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The CORE program is meant to remove barriers of entry into the cannabis industry for people in communities disproportionately impacted by the War on Drugs.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Sacramento’s first Black woman-owned storefront cannabis dispensary just opened, due in large part to the city’s Cannabis Opportunity Reinvestment and Equity (CORE) program.
Crystal Nugs is the fourth storefront dispensary to open as a member of the CORE program. CEO Maisha Bahati said Crystal Nugs, which started as a delivery service, would have never been able to expand to a physical store in midtown without the city’s help.
I wouldn’t have this opportunity if the CORE program did not exist,” Bahati said. “I’ve received loans and grants close to $200,000. I received waivers on our business operating permit. I’ve received technical assistance and just support.”
The CORE program is meant to remove barriers of entry into the cannabis industry for people in communities disproportionately impacted by the War on Drugs. This includes Black and brown communities who were disparately arrested for cannabis-related offenses or lived in neighborhoods that were over-policed for drugs.
“It’s really difficult to get into the cannabis industry,” Bahati said. “The costs to get in are huge, and so you need assistance and that’s what the CORE program essentially does. It provides you with the assistance that will help you further your career in cannabis.”
The CORE program was created in 2018. In 2020, the Sacramento City Council approved 10 new storefront dispensary permits, increasing the number of storefront permits allowed in the city from 30 to 40. Crystal Nugs is the fourth business out of the 10 that received permits to open a storefront.
Davina Smith, the program manager for the City of Sacramento’s Office of Cannabis Management, said the CORE program helps with everything from education to advertising, to networking opportunities – and, of course, funding.
“It’s sort of an organic, living program,” Smith said. “It’s pretty expensive and time-consuming to break into and actually operate a regulated cannabis business, and so, the idea is to break down those barriers, try to reduce costs.”
Smith said the six other businesses are on track to open storefront dispensaries, but they must open by April 1, 2024.
Cannabis has been making headlines in recent years as more and more states legalize its use for medicinal purposes. From reducing chronic pain to treating anxiety and depression, the benefits of cannabis are numerous and well-documented.
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at the benefits of cannabis and how it can be used to improve the quality of life for those suffering from a variety of medical conditions.
Pain Management
One of the most well-known benefits of cannabis is its ability to manage chronic pain. Whether caused by an injury, a medical condition, or simply aging, chronic pain can be debilitating and have a negative impact on a person’s daily life. Medical cannabis has been shown to be an effective pain reliever, helping to reduce pain and improve overall quality of life for those suffering from chronic pain.
Anxiety and Depression
In addition to its pain-relieving properties, medical cannabis has also been shown to be an effective treatment for anxiety and depression. This is because the compounds in medical cannabis, such as THC and CBD, interact with the body’s endocannabinoid system, which regulates mood and anxiety levels. By using medical cannabis, patients can experience a reduction in anxiety and depression, leading to improved mood and overall quality of life.
Seizure Control
For those suffering from conditions like epilepsy, medical cannabis can be a life-changing treatment. Cannabis has been shown to be an effective treatment for seizures, reducing the frequency and severity of seizures in many patients. This can be especially beneficial for children who suffer from seizures, as it can help improve their quality of life and reduce the impact of seizures on their daily activities.
Improved Sleep
Cannabis has also been shown to be an effective treatment for sleep disorders, such as insomnia. By reducing anxiety and pain, medical cannabis can help improve sleep quality and allow patients to get the rest they need to feel refreshed and rejuvenated.
In conclusion, the benefits of medical cannabis are numerous and well-documented. From reducing pain and anxiety to improving sleep and seizure control, medical cannabis can be a life-changing treatment for those suffering from a variety of medical conditions. If you’re considering using cannabis to improve your quality of life, be sure to speak with your doctor and do your research to find a reputable dispensary and cannabis products that are right for you.
Cannabis-delivery company Crystal Nugs is planting roots in Midtown with plans to open a storefront dispensary in a vacant building at the corner of J and 23rd streets.
Crystal Nugs CEO Maisha Bahati said once operational, it will be the largest cannabis dispensary in Sacramento.
The building at 2300 J St. was previously occupied by J’s Beauty Supply. The two-story location is 7,800 square feet and has its own parking garage with 18 spaces, Bahati said.
“We have owned a tattoo shop on J Street for 12 years right across the street and have always admired the building but never imagined opening a dispensary there,”she said. “It sits on the corner and there is a lot of foot traffic in the area. Parking was also a big deal for us, so it’s just a great location. I think we’ll fit in well with the neighborhood.”
