pagesIndoor Marijuana Growers Get License
Cited: AP
If you can’t beat them, then tax them, is what Oakland California is saying. Other local governments in California and other Western states want to clamp down or stop medical marijuana, but not Oakland.
After becoming the first U.S. city to impose a special tax on medical marijuana dispensaries, Oakland soon could become the first to sanction and tax commercial pot growing operations. Selling and growing marijuana remain illegal under federal law.
Two City Council members are preparing legislation, expected to be introduced next month, which would allow at least three industrial-scale growing operations.
One of the authors, Councilman Larry Reid, said the proposal is more of an effort to bring in money than an endorsement of legalizing marijuana use — although the council has unanimously supported that, too.
The city is facing a $42 million budget shortfall. The tax voters approved last summer on the four medical marijuana clubs allowed under Oakland law is expected to contribute $1 million to its coffers in the first year, Reid said. A tax on growers’ sales to the clubs could bring in substantially more, he said.
“Looking at the economic analysis, we will generate a considerable amount of additional revenues, and that will certainly help us weather the hard economic times that all urban areas are having to deal with,” Reid said.
How much money is at stake isn’t clear because the tax rate and the number of facilities the law would allow haven’t been decided. A report prepared for AgraMed Inc., one of the companies planning to seek a grower’s license, said its proposed 100,000-square-foot-project near the Oakland Coliseum would produce more than $2 million in city taxes each year.
Given their likely locations in empty warehouses in industrial neighborhoods, the marijuana nurseries under consideration would have more in common with factories than rural pot farms.
Dhar Mann, the founder of an Oakland hydroponics equipment store called iGrow, and Derek Peterson, a former stock broker who now sells luxury trailers outfitted for growing pot as a co-founder of GrowOp Enterprises, have hired an architect to draft plans for two warehouses where marijuana would be grown and processed year-round.
Their vision includes using lights, trays and other equipment manufactured by iGrow and creating an online system that would allow medical marijuana dispensaries to see what pot strains are in stock, place orders and track deliveries.
“We are emulating the wine industry, but instead of ‘from grape to bottle,’ it’s ‘from plant to pipe,’” Mann said.
“Or seed to sack,” offered Peterson.
The pair say they intend to operate the pot-growing business they have dubbed GROPECH — Grass Roots of Oakland Philanthropic and Economic Coalition for Humanity — as a not-for-profit. They anticipate gross sales reaching $70 million a year. After paying their expenses, they’d funnel the money to local charities and non-profits through a competitive grant process.
The discussion in Oakland comes amid a statewide campaign to make California the first state to legalize the recreational use of marijuana and to authorize cities to sell and tax sales to adults. Another Oakland pot entrepreneur, Richard Lee, is sponsoring a ballot measure voters will consider in November.
Lee, who owns two of Oakland’s four dispensaries as well as Oaksterdam University, a trade school for the medical marijuana industry, hopes to secure one of the cultivation permits, but he thinks the city should opt for having more, smaller sites instead of a handful of large ones.
“We need to legalize and tax and regulate the production side as well as the retail side,” Lee said. “It’s a natural step.”
Other supporters say licensed growers would create hundreds of well-paying jobs. The local branch of the United Food and Commercial Workers union already has signed up about 100 medical marijuana workers, and the growers are expected to have union shops as well, said Dan Rush, special operations director of UFCW Local 5.
“I think Oakland’s intention is to make Oakland the leader and the trendsetter in how this industry can be effective in all of California,” Rush said.
Allowing medical marijuana to be grown openly also could give patients a better idea of where their pot is coming from. Now, many growers hide their identities to avoid federal prosecution.
Oakland has already developed a reputation as one of the nation’s most pot-friendly cities. Legislation on the city’s books includes a declaration of a public health emergency after federal crackdowns on marijuana clubs and a ballot measure instructing police to make marijuana their lowest enforcement priority.
“The whole population of Oakland is just very progressive,” Rosenthal said. “It’s the radicals who couldn’t afford Berkeley or San Francisco who all moved to Oakland.”
Ed Rosenthal, the self-described “guru of ganja”, is a popular writer of pot growing how-to books who has lived in Oakland 25 years. The activists who have flocked to Oakland since the 1970s are who gave the city a positive attitude towards marijuana according to Rosenthal.
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My Take: I think they have the right idea! They made medical marijuana legal, why not tax it and make money for the city or state. A very good friend of mine used to buy her stash and local cannabis club in San Diego. She had terminal cervical cancer. She would tell me the stories of when she would go to get her stash. I think she liked to flirt with the CA unarmed security guard they had at the shop.
I remember one time she came home mad complaining about security guard services in Rockville. It turned out that the regular guard was working in Rockville that day. I just started laughing. She got a little bit mad at me but she got over it. It seems they were shorthanded in Rockville so they sent the regular club guard down there.
I remember another time she came home and told me about someone who came in with a letter from their doctor, which in California is the only legal way to do it, who was a California liposuction surgeon. The clerk behind the window had to go check with her supervisor on this one. Usually, the people who get these letters are usually HIV or cancer patients because of all the drugs they take.
It turned out that the lady had just had laser skin treatment California and didn’t want to take all that medication because it was bad for you. She had talked to the doctor into writing a letter so she could get something “natural” for the pain. They didn’t give it to her. What some people will do just to get high is weird!
I guess what I’m really trying to say is that I see no reason why they shouldn’t make marijuana legal. The only bad thing I know about marijuana is that it slows production of sperm for men who smoke it. By making it legal, cities, counties, states and the federal government could have increased income by charging taxes on it.
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