P<\/span>rop. 64, the voter initiative that legalized recreational marijuana for all adults 21 and over in California on Election Day 2016, was supposed to be the sort of bill that appealed to all stakeholders in the cannabis industry.<\/p>\n So carefully constructed and thoroughly vetted was Prop. 64, the promises went, that this legalization would not only attract endorsements from the political world\u2019s most electric luminaries and campaign cash from the richest backers, it would also scratch every itch among the citizens \u2014 assuaging fears of stoners, soccer moms and city councils alike.<\/p>\n No small feat. But the bill\u2019s proponents also said that legalization would correct some of the drug war\u2019s most brutal injustices and create new economic opportunity. It would give law-abiding adults a lawful vector for cannabis access, while protecting children. (Indeed,\u00a0that exact promise was baked into the campaign committee\u2019s official name<\/a>: \u201cCalifornians to Control,\u00a0Regulate and Tax Adult Use of Marijuana While Protecting Children.\u201d)<\/p>\n And, importantly, Prop. 64 promised to preserve and protect the livelihoods of longtime clandestine pot farmers, whose willingness to run great risk (in exchange for significant profits) created the foundation for the capitalized cannabis farms in business today.<\/p>\n It\u2019s still far too early to tell if most of these lofty promises will be fulfilled, but initial feedback indicates that at least some of the fears of Big Pot were justified.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Two key lawmakers representing Northern California\u2019s historic marijuana-growing counties have declared<\/a>, unequivocally,\u00a0that the landscape as it stands clearly favors \u201cbig corporate farms\u201d over mom-and-pop outfits.<\/p>\n Though retail sales of recreational cannabis began on Jan. 1<\/a>, it took until November 2016 for key state agencies to release rules<\/a> for how that process would transpire. And according to State Senators Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg) and Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), as well as Assemblymember Jim Wood (D-Healdsburg), the California Department of Food and Agriculture\u2019s emergency regulations for marijuana cultivation contain a loophole that allows for cannabis plantations of unlimited size.<\/p>\n One of Prop. 64\u2019s key promises was that large-scale marijuana cultivation would not begin until 2023, the first year licenses for unlimited marijuana farms would be issued. The CDFA\u2019s emergency rules allow for \u201cmedium\u201d farms of up to one acre in size, and \u201csmall\u201d farms no larger than one quarter-acre. A single entity can only hold one medium license at a time, but there\u2019s no restriction on how many small licenses an entity can hold.<\/p>\n This is a \u201cloophole\u201d that, in theory, allows for massive, Big Ag-style grows \u2014 and since Big Ag dominates commercial agriculture everywhere huge grows are allowed, the fear is that cannabis is ripe for a similar takeover.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also a \u201cbroken promise,\u201d McGuire told the Los Angeles Times, and exactly what Prop. 64 was supposed to avoid.<\/p>\n \u201cFor two years, every discussion has included a cap on cannabis grows and the Department of Food and Agriculture needs to fix this massive loophole they have created,\u201d he told the paper. \u201cThis last-minute revision rolls out the red carpet for large corporations to crush the livelihood of small family farmers.\u201d<\/p>\n The lawmakers and the California Growers Association, the main lobby for marijuana farmers in California, want the loophole fixed before permanent rules take effect sometime next year.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not clear whether this is an oversight or a deliberate move<\/a> taken to appease powerful forces with influential lobbyists,\u00a0but this is absolutely an \u201cI-told-you-so moment\u201d for some of Prop. 64\u2019s most fervent critics \u2014 from within the cannabis advocacy world, including lifelong legalization advocates who agitated against Prop. 64 from the beginning.<\/p>\n\n Cannabis advocates have long been skeptical of corporate takeovers and legalization measures, with worries that companies like Monsanto would be eager to dominate a legal cannabis industry. (Much of the basis for this contention is the fact that George Soros, the alt-right b\u00eate noire and\u00a0billionaire bankroller of the Drug Policy Alliance<\/a>\u00a0and California\u2019s medical-marijuana law, Prop. 215,\u00a0is also a Monsanto shareholder.<\/a>)<\/p>\n A few weeks before Election Day last year, the world was treated to the bizarre sight of the country\u2019s leading anti-marijuana organization, Project SAM, on stage with the leaders of cannabis advocacy groups including\u00a0Weed for Warriors<\/a>, slamming Prop. 64 at a press conference in San Francisco.<\/p>\n In WFW\u2019s case, the organization\u2019s position hasn\u2019t wavered \u2014 and developments like the removal of the acre cap make their warnings of a creeping corporate takeover harder to deny.<\/p>\n A post shared by THE WEED FOR WARRIORS PROJECT (@wfw_project)<\/a> on Dec 16, 2017 at 6:34am PST<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n TELL US,<\/strong> do you think corporate cannabis is coming to California?<\/p>\n The post California Lawmakers Say Legalization Rules Favor Big Pot<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Warnings that marijuana legalization was a \u201cTrojan horse\u201d for corporate cannabis were dismissed as nonsense from the fringe, but a recent development allowing for massive cannabis farms has pushed three California lawmakers to step forward to decry the state\u2019s new regulations. Prop. 64, the voter initiative that legalized recreational marijuanaContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[148,50,5,306,2900],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22490"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22490"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22491,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22490\/revisions\/22491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\nRead More: California Lawmakers Say Legalization Rules Favor Big Pot<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"