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California Cities Take Another Shot At Legal Marijuana Delivery Laws

California Cities Take Another Shot At Legal Marijuana Delivery Laws

California legislature recently rejected an appeal to overturn the state’s legal delivery laws, but legal marijuana delivery is still under threat from a lawsuit filed by the League of California Cities on behalf of 24 municipalities (and Santa Cruz County) against the Bureau of Cannabis Control (BCC).

The suit, filed earlier this month, aims a regulation which allows licensed operators to provide cannabis to cities in which brick and mortar shops are banned by local authorities.

“The City Council has maintained that this is an issue of local control, which Beverly Hills should have the ability to regulate cannabis,” explained Keith Sterling, a spokesperson for the city of Beverly Hills, among the plaintiffs in the situation.

Legal marijuana delivery has been the subject of numerous legal and legislative battles since California legalized cannabis in January 2018.

Proposition 64, the legalization ballot initiative, gave cities wide latitude in how they controlled the new sector. Although the biggest California cities — Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco — allows recreational cannabis stores, 80 percent of the state’s municipalities have banned brick and mortar shops. This means citizens in vast regions of the state basically don’t have any access to legal bud – unless they get it delivered.

In July 2018 the law was modified to permit legal marijuana delivery . The cities which had banned stores balked, asserting their prohibition should extend to deliveries.

The current lawsuit boils down to a power play between local governments and state regulators and possibly threatens California’s legal marijuana marketplace, which is slower to grow than many expected.

“There is likely to be delivery in any case; the question is whether it is going to be legal or illegal,” said Dale Gieringer, state manager for NORML, a nonprofit working to reform marijuana laws. “We think it’s better to allow legal licensed delivery”

Sacramento retailer Maisha Bahati opened her delivery-only business, Crystal Nugs, in March 2019 following the city capped the number of brick and mortar locations. Business is brisk in the female-owned enterprise, which takes for Amazon-style shipping times of under an hour.

“We’re getting new clients every day, many have not been into an actual shop,” Bahati said. “It’s professional and discreet.”

Crystal Nugs provides legal marijuana delivery to small cities and unincorporated areas like El Dorado Hills and Rosewood that have banned brick and mortar locations. The League of Cities lawsuit, she stated, is par for the course within an industry that continues to combat negative perceptions about marijuana, a drug that remains illegal at the national level.

“The reason they have the lawsuit is that they still think marijuana entices offense,” Bahati said.

Many retailers feel existing regulations relating to home delivery are onerous enough. Bahati, for one, spent over two years and $60,000 to obtain a permit and get the business up and running. “It’s a long process, a fighting game,” she said. “And dealing with everything related to cannabis was pricey.”

The League of California Cities suit, filed in conservative Fresno County, points to language in Proposition 64 permitting “deliveries of cannabis, but only if these operations comply with local authorities,” and, “a jurisdiction [can] govern or fully prohibit the operation of commercial cannabis companies within its boundaries.”

Home delivery supporters say that Proposition 64 does not allow local authorities to prohibit the transport of marijuana. They also don’t think local authorities have the authority to avoid delivery of medical marijuana, Gieringer said.

For residents of towns which prohibit physical shops, delivery is their sole option, he said.

“We’ve talked to folks who say that their nearest dispensary is 150 miles off — in northeastern California. In certain areas in the Central Valley it’s very hard to discover a dispensary.”

If you are in LA and looking to purchase marijuana flowerCBDedibles, or concentrates for deliveryregister with Kushfly here.

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