Bahati envisions the lobby occupying downstairs, with the dispensary and showroom upstairs. She said the amount of space will allow the opportunity for innovation in terms of how brands are showcased.
Crystal Nugs is one of 10 local cannabis companies that received dispensary permits from the city through its Cannabis Opportunity Reinvestment and Equity (CORE) Program, which was created to assist those facing barriers to starting cannabis businesses due to the historical disparate enforcement of cannabis crimes.
The planned dispensary will put an emphasis on women-owned and minority-owned brands, Bahati said, especially those local to the region.
“I just want people to be able to come to this staple location in Sacramento and know that you’ll find local, equity-owned, women-owned brands, and top brands in the market,” she said.
The planned dispensary is organizing an open house this weekend to allow Midtown residents to learn more about the vision for Crystal Nugs and meet the team. Approximately 2,900 invites were sent out, Bahati said, and the goal is to let residents ask questions and show that the dispensary is committed to the neighborhood and transparency.
Architectural plans are in the process of being finished for the location, which Bahati is leasing. Once those are completed, Crystal Nugs will apply for a conditional use permit through the city to operate a dispensary on the premises.
Bahati said if all goes according to plan, they expect to have doors open to the public in the fourth quarter of 2022.
By Jake Abbott – Staff Writer, Sacramento Business Journal
There’s a new kind of celebration attached to the Thanksgiving holiday week, and it is centered around cannabis consumption.
Green Wednesday is the marijuana industry’s big sales day, like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Some Sacramento dispensaries are seeing a lot of green from the aptly named day.
Several people crowded around the counter at NUG Sacramento, waiting for their weed. The high demand at the downtown Sacramento dispensary is a result of Green Wednesday.
“It’s been busy all day, actually. It’s our marijuana industries, our Black Friday, per say,” NUG Sacramento general manager Jonathyn Newsom said.
Newsom said the Thanksgiving-adjacent sales day has been all the buzz for a couple years now. Compared to a normal day, it is bringing double the amount of cannabis customers into his shop.
“I want to say maybe this is the second year that I’ve seen it in effect. This year, more or less, being in full effect,” Newsom said.
With the menu full of discounted pot products, NUG “budtenders” were barely able to catch their breath Wednesday.
“It has been pretty crazy, nonstop,” Budtender Eric Comacho said.
Comacho says customers have been telling him and fellow budtenders why they are buying cannabis ahead of Thanksgiving. Many have said that they plan to treat the holiday madness with marijuana.
“A lot of people are coming just because they know they’re going home to visit their families, so that’s definitely the number one reason I’ve been hearing,” Comacho said.
From flowers to vapes to edibles, NUG said all of its products flew off the shelves Wednesday. But they are not the only dispensary in Sacramento that saw that happen.
A Therapeutic Alternative, another joint in town, saw about 50% more pot patrons on Green Wednesday this year.
“We had some doorbuster sales in the morning that were gone within an hour of opening,” A Therapeutic Alternative Director of Education Hezekiah Allen said.
Allen said for A Therapeutic Alternative, Green Wednesday is more than just items on a menu. It is a sign that the “cloud of smoke” around the cannabis industry is lifting.
“It’s been a long journey to get to legalization, to get to normalization, and to have this sort of attention and to have the sort of tradition focused on the holiday is really encouraging and empowering,” Allen said.
NUG agrees.
“It’s showing how far cannabis is coming and how it’s being normalized,” Newsom said.
Newsom says it is a step in the right direction – and a way to save green, on green, for Thanksgiving.
Some dispensaries tell KCRA 3 their deals will continue through Black Friday and even Cyber Monday.
The Sacramento City Council is expected to vote Tuesday to allow 10 new storefront marijuana dispensaries in the city in an effort to address longstanding equity issues in that industry.
Of the city’s current 30 dispensaries, none are owned by Black men or women – a population disproportionately arrested during the War on Drugs, according to Malaki Amen, executive director of the California Urban Partnership.
To address that issue, the council has been discussing for years whether to allow more pot shops to open.
The council previously discussed holding a lottery to choose the 10 new shop owners, but the council directed staff to instead select them based on criteria.
The proposed criteria include evaluating whether applicants will be able to successfully submit a complete application for a dispensary permit, be able to successfully operate a dispensary, and utilize criteria “reasonably necessary to protect the public health, safety, and welfare,” the staff report said.
It’s unclear from the report whether applicants would have to prove they have capital or investors to start the business.
Amen raised issues about whether that criteria will allow the people most impacted by the War on Drugs to open dispensaries – the goal of allowing new shops to open in the first place.
“We’d like the opportunity to participate in a conversation about what those methods should be and the criteria should be,” Amen told the council’s Law and Legislation Committee last month.
