Written by Amanda Angulo
On Monday, legislators of California attempted to address the problem of the black market marijuana industry. Due to many of California’s legal recreational usage of marijuana, the business has been heavily taxed and regulated, making it difficult for some of those members to grow and sell legally. This has forced many to remain in the black market, in which many government officials have been attempting to force them to shut down.
However, lawmakers proposed a $100 million subsidy to help potential marijuana vendors to get legally licensed. The large sum of money is designed to be allocated and directed to local government agencies and cities in order to “hire experts and staff to assist businesses in completing the environmental studies and transitioning the licenses”.
The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and many other environmental regulations make it nearly impossible to be able to change or improve anything within the state. CEQA has several financial requirements to be done by businesses, entrepreneurs, and developers towards extensive environmental impact studies. In addition, they also have a rule that permits anyone to file a lawsuit against the construction of anything, in order to stop it; and this can be done with any claim of potential environmental harm.
Rather than actually finding a solution to this, many cities have been slow to discuss and establish cannabis regulations and laws. For example, Los Angeles has an enormous amount of unlicensed dispensary stores and two years after marijuana legalization, LA still has been unable to come out with business licenses. Los Angeles will be receiving $22 million of state funding due to this. A reward for a failure.
