OCEANSIDE APPROVES TWO MORE CANNABIS BUSINESSES

Waivers granted to allow manufacturers near homes, church

Two additional businesses that make and distribute marijuana vaping cartridges and packaged cannabis products were approved by the Oceanside City Council last week.

Buddiez Manufacturing and Distribution received a conditional use permit to open its business in a building constructed in the 1960s on San Luis Rey Road near Airport Road and Mission Avenue. The site was a restaurant for 50 years, but the building is now vacant and will be remodeled.

The small, family-owned company will have about five employees, said Mohamad “Moe” Saab, Buddiez’s community relations liaison, who owns the business with his brother Omar Saab. They expect to open by the end of this year and will distribute their products to other businesses throughout California.

Oceanside adopted an ordinance in 2018 to allow medical-only commercial cannabis businesses in specific industrial and agricultural zones. The City Council added cultivation of recreational marijuana to the list of permitted activities in June 2020, and later this year is expected to consider expanding recreational uses to other cannabis businesses.

Buddiez will be prepared to manufacture both medicinal and recreational cannabis products, Moe Saab said.

Also approved at the City Council meeting Wednesday was a conditional use permit for a medical cannabis distribution facility to be

operated by Left Coast LLC in a building on Ord Way, near Oceanside Boulevard. The council approved a separate application in October 2020 for Left Coast to open a manufacturing facility at the same site.

Oceanside has issued a total of 22 licenses so far for manufacturing, distribution, cultivation and retail delivery businesses. As of mid-week, only one business, Medleaf Delivery, was up and running, although a Left Coast representative said Wednesday that company’s manufacturing facility was due for a state inspection Thursday that was one of the final hurdles before opening.

Both of the applicants Wednesday were granted waivers to the city’s requirement that cannabis businesses be located at least 1,000 feet from residential districts, schools, churches or public recreation facilities.

The Left Coast facility is about 150 feet from the nearest homes, 350 feet from a church, and 550 feet from a massage business, according to a city staff report. However, the city granted a “waiver of locational requirements” because, despite the short linear distance, the cannabis business will be separated from the homes by another industrial building and will be a 1.5-mile pedestrian walk from the nearest house.

Multiple speakers at Wednesday’s council meeting, as they have at past meetings, were critical of the council for granting locational waivers to Left Coast, Buddiez and other cannabis businesses.

“The city is repeatedly granting waivers to get

“When the city doesn’t follow its own regulations, it undermines the public’s health.” Becky Rapp • Oceanside parent

around the rules,” said Kelly Mccormick, a parent and public health advocate. “The path of travel is irrelevant.”

“When the city doesn’t follow its own regulations, it undermines the public’s health,” said Becky Rapp, also a parent and frequent speaker on the topic.

Odors and potentially toxic chemicals from cannabis manufacturing travel the shortest route away from a site, which is the reason for establishing minimum distances, the speakers said.

City officials have said repeatedly that qualified exemptions are part of the approvals process.