Councilman Jay Schenirer said there are limitations on how the city language can be written, for legal reasons.
“I think we all have the same goals on this program around equity,” Schenirer said.
The people interested in opening shops had a say in the criteria language, cannabis manager Davina Smith said.
The Law and Legislation Committee, which contains four council members, unanimously voted to recommend the item to the full nine-member council, a sign it will likely pass.
To be considered, applicants must be participants or former participants in the city’s Cannabis Opportunity Reinvestment and Equity (CORE) program. That program is only open to residents who meet certain requirements, such as earning a low income, living in certain zip codes most impacted by the War on Drugs, or having a prior arrest for a cannabis-related charge. The program had about 159 graduates as of late August.
While permits for manufacturing, cultivation, delivery and distribution have been available, no permits for storefront dispensaries, the most desirable, have ever been available to new applicants. When recreational marijuana became legal California, the city allowed the shops already selling medical marijuana to have the only storefront permits.
Last year, The Sacramento Bee reported that one group of business partners had been able to gain ownership of a third of the city’s storefront dispensaries, despite a city code intended to prevent that. The code has since been strengthened.
Sacramento is poised to allow 10 new cannabis dispensaries in an effort to fix long-standing equity issues in the city’s retail pot market.
Of the city’s 30 dispensaries, none are owned by black men and women, demographics that were disproportionately arrested during the War on Drugs, Malaki Amen, executive director of the California Urban Partnership, has said.
To address that, the City Council in 2018 approved the creation of the Cannabis Opportunity Reinvestment and Equity (CORE) program. For those who meet certain income, zip code and other requirements, the program waives thousands of dollars in fees and prioritizes applicants for permits.
Although permits for cultivation, manufacturing, and delivery are available, there is no way for a CORE graduate to open a dispensary, which most want to do. About 117 people recently graduated from the program.
Councilman Larry Carr proposed the city get rid of the cap altogether. If his colleagues won’t agree to that, he suggested the city allow 30 new permits so half the shops in the city would be owned by CORE participants.
“There are 30 licenses granted. Equity will be when there are 30 CORE licenses granted,” Carr said.
He said he would accept a minimum of 10 new permits, however, and Councilman Allen Warren agreed.
Councilmen Jeff Harris and Eric Guerra raised concerns with allowing too many new shops, suggesting the city should start with three.
Mayor Darrell Steinberg, looking for a compromise, suggested the city allow 10 new permits spread out over two years.
Amen said he would prefer the city allow 10 new permits a year. That’s the amount the city currently has the staff and resources to process, said Assistant City Manager Leyne Milstein.
“I appreciate concerns across the board from the mayor and council and yet I still have concerns about tip-toeing toward equity when we’ve been down this road for five years now,” Amen said, referring to when the city first started discussing equity issues in the city’s cannabis market. “We’re at a point not only where the city has to build trust with communities damaged by the War on Drugs, but we really have to be intentional about opening up this market.”
MARIJUANA DISPENSARY SCANDAL, FBI INVESTIGATES
The discussion followed reports by The Sacramento Bee that revealed a man who was indicted in October with Rudy Giuliani’s associates in a campaign-finance scheme co-owns a Sacramento dispensary. His business partners own a total of nine of the city’s 30 shops under the “Kolas” brand. In 2011, the business partners only owned two, city applications show. City code bars owners from selling or transferring permits.
Although city staff had been checking since 2014 to make sure at least one name remains in the application from the previous year, dispensaries have been allowed to add new names of owners, then over time, remove the names of original owners. The council in November amended city code to prohibit people with an ownership interest in a storefront dispensary from obtaining an ownership interest in another dispensary.
In addition, the FBI has been investigating whether pot business owners in Sacramento have bribed local officials in exchange for favorable treatment.
Ashby said the city’s priority should be fixing the problems that allowed the business partners to accumulate so many permits.
“I don’t understand how one person came back with (so many) when we very clearly, every member of this dais said that’s not gonna happen … and it happened anyway,” Ashby said Tuesday, holding up a copy of the article. “All the ones that were monopolized could’ve gone to women and minority-owned businesses.”
After The Bee stories were published in October, the council passed a moratorium on dispensary transfers, which lasts until March 11. The mayor called for a new city audit and for a new employee to be hired in the city auditor’s office to focus solely on the cannabis department.
The council approved the creation of that position Tuesday.
“I’m confident that we are beginning to build the checks and balances so if there is a problem that raises eyebrows, we know about it and we can act,” Steinberg said.
