The transition to a fully regulated cannabis industry in California seems to be under an elastic deadline. The first 120-day temporary permits for cannabis businesses granted in January are now set to lapse, but state regulators are preparing to extend them. The permanent annual permits have yet to be issued.<\/p>\n
A third of all existing licenses \u2014 currently numbering around 6,000 \u2014 are due to run out by the start of June, and a tenth in early May. Rather than immediately issue full annual licenses, regulators are extending temporary ones for another 90 days.<\/p>\n
\u201cPart of the problem, I think, is that people wait until the last minute,\u201d said Lori Ajax, chief of California\u2019s\u00a0Bureau of Cannabis Control<\/a>, speaking to the\u00a0Orange County Register<\/a>. \u201cI\u2019m a procrastinator sometimes. I get it, so I\u2019m not upset.\u201d<\/p>\n Only 278 businesses had even applied for full licenses as of April 25, the OCR reported.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n That includes just 24 cultivators, 61 manufacturers and 193 dispensaries, distributors or testing labs. If businesses don\u2019t submit applications for a full license before their temporary permits expire or receive a 90-day extension license, they\u2019ll be required to shut down \u2014 at least until their full annual authorization is approved.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, some 1,150 temporary applications have been rejected, overwhelmingly due to failure to win approval from local authorities, the OCR reported. But getting that approval is often simply impossible.\u00a0More than two-thirds of California\u2019s cities (144 out of 482) don\u2019t allow any cannabis businesses at all,\u00a0according to<\/a>\u00a0data compiled by the Southern California News Group. Other municipalities and counties have been slow in issuing local applications. Sonoma and Nevada counties, for example, have extensive backlogs in processing local cultivation permits, according to Hezekiah Allen, director of the\u00a0California Growers Association<\/a>.<\/p>\n The\u00a0Los Angeles Times also notes<\/a> that the expense and red tape of getting a regular license is a \u201cheadache\u201d for many applicants. Fees for the annual permits run as high as $73,000, and also often require costly upgrades to security and product testing.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s all a bit of a hardship right now,\u201d said Nicole Neubert, a San Francisco attorney representing cannabis businesses, in comments to the paper. \u201cAll of these costs of becoming regulated are hard for these businesses to incur, especially at a time when the market is so strange.\u201d<\/p>\n Among the programs to be instated with the full permits is a\u00a0track-and-trace system<\/a>\u00a0that will monitor cannabis from seed to sale.\u00a0(The Mercury News\u00a0facetiously notes<\/a> that the strain known as C. Banana has been dubbed by state regulators as\u00a0#S0411180010-01 for the track-and-trace system.)<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s tracking cannabis as if it were uranium,\u201d Mark McMillan, director of systems at Oakland\u2019s flagship\u00a0Harborside<\/a>\u00a0dispensary, told the Mercury News.<\/p>\n Now, implementation of the track-and-trace system is set to begin June 1. Software will monitor each plant\u2019s yield and every move, and measure its weight along the way right down to the point of sale \u2014 assuring that legally cultivated cannabis isn\u2019t crossing state lines (which could bring down federal wrath) or being diverted to the illicit market<\/a>.<\/p>\n In addition to serving as a kind of insurance policy against federal interference in the California cannabis industry, this system will also help state tax collectors determine how much revenue they should be collecting. The track-and-trace program is to be overseen by the Florida-based firm\u00a0Framwell METRC<\/a>\u00a0(Marijuana Enforcement Tracking Reporting Compliance), which already has contracts in Nevada, Colorado and Alaska.<\/p>\n But there\u2019s clearly some trepidation about compliance within the industry. \u201cThere is a lot of pressure here,\u201d said Harborside\u2019s McMillan. \u201cErrors can happen by accident, by one person sneezing.\u201d<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong> are you struggling in California\u2019s new regulated cannabis industry?<\/p>\n The post Elastic Deadlines for California\u2019s Regulated Cannabis Industry<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
The transition to a fully regulated cannabis industry in California seems to be under an elastic deadline. The first 120-day temporary permits for cannabis businesses granted in January are now set to lapse, but state regulators are preparing to extend them. The permanent annual permits have yet to be issued.Continue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4064,148,1972,50,141,2082,690,4139,81],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25932"}],"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\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25932"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25933,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25932\/revisions\/25933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\nRead More: Elastic Deadlines for California\u2019s Regulated Cannabis Industry<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"