Calif.’ s new era: Recreational pot sales
About 90 retailers start legally selling marijuana
CATHEDRAL CITY, Calif. – At one minute after midnight Monday, Nick Hughes at the Cathedral City Care Collective celebrated more than the new year: He had his first legal recreational marijuana customer — perhaps the first in all of California.
Sales statewide weren’t supposed to begin until 6 a. m. PT, but Hughes said he had permission from city officials to start selling once the clock hit midnight.
“He was waiting for us to open,” Hughes said of his first customer. “He was excited, and he seemed like he was honored to be the first.”
Californians voted in 2016 to legalize sales, and anyone 21 and older can make purchases at licensed shops, as well as grow, possess and use limited quantities of weed.
About 90 retailers received licenses statewide to open New Year’s Day. They are concentrated in San Diego, Santa Cruz, the San Francisco Bay Area and the Palm Springs area.
“It’s been so long since others and myself could walk into a place where you could feel safe and secure and be able to get something that was good without having to go to the back alley,” said Jeff Deakin, 66, who waited in Oakland with his wife, Mary, and their dog all night for Harborside dispensary to open at 6 a. m. “This is kind of a big deal for everybody.”
Los Angeles and San Francisco are among the cities where recreational pot will not be available right away because regulations were not approved in time to start issuing the city licenses needed to get state permits.
Bakersfield, Fresno and Riverside are among the communities that have adopted laws forbidding recreational marijuana sales.
Hughes said he had about seven customers come in from midnight to 1 a. m. No others came in before dawn even though staff put word out that Cathedral City Care Collective would get a head start on sales.
California legislators enacted specific provisions for marijuana use. Anyone who purchases recreational marijuana isn’t allowed to smoke in public areas and can’t use it anywhere that cigarettes aren’t allowed.
Traffic laws prohibit use of marijuana in vehicles.
“We can talk about the good, the bad and the ugly of the specific regulations,” said founder Khalil Moutawakkil of Kind Peoples, which grows and sells weed in Santa Cruz, Calif., “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.”
Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin and state Sen. Nancy Skinner were on hand for a ribbon- cutting ceremony as his city began selling marijuana legally. Customers began lining up before dawn Monday outside Berkeley Patients Group, one of the oldest dispensaries in the nation.
A big crowd also gathered at Harborside dispensary in nearby Oakland.
Los Angeles officials announced late last month that the city will not accept license applications until Wednesday, and it might take weeks before any licenses are issued. That led to widespread concern that longestablished businesses would have to shut down during the interim.
Lawyers advising a group of city dispensaries have concluded those businesses can continue to legally sell medicinal marijuana as “collectives,” until they obtain local and state licenses under the new system, said Jerred Kiloh of the United Cannabis Business Association, an industry group. It wasn’t immediately clear howmany of those shops, if any, were open Monday.
State regulators have said shops must have local and state licenses to open for business in the new year.
Los Angeles’ top pot regulator, Cat Packer, said last month that medicinal sales can continue to consumers with a doctor’s recommendation until new licenses are issued.
The state banned “loco- weed” in 1913, according to a history from the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, the pot advocacy group known as NORML. The first attempt to undo that by voter initiative in1972 failed, but three years later, felony possession of less than an ounce was downgraded to a misdemeanor.
In 1996, over the objections of law enforcement, President Clinton’s drug czar and three former presidents, California voters approved marijuana for medicinal purposes.
Twenty years later, voters approved legal recreational use and gave the state a year to write regulations for a market that would open in 2018.
California’s pot shops aren’t like a typical mall retailer or even a liquor store. Customers, like medical marijuana patients, will need to be buzzed in from a locked door, and the rooms they will enter are filled with security cameras. That doesn’t mean marijuana retailers are shady or illicit. “We’re as legitimate a business as a jewelry store, as a liquor store,” Hughes said.
“We’re as legitimate a business as a jewelry store, as a liquor store.” Nick Hughes Cathedral City Care Collective, which is licensed to sell recreational marijuana