More than seven months after marijuana became legal in California for adults over 21, advocates have a lot to be thankful for and yet still much to be desired.
Cities up and down the coast where Proposition 64 in 2016 passed by some of the ballot measure’s highest margins have banned dispensaries.
They have prevented individuals from growing cannabis in their backyards.
And now, with the state’s California Bureau of Cannabis Control poised to adopt new rules permanently governing the adult use of marijuana, cities are lining up in opposition to a provision that would force them to allow delivery services. A 60-day public comment period on the rules ends Aug 26.
“We always wanted to preserve local control,” said Dustin Moore, a Manhattan Beach resident who served as the deputy campaign manager for the Yes on 64 campaign.
Local control was baked into the proposition, he said, giving cities the ability to prohibit if they wished how many dispensaries operated in their city, if any at all.
“Even in the eyes of what’s being interpreted now around delivery services, I would still argue it allows for local control,” Moore said. “What they (cities) don’t have the ability to do is prevent someone from driving on public roads and deliver to a private residence.”
Although many cities passed laws prohibiting delivery services, law enforcement officials have said there is virtually nothing they can do to enforce such restrictions. The issue of delivery services is essential to the original Compassionate Use Act of 1996, which said patients must be allowed safe and legal access to medicinal marijuana, Moore said.
A proposed initiative aims to overturn Pomona’s ban on commercial marijuana use.
A review of Weedmaps.com, a website dedicated to connecting patients to dispensaries, delivery services and doctors, show numerous services that deliver throughout the South Bay – where every city bans the business practice.
Many of those delivery services are not charging taxes or operating under any business license at all, putting them in a sort of gray market, observers say. Some dispensaries, located in unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County, out of the jurisdiction of cities with prohibitions, may also be operating under quasi-legal circumstances.
What cities also can’t control is the ability for an individual to grow up to six plants in the privacy of their own home. The proposition also decriminalized marijuana offenses and expunged past convictions depending on the amount involved.
Among Los Angeles-area beach cities, Long Beach is the only municipality that permits dispensaries through a voter-approved medical-marijuana initiative in 2016, which allows up to 32 licenses. The City Council approved last month rules that set up fees and licensing requirements for medical-marijuana dispensaries that also want to operate as adult-use ones; those fees run between $7,000 and $8,500, but they have yet to take effect.
Ivan Jimenez, a Long Beach resident who grows cannabis for his own business in Northern California, told the council at the time of the rulemaking process that he’d like to open up in his home city but he finds the fees too high.
“I would love to come here and invest money in the same industry,” Jimenez said during public comment. But “I believe the city of Long Beach is taking advantage of the taxing and taking advantage of the fees.”
Devil in details
Since January, when the adult-use law went into effect, dispensaries across the state have been adapting to new emergency regulations put in place to bridge the gap before permanent rules could be established.
Those emergency rules required by July 1 that all products, medicinal and recreational, be tested and labelled. The new rules also barred giveaways and allowed governments to impose taxes, some as high as 35 percent in combined local, county and state taxes.
Moore believes what bans and excessive taxes and fees are doing is “throwing gas on the illicit market.”
In Los Angeles County, where 59.5 percent of voters approved Prop 64, only 20 percent of municipalities allow some kind of operating license to sell pot. That’s not to say, however, that every supporter wants a dispensary around the corner from their house, Moore said.
“When you voted for Prop 64 what did you actually vote for. Were you voting for cannabis to be sold in your neighborhood or for cannabis to be made legal and end the war on drugs.”
Jonatan Cvetko, who heads the non-profit Emerald Angels that works toward responsible cannabis regulation, said rules such as one that requires child-resistant bags were a good thing. Like other advocates, Cvetko fears that the legal market is not given an opportunity to succeed.
“If the majority of the bans stay in place there will be no access for residents to find clean and safe products,” Cvetko said. “It’s not that the black market will come back, it’s that it hasn’t gone away. The goal was to allow existing operators to transition, so without any pathways for operators they have no choice but to stay in the illicit market.”
In Redondo Beach, the council was unified against the state’s rulemaking allowing delivery services even in cities with laws prohibiting them. The council directed staff to draft a letter to that effect. Similar letters were recently addressed to the state agency by the League of California Cities
While it opposed one important aspect of the rules, the Redondo Beach City Council also instructed the city manager to form a Cannabis Steering Committee. Mayor Bill Brand said that doesn’t mean the city is giving the green light to dispensaries.
“This is brand new legislative territory, so I’m looking forward to the recommendations from the city manager’s task force and more importantly, what the residents feel is appropriate for Redondo Beach,” Brand wrote in a statement. “No decisions will be made before a full vetting of all the issues.”
