This year, California is supposed to see the final enactment of the Adult Use of Marijuana Act (AUMA), approved by California voters in 2016\u2019s Proposition 64. But authorities have thus far failed to address a glaring omission in the law: any provision for the regulation of \u201ccompassionate care\u201d providers.<\/p>\n
On New Year\u2019s Day, the long-awaited Medicinal and Adult-Use Cannabis Regulatory Safety Act (MAUCRSA) was implemented, but final regulations to oversee cannabis enterprises were put off, leaving the businesses operating under\u00a0temporary licenses<\/a>. Finally, new draft regulations were\u00a0released<\/a>\u00a0July 13. After a 45-day public commentary period, they will assume the force of law. And they have left some bitterly disappointed.<\/p>\n One of those disappointed cannabis activists is Joe Airone, founder and director of the Bay Area-based not-for-profit\u00a0Sweetleaf Collective<\/a>, which he boasts is the oldest continuously running medical marijuana provider in the state. The Sweetleaf Collective started in 1996, the same year such operations were legalized in California by Proposition 215. It started doing bike deliveries around San Francisco and has recently expanded to the Los Angeles area.<\/p>\n But California\u2019s new legal cannabis system\u00a0has only paralyzed their compassionate care program<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cBefore, all we needed was patient paperwork for each of our collective members. We could cultivate, transport and distribute. We could manufacture cannabis products and dispense them to patients,\u201d Airone said. \u201cThis year, that would require four different licenses \u2014 for cultivation, distribution, manufacture and dispensary or delivery \u2014 to do what we were doing last year completely legally for 150 patients. And each of those permits costs tens of thousands of dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n In short, Airone says, \u201cCosts are now prohibitive for us. The whole industry is now geared for commercial activity. There\u2019s no space now for non-commercial activity \u2014 providing cannabis for free to those who need it most.\u201d<\/p>\n Sweetleaf is a not-for-profit mutual benefit corporation under the California tax code, which is what all cannabis businesses were required to be prior to Prop 64.<\/p>\n \u201cNow cannabis businesses can be regular commercial corporations and make lots money,\u201d Airone says.\u00a0\u201cThat\u2019s what regs and laws are geared toward now.\u201d<\/p>\n The\u00a0text of Prop 64<\/a>\u00a0called for a \u201cfeasibility study\u201d for licensing \u201cnon-profit entities\u201d in the cannabis industry \u2014 to have been completed by January 2018. It was never carried out. A November 2017 rider bill signed by Gov. Jerry Brown pushed the deadline for the study back by two years \u2014 to January 2020.<\/p>\n Airone was hoping the newly released regulations might nonetheless provide some legal space for his collective to operate in.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have been working directly with the Bureau of Cannabis Control,\u201d he says. \u201cWe have been trying to craft a non-commercial license.\u201d<\/p>\n In a\u00a0Bureau of Cannabis Control Advisory Committee<\/a>\u00a0meeting in Los Angeles on March 15, the advisory board voted unanimously to create a non-commercial license category. The sub-committee on public health found that that gap in the law constituted a \u201cpublic health emergency,\u201d and needed to be addressed as soon as possible.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were going on that recommendation and thought that we would have a license type before the final regulations dropped,\u201d Airone says.\u00a0\u201cNothing has happened. We had high hopes, and I don\u2019t really know how to explain what\u2019s going on right now.\u201d<\/p>\n Airone says he has patients, including patients suffering from AIDS, asking him when they will be able to receive medicine again.<\/p>\n \u201cI have patients asking me, \u2018When can I get my stuff? I\u2019m losing weight, when am I going to be able to get my medicine?\u2019 With AIDS wasting syndrome, you can lose from 30 to 50 pounds in a month, and cannabis is the only thing that can help some patients\u2026. A lot of my people aren\u2019t going to be here in 2020.\u201d<\/p>\n Another burden for compassionate providers is that under the current regulations, non-commercial activity is taxed as if it were commercial.<\/p>\n \u201cLast year we gave away over 100 pounds of cannabis for free,\u201d Airone says.\u00a0\u201cWe were told by our consultants that if we did that this year, we would be liable for $200,000 in taxes. We\u00a0cannot handle a six-figure tax bill. We\u2019re a small not-for-profit.