CA: With Mayor Out Of Town, Malia Cohen Signs Own Cannabis Moratorium

Ron Strider

Well-Known Member
With Mayor Ed Lee traveling abroad, Supervisor Malia Cohen signed her own legislation Friday to halt approvals of new cannabis business permits for 45 days in San Francisco.

The moratorium comes just as the city's new Office of Cannabis prepares to roll out dispensary permitting regulations at Tuesday's Board of Supervisors meeting. The sale of recreational marijuana will become legal throughout the state on Jan. 1.

Cohen, who is serving as acting mayor until Lee returns home Sunday evening, said the mayor supports her legislation. The moratorium will give the city time to come up with consistent guidelines to evaluate dispensary applications, Cohen said.

She criticized the current approval process at the Planning Commission for being haphazard and unfair, saying projects with a lot of political juice and financing sail right through, while the ones that lack capital don't get approved.

Cohen and other supervisors have pressed the Office of Cannabis to create policies that will give low-income, African American and Latino entrepreneurs an equal shot at success in what is expected to be a booming marijuana trade.

"We shouldn't be issuing permits until we have the rules and regulations solidified," she said.

As the supervisors deliberate about fairness in the market, many of their constituents are objecting loudly to having cannabis businesses in their neighborhoods.

Fed-up Excelsior residents persuaded Supervisor Ahsha Safai to sponsor an ordinance in July limiting the number of dispensaries in his district to three. Next month, the supervisors will hear an appeal of a luxury medical marijuana shop that applied to open in the outer Sunset, infuriating locals.

San Francisco has 11 cannabis permit applications in the pipeline, and only four of them will be exempt from the moratorium, because they have hearings scheduled in October.

City officials will have to wrestle with many other sides of the cannabis market as it expands, such as how to regulate app-based delivery services that aren't tied to a brick-and-mortar store. Those businesses aren't going before the Planning Commission at all, Cohen said.

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