In order to sell them on the idea that cannabis is okay to have and sell in stores without invoking the police state, backers of California\u2019s 2016 legalization initiatives promised the state\u2019s conservatives and die-hard drug-warriors all kinds of things.<\/p>\n
One of them was omnipotence \u2014 that all the cannabis all over the state could all be accounted for at any one time. And what do you know? Just like vows to quash the illicit market and \u201cright the wrongs of the drug war,\u201d\u00a0this deal isn\u2019t quite working out.<\/p>\n
As the Associated Press reported<\/a>, the percentage of growers, sellers, and manufacturers using the state mandated tracking system \u2014 the one state taxpayers are giving $60 million to a private company to run \u2014 is in the single digits.<\/p>\n A\u00a0panopticon<\/a>\u00a0for pot, the state\u2019s \u201ctrack and trace system\u201d is intended to follow the life of a cannabinoid \u201cfrom seed to sale.\u201d Plants are assigned barcodes at birth, with up to 100 plants entered into a \u201clot.\u201d Barcodes are also slapped on products like oil cartridges and edible and entered into units of measurement called \u201cpackages.\u201d Lots and packages alike are then scanned on their way from the farm, to the extraction lab, to the testing lab and to the dispensary.<\/p>\n Such control would ensure everybody paid their taxes to the full, that no illicit marijuana ended up at dispensaries, and that no cannabis grown under the cover of legitimacy would \u2014oops! \u2014 be shipped out of state or fall into the hands of someone who shouldn\u2019t have marijuana, like a child.<\/p>\n Dominion like this over such an enormous and variegated industry is no small feat. Agriculture is messy; can you imagine trying to follow the life of an almond? And so California state regulators\u00a0gave<\/a>\u00a0cultivators, sellers, and transporters until Jan. 1, 2019, one year into the era of commercial sales, to get familiar with the state-mandated software program, called Metrc, and comply with track-and-trace requirements.<\/p>\n But there were exceptions. Only holders of \u201cpermanent\u201d licenses from the Bureau of Cannabis Control or state Department of Food and Agriculture had to comply; a business with a \u201ctemporary\u201d license did not. The first permanent licenses were only issued in November; many more temporary-license holders are still waiting for their applications to be processed.<\/p>\n This means that a permanent license-holder doing business with a temporary license holder had to input both parties\u2019 activities into the Metrc system. A \u201cvertically integrated\u201d company with temporary and permanent licenses for different stages of the business \u2014 transportation versus manufacturing, say \u2014 isn\u2019t required to use track-and-trace for product that passes from one stage to the other with different licensing at each stage.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a pain, but as\u00a0Marijuana Business Daily reported in March,<\/a>\u00a0there was also misinformation and limitations fueling \u201cwidespread confusion.\u201d Some companies complained that the \u201cunique identifier\u201d stickers were too big for small products like\u00a0vape cartridges<\/a>. Others were flummoxed by arbitrary limits such as a ceiling of 500 \u201cunique identifier\u201d stickers per order. Someone started selling fake identifier stickers.<\/p>\n And if a company couldn\u2019t quite figure out how Metrc worked, well, OK \u2014 they could use good old-fashioned paper instead.<\/p>\n That all sounds like a recipe for a mess, or for companies to justifiably say \u201cf*ck it.\u201d And as per the AP, that\u2019s happening. Only nine out of the state\u2019s 627 retail dispensaries, 93 out of 1,000 licensed manufacturing companies, and 254 out of the state\u2019s 4,000 licensed growers are using track-and-trace.<\/p>\n In the meantime, everyone else is using a paper-trail \u201chonor system,\u201d as the AP described it.<\/p>\n State regulators don\u2019t seem fussed. As the AP reported, the state has received 50,000 paper shipping manifests, and has yet to open any enforcement cases over fudged or fake records.<\/p>\n Meanwhile,\u00a0fake product<\/a>\u00a0is being sold in unlicensed stories, and illicit cannabis continues to be grown on unlicensed farms and shipped out of state.<\/p>\n So what\u2019s the harm, other than under-delivering on a massive over-promise? There is the chance that taxes are going underpaid. There is the possibility that bunk product is getting out there, though the obvious choke point for that would be the retailer, who could deny shelf space to product without an identifier. Or maybe the consumer could be encouraged to tell the state what they bought and where and then the state could determine if the retailer was being honest. But with unlicensed cannabis dispensaries proliferating in big markets like Southern California with (thus far) something close to impunity, perfecting the pot panopticon is likely very low on regulators\u2019 list of priorities and, until something bad happens, even lower priority among consumers.<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong>\u00a0 do you know where your cannabis comes from?<\/p>\n The post The Pot Panopticon: Tracking & Tracing CA Cannabis Is a Mess<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
In order to sell them on the idea that cannabis is okay to have and sell in stores without invoking the police state, backers of California\u2019s 2016 legalization initiatives promised the state\u2019s conservatives and die-hard drug-warriors all kinds of things. One of them was omnipotence \u2014 that all the cannabisContinue 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":[148,50,90,687,2111],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35317"}],"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=35317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35318,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35317\/revisions\/35318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n
\nRead More: The Pot Panopticon: Tracking & Tracing CA Cannabis Is a Mess<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"