For more information on the cannabis industry in California and to comment on the proposed rules visit Cannabis.ca.gov.
A cloud of smoke hung over Cal Expo Friday afternoon as thousands gathered for the High Times Cannabis Cup, the first permitted event in California to allow recreational use of marijuana.
Organizers expected upwards of 15,000 people over the course of the two-day festival, which boasts musical performances from acclaimed artists, including Lauryn Hill, Lil Wayne, Gucci Mane, Rich The Kid, Cypress Hill, Rick Ross and Ludacris.
The event was at risk of becoming a music-only festival until the Sacramento City Council approved a license for on-site consumption and sales in a 6-2 vote Tuesday. Weeks earlier, a similar High Times event had its permit denied by the San Bernardino City Council just before it was scheduled to take place.
At Cal Expo, crowds maneuvered their way through the rows of booths Friday afternoon, sometimes stopping to take long drags from blunts or sample products. In between puffs from a neatly-rolled joint, Brian Johnson said he was grateful to the city for approving the license.
“I think it was really cool for the city of Sacramento to trust the cannabis community to do something like this,” Johnson said. “I think we’ll hold up our end and have a great event with no mishaps. We’re just out here having fun, trying to socialize and enjoy our products.”
Other attendees, like medical marijuana user William Bennett, said they simply came to learn more about the cannabis industry.
Bennett said he wanted tips for growing marijuana at home. Bennett, who said he suffers from chronic pain caused by a back injury, began using medical marijuana about five years ago as an alternative to prescription opiate painkillers, which he said caused him unbearable side effects. Bennett has since started to grow his own.
“I’m kind of on the fence with recreational, but in the long run, it’s better than people drinking and doing other things,” Bennett said. “You don’t hear about people having big brawls and fights at (events like this). Everyone’s just sitting back.”
Bennett’s wife, Dianne Kirk-Bennett, said she was impressed with how expansive and well-organized the event was.
“If this is your thing, this is the place to be,” Kirk-Bennett said.
The event has approximately 280 vendors, selling marijuana-themed apparel and art, vape pens, concentrates, topicals, edibles and a variety of other cannabis products.
High Times Chief Revenue Officer Matt Stang said it felt “incredible” to host the event, which he characterized as a watershed moment for the industry.
“It gives me a feeling that we’ve really progressed as a country. We’ve come to a point where we can have a peaceful gathering to consume and purchase cannabis with a state sanction,” Stang said. “The ability to do this legally — it’s been a long fight. High Times has been doing this for 44 years. We started as the voice of the opposition, and now we’ve grown into the majority. ”
Security was tight during for the strictly 21-and-up event. Unlike most music festivals, no alcohol sales were allowed.
Joe Devlin, Sacramento’s chief of cannabis policy, said the event would generate more than $200,000 in tax revenue. Devlin said High Times “has a distinguished track record of hosting safe, successful and compliant cannabis events,” noting that the company had developed a “comprehensive security plan” that was approved by law enforcement and had organized a ride share program for those attending the festival.
Stang said High Times had contracted with two separate security firms to ensure no attendees purchased more than the legally-allowed amount and to check for impaired drivers. Ticket buyers were given Uber and Lyft codes at the time of purchase in order to minimize the risk of attendees driving under the influence.
For those in the industry, the event served as a safe demonstration to convince skeptics and state government officials.
“We want to make sure that people understand what a great, compliant, adult-use event can be, because we want this to be the model for the rest of the country,” Stang said.
As the first executive director and general manager of the city of Los Angeles’ Department of Cannabis Regulation, Cat Packer will lay the legal foundation for how the United States’ second-largest city handles marijuana. But it wasn’t until three years ago, in her last semester of law school, that she even knew what she wanted to do professionally.
That’s when she took a life-changing law class on marijuana.
“I will admit, before taking the class, I was completely oblivious to the many interesting conversations happening around the country about this subject,” Packer said.
A growing number of students across the United States have taken some of the country’s first marijuana-themed university classes and found nearly instant success with this unique knowledge.
“Think about it: If you graduated from law school 10 years ago, you couldn’t study this, because the reforms hadn’t happened yet,” said Douglas Berman, the Robert J. Watkins/Procter & Gamble Professor of Law and the creator of Packer’s Marijuana Law, Policy & Reform Seminar at Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law.
Berman is proud of Packer, but when he started the course in 2013, not all students were as enthusiastic as she. Some said they didn’t enroll out of concern that future employers wouldn’t like it, according to Berman.
