NAVIGATE CALIFORNIA’S NEW POT REGULATIONS

Pot’s platonic ideal goes from grower to consumer. On the black market, pot passes, variously, from grower to processor to wholesaler to dealer to consumer. California’s current quasi-legal medical marijuana market flows similarly — growers still walk into dispensaries peddling plants — but pays extra care and attention to testing and consumer-friendly goods and packaging. California’s new medical marijuana laws, influenced by labor unions, create a licensed and regulated system in which a new type of middleman must approve all pot products.

As Bernie Sanders Calls for Marijuana De-Scheduling, Richard Nixon Reminds Us Why Pot Tops Illegal Drugs List

The architect of America’s War on Drugs, left, with Elvis Presley, the pop singer/movie star/drug abuser who asked to be President Richard Nixon’s special drug agent.

By Ed Murrieta

Richard Nixon was socially awkward and paranoid. His ramblings were at times unintelligible. He indulged in cottage cheese and ketchup.

Total stoner, right?

The 37th president of the United States was anything but. In fact, Nixon’s disdain for drugs and drug users — based wholly on Nixon’s personal and racial prejudices — launched the nation into an unwinnable conflict that’s been carried out by all seven subsequent presidents: America’s War on Drugs, now on the brink of its 45th year.

Nixon’s anti-drug legacy slunk from his disgraced dungheap this week when one of the Democrats running for president called for marijuana to be completely removed from the schedule of controlled substances regulated by the Drug Enforcement Administration, an agency Nixon authorized.

THE POT PIPELINE: FROM HOME-GROWN TO HIGHLY REGULATED

Is pot the cherry on top for alcohol distributors?

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California’s new landmark medical cannabis laws create a new kind of private business that will play a central role regulating the state’s $1.3 billion pot industry: a licensed distribution scheme that appears to favor alcohol wholesalers.

By 2017, all cannabis authorized to be grown, processed and sold in California must pass inspection by licensed distributors that will charge fees for quality assurance, lab testing, and transportation by Teamster drivers.

Nearly 20 years into a heretofore unregulated medical cannabis market, California adopted a layer of bureaucracy that some growers and artisan producers say potentially threatens the integrity of their products and will certainly raise consumer prices.

TOTALLY LEGAL AND NOWHERE TO TOKE, THE SOCIAL-USE CANNABIS CONUNDRUM

In recreational-use states, banning cannabis consumption in bars and cafes shuts out tourists and threatens locals whose landlords oppose pot.

By Ed Murrieta

Voters in four western states legalized adult-use recreational cannabis. But lawmakers in Alaska, Colorado, Oregon and Washington say there is only one place to consume it: in private residences whose owners approve of pot.

Activists complain that bans on smoking, vaporizing and even eating cannabis in public places like bars and cafes turn tourists into outlaws and threaten the evictions of residents whose landlords oppose pot.

Lawmakers in Alaska and Oregon are currently working on regulations for their states’ commercial marijuana industries. Cannabis consumption in bars and cafes is banned in both Alaska and Oregon’s draft regulations, prohibitions that rile activists in both states.

Oregon considers strict cannabis kitchen segregation

Draft regulations introduced in Oregon would segregate cannabis edibles kitchens from all other types of licensed commercial kitchens, and would require the state’s permission to share facilities with other licensed edibles makers.

Released on Friday along with other proposed licensing regulations covering growing, wholesaling and processing of cannabis products, the edibles kitchen draft regulations are the most specific and restrictive in any recreational or medical cannabis jurisdiction.

Alcohol distributors as marijuana middlemen

Beer, wine and liquor distributors — long-time big-money backers of cannabis prohibition — stand to gain from new regulations governing California’s $1.3 billion medical cannabis industry.

One of the landmark laws Gov. Jerry Brown signed Oct. 9 calls for the creation of a new kind of business to regulate the flow of all cannabis products in California, essentially middlemen like beer, wine and liquor distributors but with authority over quality assurance and product testing.

5 WINE-STYLE CALIFORNIA CANNABIS APPELLATIONS WE NEED NOW

One of California’s new medical marijuana laws will allow the botanical drug to be marketed like wine beginning Jan. 1.

Landmark legislation bringing overdue order to a muddled market establishes the Bureau of Medical Marijuana Regulation, which will have the authority to establish wine-style geographic pedigrees for pot and make Humboldt Hash and Santa Cruz Sinsemilla as legitimate as Napa Valley Viognier and Paso Robles Pinot Noir.

Heavy-hitting ReformCA releases 2016 legalization initiative

The largest and best-funded group seeking to legalize adult-use recreational cannabis in California has filed the first draft of its long-awaited voter initiative.

As currently written, ReformCA’s Control, Regulate, and Tax Cannabis Act of 2016 would, among other provisions, legalize possession of up to one ounce by adults 21 and over; license commercial farms and stores; allow for public consumption in licensed facilities; allow cities and counties to ban cannabis businesses by popular vote; prevent stoned driving; prevent cannabis money going to criminal cartels; and protect medical cannabis patients and caregivers.

ReformCA joins a crowded field of 10 initiatives jockeying for attention and possibly even the 2016 ballot — from bare-bones statements to fully-lawyered language.

Envisioning a California Cannabis Conference

Substitute words like cannabis, growers, farms, greenhouses, concentrates and edibles for the alcohol references in strikethrough in this passage from the program for the 26th annual Envisioning California Conference that convened Friday in Sacramento:

California is an internationally recognized leader in the production of wine and beer. Increasingly, these industries have embraced a think-small ethos evident in a diverse range of micro breweries and artisanal wineries. Along the way, California has confronted a number of policy challenges in terms of land use, business models and regulation, trade, environmental impacts, and other issues. As a follow-up to the 2013 Food for Thought conference, this Envisioning conference will explore recent trends in brewing and winemaking in California, examine current policy implications, and consider possible future developments in the industry. It will also provide an opportunity to talk directly with California winemakers and brewers, to sample their products, and join a broader conversation about California’s liquid gold.

They called this year’s conference “California’s Liquid Gold: Brewing & Winemaking in the Golden State.” With two edits, we have my proposed theme for the 27th annual Envisioning California Conference — “California’s Gold: Cannabis in the Golden State” — hopefully convening in October 2016 .

Would Jerry Brown Sign Cannabis Bills in a Dispensary?

Craft beer has become something of an infatuation at the Capitol. Gov. Jerry Brown sure seems to enjoy a hoppy pint. When he signed a bill in 2013 authorizing craft breweries to sell beer in to-go containers called growlers, the governor did so at a popular Sacramento brewery and tweeted, “Carpe Cervisiam!”

Do you think the governor, who’s already snarked about a stoned workforce’s impact on California’s productivity, would stage a dog-and-pony show at a dispensary to sign the three historic medical cannabis bills currently awaiting his signature? Would @JerryBrownGov then tweet, “Carpe Cannabis!”?