Cut red tape to save cannabis in the state

Remember when allowing the legal sale of marijuana in California was going to be such a panacea for the state?

After a century of active state-sanctioned prohibition, which harmed thousands of lives, and cost untold hundreds of millions of citizen-earned tax dollars, the underground cannabis market would finally be brought out into the sunshine in the Golden State.

The financial benefits that would be reaped for Sacramento and our cities!

The safety it would bring to the trade, with its bans on dangerous pesticides and herbicides, and its elimination of the exploitation of often undocumented workers!

The freeing-up of law-enforcement budgets to concentrate on real crime and public safety!

Formerly incarcerated Californians who had been hounded down the decades for the supposed crime of pot transactions and possession would see their records properly wiped clean, and, if they so desired, could get first in line for opening up licensed shops, like liquor stores for weed, with the same kind of regulations. Nothing too onerous. Don’t sell to the kids and don’t become a neighborhood nuisance, Easy enough to get set up in every city in the state, right?

Sadly, if that’s the way you think it’s gone for the legal marijuana business since California voters approved Proposition 64 in 2016, you’ve been smoking too much herb.

Taxes, regulations, over-regulation, the pressures of competing with the still-vibrant underground sellers — they all have driven legal cannabis cultivators to the brink of going out of business, and into despair.

“Despite the challenges of growing an illegal crop, including enforcement raids that still scar residents, the ‘war on drugs’ kept product scarce and prices high,” CalMatters reports.

As one longtime resident and veteran of the business puts it: “Everybody was making so much money it was insane.”

Not so much in the late winter of 2023.

A pound of fancy cannabis that might have fetched $1,000 or more several years ago is now selling for just a few hundred dollars — not enough to cover expenses and taxes.

Legal sales in the state fell by 8% last year to $5.3 billion, according to tax data from Sacramento, marking the first downturn since actual legal sales began in 2018.

Farms are closing down, and thousands of unemployed and under-employed cannabis workers are looking for new jobs, or are leaving the growing region entirely.

What’s the answer?

It doesn’t take a Harvard MBA to analyze the industry’s problems. If lawmakers and the governor don’t deregulate, lower or temporarily eliminate taxes and make it possible for the mom-and-pops to compete, the legal industry that Californians said they wanted to legalize seven years ago is simply going to disappear.

Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature last year did eliminate one cultivation tax after farmers begged for some relief. But that was too little, too late.

Much more needs to be done. And undone.

“State Sen. Mike McGuire, a Democrat who represents the north coast, blamed Proposition 64 for setting up family farmers for failure with a litany of ‘suffocating rules,” as CalMatters notes. “He is preparing to introduce legislation this spring that could undo some of those regulations for small growers, including an ‘antiquated, cockamamie licensing structure’ that requires them to keep paying annual fees even if they fallow their land because of the price drop and a ban on selling cannabis directly to consumers, something that is allowed for other agricultural products.”

California needs to change those strictures and more to save the industry. Individual cities and counties as well need to cut their crazy red tape tying up retail businesses. And one promising big change is in fact being looked at by the state. Department of Cannabis Control Director Nicole Elliott has requested an opinion from the state Justice Department on negotiating deals with other states to allow weed to be exported there.

Neighboring Nevada and Arizona, for instance, are huge markets for California wine. Why not for the second-mostfamous California crop as well?