Marijuana continues to be in the local news just as we promised last year that it would. The latest news is next week’s special election to create a “cannabis business tax” in the unincorporated areas of Sonoma County. The single ballot item is called Measure A.
Last November’s statewide vote on Proposition 64 to legalize adult recreational use of the flowering plant won all of us a fast-moving series of new laws, land use permitting, business activities, neighborhood alerts, health care questions, youth education concerns, new taxes and lots of new vocabulary.
The very first steps were taken late last year to end most of the prohibitions against cannabis on the local and state level. The governor and state legislature also got around to structuring some laws around our 20-year-old medical marijuana industry, first approved by voters in 1996 with Proposition 215.
All of the above is just the very beginning to welcoming a multi-billion dollar industry into our midst.
“Scary, uncertain and confusing,” is what the Sonoma County Growers Alliance (SCGA), a cannabis growers advocacy group, calls the current state of local marijuana affairs. Just imagine what others must be calling it.
All to say, if you are not confused about how to vote on Measure A, then maybe you didn’t look close enough. Matching all the pros and cons of the proposed tax and attached regulations even stumped the Growers Alliance. When their members finally voted to oppose Measure A it was too late to add their argument to the ballots.
The county, as the City of Cloverdale just did, wants to put a tax structure together ahead of the Jan. 1, 2018 date when cannabis cultivation and business permits are scheduled to be issued throughout all of California.
The Board of Supervisors voted to hold an expensive ($400,000) special election on March 7 so they could begin work on permitting, licensing and taxing the medical and recreational cannabis industries.
The county expects it will need more than a dozen new employees to oversee this specialized industry. Measure A is actually a series of taxes to be paid on both cultivation and gross sales. All taxes would go to the county’s general fund to support a series of essential services tied to any identified pot industry impacts.
If Measure A does not pass, the supervisors warn some local controls over the new industry may be lost to new state laws now being worked on in Sacramento. Measure A proposes a maximum tax of 10 percent on both cultivation and sales which would be on top of future state taxes that were set by Prop. 64.
SCGA members, who endorse some new taxes, say too much tax will scare away smaller cannabis farmers from applying for the new business permits and will open the door for large corporate growers to dominate the industry.
Local growers are already feeling the sting of a recent supervisors’ vote to restrict cannabis operations to non-residential zoned areas only. A land grab for suitable warehouse space and new garden locations is already under way here.
For all non-growers, Measure A might look like an easy tax to support since they wouldn’t pay it. Measure A, or some other cannabis tax, would allow governments to begin to recoup the costs of safety, environmental and health impacts on what’s been an illicit industry up to now.
But if the Measure A tax levels are as onerous as the Growers Alliance and others say they are, then the supervisors’ cannabis business tax may backfire.
Unfortunately, whether Measure A wins or loses Tuesday, we believe the outcome will be the same. And that is, expect lots more “scary, uncertain and confusing” to be part of the local marijuana news for many months to come.