\u201d<\/p>\n On top of local taxes, Prop. 64 imposed a 15 percent excise tax on retailers, while cultivators must pay $9.25 for each ounce they produce. According to the San Francisco\u00a0Chronicle<\/a>, California is hoping to bring in a yearly $1 billion in taxes from cannabis sales, with the revenues going to addiction prevention and law enforcement efforts to\u00a0suppress the black market<\/a>, among other things.<\/p>\n In late May, state Senator Scott Wiener \u2014 a San Francisco Democrat and longtime medical marijuana supporter \u2014\u00a0introduced a bill<\/a>\u00a0to exempt compassionate care programs from taxes when providing free cannabis to financially disadvantaged people living with serious health conditions.<\/p>\n \u201cCompassionate care programs aid people who are seriously ill and suffering, and we should be helping them thrive, not squeezing them with business taxes that are forcing many of them to close,\u201d said Wiener in a\u00a0press release<\/a>. \u201cLet\u2019s correct this oversight in Prop 64, and help people living with serious conditions like HIV and cancer get the medical cannabis they need.\u201d<\/p>\n The measure has the support of the\u00a0Drug Policy Alliance<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0California NORML<\/a>\u00a0and has\u00a0made it through two committee hearings with bipartisan support. But as a tax bill, it needs a super-majority of 67 percent of those voting in both the Senate and Assembly in order to pass. The Assembly vote is slated for next month.<\/p>\n While compassionate care might have inspired California\u2019s medical marijuana laws, it appears that adult-use cannabis legalization could paradoxically mean the death of compassionate care\u00a0in California.<\/p>\n \u201cVictory was built on the backs of human suffering,\u201d Valerie Corral, a co-founder of Santa-Cruz-based\u00a0Wo\/Men\u2019s Alliance for Medical Marijuana<\/a>, told the\u00a0Sacramento Bee<\/a>\u00a0in March. \u201cUnfortunately, compassion is not financially appealing in this market.\u201d<\/p>\n Airone says Sweetleaf has found some creative ways to continue to get medicine to its patients.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t have a permit, so I can\u2019t touch the medicine. But we did the legwork\u00a0to organize donations to our patients without touching the stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n Recently, the firm\u00a0True Humboldt<\/a>\u00a0brought product\u00a0from permitted cultivators in Emerald Triangle to a giveaway at\u00a0Magnolia Wellness<\/a>\u00a0dispensary in Oakland and the\u00a0Green Earth Collective<\/a>\u00a0in Los Angeles. The company\u00a0Flow Kana<\/a> also did a big give-away to Sweetleaf patients. Airone credits these companies as \u201cbig players in the industry that do care about compassion.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut now it\u2019s a lot more complicated,\u201d he says. \u201cBy this time, last year we had distributed 60 pounds. So far this year, we\u2019ve distributed 15 pounds. That\u2019s 75 to 80 percent less. And we\u2019re one of the most established compassionate programs in the state, and we\u2019ve been doing this without a hitch for 20 years.\u201d<\/p>\n He estimates there are 30 or 50 other collectives in similar straits across the state.<\/p>\n Airone also notes the unlikely phenomenon of \u201cblack-market philanthropy\u201d \u2014 compassionate providers operating outside the framework of the AUMA. \u201cThey are true activists who will not let their patients suffer. They are willing to break the law so they can get medicine to their patients, and I highly commend them.\u201d<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>,\u00a0do you think California should protect its compassionate care programs?<\/p>\n The post Compassionate Care Programs Pushed Out of California\u2019s New Regulations<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
This year, California is supposed to see the final enactment of the Adult Use of Marijuana Act (AUMA), approved by California voters in 2016\u2019s Proposition 64. But authorities have thus far failed to address a glaring omission in the law: any provision for the regulation of \u201ccompassionate care\u201d providers. OnContinue 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":[2780,4064,148,4408,50,5042,592,1046,53,5043,5044,1754],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28026"}],"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=28026"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28027,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28026\/revisions\/28027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Regulations Favor For-Profit Sector<\/h4>\n
Kicking Compassion Down the Road<\/h4>\n
State House Moves to Relieve Tax Burden<\/h4>\n
\u2018Black Market Philanthropy\u2019<\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: Compassionate Care Programs Pushed Out of California\u2019s New Regulations<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"