As marijuana has become more mainstream, his class now fills quickly. And even if students don’t go into the field like Packer did, with medical marijuana legal in more than half of the United States and recreational pot legal in nine, chances are that what they learn will come in handy.
“And with all that heat in this space on this still controversial topic, I try to emphasize, lawyers should be bringing more light, rather than heat, to these conversations, armed with the facts,” Berman said.
The facts about marijuana are still at the center of the debate, because while states are more permissive, federal law still puts marijuana in the same category as heroin: a Schedule I drugwith “no currently accepted medical use,” at least in the eyes of the federal government.
That leaves researchers and universities offering classes in uncharted waters.
Despite the limits, a handful of determined professors have stepped up, without textbooks or well-trod academic territory, and created courses to try to ensure that the next generation is prepared to match the public’s interest. There seems to be only one “weed major,” the medicinal plant chemistry program at Northern Michigan University, but a growing number of weed-themed classes are being offered on campuses across the country in law, business, medicine and general science.
Demand outpaces science
In 2013, the Washington Attorney General’s Office provided Beatriz Carlini, a research scientist at the university’s Alcohol and Drug Abuse Institute, with funds to develop training modules for health professionals who can get continuing education credit. They learn about how cannabis works and about its best uses; a second module teaches best clinical practices.
Marijuana is legal in its recreational and medicinal forms in Washington, and with more legal access comes a public desire for more education. But unless your doctor is in his or her late 90s and can remember before 1942, when it was legal to prescribe cannabis, more than likely they learned nothing about its benefits in medical school.
“Hopefully, we can help patients make good decisions,” Carlini said. “People won’t wait for these things to resolve federally.”
Yu-Fung Lin teaches the physiology of cannabis at the UC Davis School of Medicine. Physiology is a branch of biology that looks at the functions of living organisms and their parts.
The elective focuses on how cannabis and cannabinoids impact the body. It also looks at physiological impact, therapeutic values and history. It’s the first class of its kind in the University of California system.
Lin, an associate professor who usually teaches medical students, didn’t know what to expect from her 55 undergraduates. “I’ve been quite impressed by their commitment,” she said.
She hopes her class will inspire future research. “Just knowing what we know, and the limitations of what we know, should inspire students, and they in turn could do research that would be really helpful in this field.”
Jam-packed
The Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont can’t create classes fast enough. Its on-campus medical cannabis class was so popular, it had to relocate twice, settling into the largest available lecture hall according to the University. Its online continuing medical education program and the cannabis science and medicine professional certificate program have wait lists. Enrollees have come from as far away as Thailand. It has created webinars and a cannabis speaker series, and even the school’s farm extension provides original plant research about hemp.
Dr. Kalev Freeman, an emergency room physician, and Monique McHenry, a botanist, helped create these courses to address several needs. Freeman said he’s seen too many people taken off ambulances after overdosing on opioids, and he hopes to offer information about a “safer alternative to the public.” McHenry wanted to find a topic attractive to “young minds to get them interested in science.”
Their classes focus on basic science, the drug’s physiology, molecular biology and chemistry. The professional training also drills down on practical issues like effective dosing, delivery methods and drug interactions.
“The more we can do to focus on getting evidence-based facts out to more medical professionals and the public, the more we will have a real success,” McHenry said.
Freeman agreed: “It’s a disservice to the public if professionals aren’t equipped with this knowledge.”
The bud business
The skills that students in Paul Seaborn’s Business of Marijuana class learn at the University of Denver are in demand, and other professors have noticed. He’s gotten calls from all over the world, asking how the class works.
“People want to learn from the Colorado experience,” Seaborn said. “It’s been fascinating to learn the pros and cons of the business in real time as state and federal laws evolve.”
Understanding the rules of the game is key, since those rules create a “unique set of challenges,” Seaborn said. His students learn about marijuana law and history, and they tackle its complicated finances, accounting, marketing and management.
The university’s location presents unique opportunities because so many market pioneers live in the neighborhood and are happy to be guest speakers. Colorado was the first to legalize recreational adult marijuana use, so the industry bloomed there, creating more than 18,000 full-time jobs and generating $2.4 billion in economic activity, according to a study of the market in 2015.
“It’s a rare thing to have an industry start from square one in your lifetime and grow so quickly right around you,” Seaborn said. From his most recent class of 27, three or four students immediately went to work in the industry, and others will probably soon follow.
“There is certainly caution over an industry like this, especially with the federal legality in question, and there is still ongoing discussion and careful thought about how this works, but we want our graduates to come at this from an informed perspective,” he said. “The industry is not going to wait.”
