarten and walking down the street into a cannabis store.

Additionally, the board voted 10-1 to approve Safai’s amendment requiring half the city’s dispensaries to qualify for an equity program that benefits low-income residents, people displaced from their homes and people with marijuana convictions. Oakland approved a similar rule in March, despite criticism from marijuana entrepreneurs who said it would choke off the market.

“This is (intended) to meet the spirit of what this body has discussed over the last three months,” Safai said, referring to his colleagues’ insistence that racial and class equity be the linchpin of San Francisco’s cannabis laws.

Supervisor Malia Cohen made several amendments to the equity program Tuesday, keeping it open to people with past marijuana convictions anywhere in the country, but not to people with other nonviolent felonies. She also changed the workforce requirements for businesses that would serve as “incubators” for equity applicants. Under the revised rules, 30 percent of the workers at those businesses would have to qualify for the equity program.

The board kept a mandatory 600-foot radius between dispensaries, despite objections from Supervisor Hillary Ronen, who said it would limit the amount of new shops that could open and the blue collar jobs they would create.

Ronen also persuaded her colleagues to strike Safai’s three-dispensary cap in the Outer Excelsior — a change that Safai deemed disrespectful. He asked for the cap several months ago following a long feud between two cannabis stores on Mission Street and their neighbors.

Supervisor Norman Yee failed to get approval for his requests to restrict the number of dispensaries on Ocean Avenue and ban them from West Portal Avenue in his west side neighborhood.

The board unanimously passed Supervisor Aaron Peskin’s amendment to allow existing medical dispensaries to sell recreational marijuana beginning Jan. 5.

The supervisors started discussing recreational cannabis legislation when the new Office of Cannabis was proposed in June.

The board voted to allow existing medical dispensaries to sell recreational marijuana beginning Jan. 5.