Packer, the Los Angeles marijuana czar, would agree. “We’re in a real moment of transition,” she said. “These conversations about marijuana are incredibly complex. I found I can’t have a conversation about the law without talking about health and social justice issues and enforcement issues.”
It sounds like the perfect material for more college classes.
SALINAS
To view the revolution taking place in California’s commercial cannabis industry, head to the Central Coast.
Turn off Highway 101 in the Salinas Valley. Look for the clusters of greenhouses protected by fences with razor wire, security cameras and guards. There you will find some of the largest marijuana grows in the state.
Inside, removable curtains are used to periodically block sunlight and trick the plants into flowering sooner than normal. Fabric tunnels send in cool air, while rubber tubes deliver water and other nutrients to the marijuana.
“It’s a marriage of old-school growing with ‘Big Ag’ technique,” said Gavin Kogan, co-founder of Grupo Flor, which operates a 6-acre farm in Salinas.
Pot grows in California historically have been small scale, a result of prohibition as much as the cultivation demands of the plant. California’s outlaw growers operated in rugged and hard-to-reach locations like Big Sur and Humboldt County’s Mattole Valley.
The tradition of modest grows was expected to continue for at least five years under California’s system of legalization approved by voters in 2016. The law contained protections for small farmers worried they would be crushed by big agricultural interests. But in an unexpected move, the California Department of Food and Agriculture scrapped a planned 1-acre cap on cannabis farms in November.
No place has benefited more from that change than the Central Coast, which covers Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Monterey and Santa Cruz counties. The region is now challenging the Emerald Triangle — long the epicenter of cannabis cultivation in California — as the state’s capital of commercial weed..
State records show that the Central Coast had 1,065 cultivation licenses as of March 28, compared to 1,159 in the Emerald Triangle, which is made up of Humboldt, Mendocino and Trinity counties and is about the same size as the Central Coast. The two regions account for more than two-thirds of all the cultivation licenses in the state, with Los Angeles, Sacramento and other urban counties taking up most of the other licenses for indoor grows.
“The supply chain in California is changing,” said Andrew DeAngelo, co-founder of the Bay Area’s Harborside Health Center dispensary and operator of a 4-acre farm in Salinas. “These are seismic changes.”
The Emerald Triangle produces more marijuana than the Central Coast, but most of that pot comes from smaller farms. The Central Coast leads the state with multi-acre grows.
The Department of Food and Agriculture will not approve a single license for a farm over an acre, but large farms are getting approved by obtaining multiple licenses for a single property. On the Central Coast, each grower has an average of 5.75 licenses, almost four times the average of 1.62 in the Emerald Triangle.
In the most extreme case, a grower in Santa Barbara County has received 89 licenses for a 20-acre farm.
The Central Coast has great advantages for big growers: a well-established agricultural community with an extensive labor pool, flat land and an abundance of greenhouses. Local government also has been more tolerant of cannabis on the Central Coast than in other farming regions in the state. Cannabis farms must receive state and local approval.
Supporters say the growth of commercial cannabis on the Central Coast has brought increased tax revenue and jobs. But critics say its large cannabis farms are undermining the will of voters and keeping thousands of small farmers in the black market, thus threatening the future of legalization.
Such arguments have gotten increasingly personal.
“I want to be careful what I say because this is the kind of thing that can get you punched,” said Kogan, standing in front of his Salinas facility. He acknowledges that Grupo Flor, a “vertically integrated” company that grows, manufactures and sells retail cannabis, could not operate the whole farm under a 1-acre cap. If the state chose to implement the cap, he says, Grupo Flor would operate 1 acre and lease the remaining space to other growers.
“It’s elitist,” Kogan said of the policy. “It says there is only one way to grow — small boutique grows.”
Hezekiah Allen, executive director of the California Growers Association, takes issue with Kogan’s argument and his choice of words.
“The broke farmers that are working hard to obtain a single license to sustain and transition their family business are the ‘elite’?” he said. “License stacking is a privilege only accessible to the select few. I understand folks disagreeing with the policy, but to hear the policy described as ‘elitist’ is laughable. It has the same ring as ‘let them eat cake.’ ”
Protecting small growers, particularly in the Emerald Triangle, was an issue for Allen and other supporters of Proposition 64, the 2016 ballot initiative that legalized cannabis. Small growers had helped defeat a previous legalization initiative because they worried it would invite big companies that would put them out of business.
Proposition 64, also known as the Adult Use of Marijuana Act, promised that the “marijuana industry in California will be built around small- and medium-sized businesses by prohibiting large-scale cultivation licenses for the first five years.” The law would limit the number of licenses growers could receive and said individual licenses for farms over an acre would not be available until 2023.
The Department of Food and Agriculture signaled its support of the law right before it issued emergency regulations in November, stating in an environmental impact report that cannabis farms would “not exceed the total acreage cap of 1 acre established by CDFA.” Emergency regulations were issued so growers could start cultivation while the state prepares final regulations.
But, inexplicably, emergency regulations were released that effectively eliminated the planned cap. At the time, a Department of Food and Agriculture spokesman said it was a last-minute decision but gave no reason for the change. Since then, the department has declined to discuss the decision, citing a pending lawsuit by the California Growers Association that seeks to have the cap reinstated. The lawsuit in Sacramento Superior Court appears to be on hold until the department decides whether to include a cap in its final regulations due later this year.
Adding to the mystery of the department’s decision, Amber Morris, branch chief of the division responsible for the regulations, resigned just weeks after they were released. Allen and others said they believe her resignation was due to the removal of the cultivation cap. A department spokesman has declined to say why Morris left. Morris declined to comment when she was reached by phone and later did not respond to specific questions sent to her personal email account.
The decision paved the way for some unprecedented grows. For instance, Central Coast Farmer’s Market Management has 89 licenses for a grow in Santa Barbara County, enabling the company to grow more than 20 acres of marijuana. The company did not respond to requests for an interview.
Santa Barbara County, which has been known for its strawberries but not for marijuana, now has more cannabis cultivation permits than any other county — 737 as of late March. Like Monterey County, Santa Barbara County has an abundance of greenhouses. It also is close to the biggest cannabis market in the world, Los Angeles.
Grupo Flor’s Kogan and DeAngelo of Harborside offer similar critiques of cultivation limits, saying the market and not government should resolve the concerns raised by Allen and small growers in the Emerald Triangle.
“We have to be more creative and not take something out of Lenin’s playbook,” DeAngelo said, referring to the former head of the Soviet Union.
Kogan and DeAngelo say large farms don’t have to mean the end for small farmers. They can thrive by providing different products than big growers. High-end cannabis demands more attention than large farms can give, they acknowledge. Small farmers can serve more discriminating customers while big farms provide product for more cost-conscious consumers, Kogan and DeAngelo say.
Kogan says the differences between each region’s cannabis were summarized by Steve DeAngelo, Andrew’s brother. “We’re going to be the Mondavi of weed,” said Kogan, referring to the popular wine maker and paraphrasing DeAngelo. “They can be the Champagne of weed.” Grupo Flor, Kogan adds, is shooting for something more like Opus One, a higher quality wine co-created by Robert Mondavi.
Inside one of his Salinas greenhouses, Kogan repeatedly raises the importance of bringing efficiency to cannabis cultivation, with the goal of lowering costs. The greenhouses are jointly owned by a cut-flower farmer, who has helped Grupo Flor incorporate large-scale farming techniques into cannabis cultivation, Kogan said.
Grupo Flor has 19 full-time cultivation employees, most of whom are Latino, reflecting hiring practices for agriculture generally.
Tod Williamson, who manages the facility, said Emerald Triangle growers went to extremes to carry gear to remote locations not easily detected by authorities. But with legalization, cannabis cultivation needs to come out into the open, he said.
“If you’re going to serve California, you can’t do it with guys and their backpacks,” he said. “Those days are over.”
Still, some areas are trying to protect smaller farmers, including San Luis Obispo County, just south of Monterey County. The state’s decision to remove cultivation caps does not prevent local and county government from approving their own limits on the size of grows. County supervisors in San Luis Obispo set a limit of a half-acre on indoor operations and 3 acres for outdoor.
Industry consultant Sean Donahoe said the local policy means San Luis Obispo County is falling behind other Central Coast counties. In December, Donahoe started a signature-gathering campaign to overturn the policy, which prevented growers from applying for temporary licenses. It also required the largest grower in the county, CFAM Management Group, to reduce its greenhouse operation by 90 percent.
Others in the industry opposed the referendum, and the debate grew testy at times. Donahoe pulled the proposal days after starting it, saying he had reached an agreement that satisfied some of the company’s concerns, although the size cap remains in place.
Supervisors specifically said they wanted a “slow roll-out” of commercial grows. The county would allow only operators who previously registered with the county in 2016 to apply for local licenses in 2018, which had the effect of giving local, smaller-scale operators a leg up.
The county has limited applications to about 160 growers; about 110 are in the local application process. Only a handful have been approved by the state.
Jason Kallen, executive director of SLO NORML, an advocacy group, and president of City Boy Farms, supports the county’s approach.
“It guaranteed they got local operators and not outside corporate interests,” he said.