The City of Long Beach is gathering community feedback through the end of June to decide whether it should allow delivery-only cannabis businesses to open.
While state law allows Long Beach residents to buy from delivery-only cannabis businesses in other cities, the City currently doesn’t allow this type of business within its borders.
“We cannot restrict delivery businesses from delivering in our jurisdiction or our delivery businesses delivering to a neighboring jurisdiction,” Emily Armstrong, manager of Long Beach’s Cannabis Social Equity Program, said.
Currently all Long Beach based cannabis delivery services are tied to brick-and-mortar cannabis dispensaries.
But because delivery-only cannabis businesses are usually much cheaper to open than a dispensary storefront, which can cost over $1 million, the City is considering them as a more affordable and equitable path to business ownership.
During a virtual town hall meeting to discuss the topic on June 16, around 42% of participants were applicants to the City’s cannabis social equity program.
“This program seeks to increase business ownership and employment opportunities of individuals that were impacted by the War on Drugs in Long Beach,” Armstrong said.
The War on Drugs disproportionately targeted people and communities of color.
At one point, 25% of incarcerated people in the county were serving time for drug law violations, according to a March 2019 report by County of Los Angeles Public Health Substance Abuse Prevention and Control.
According to data by the City of Long Beach, although Black residents only made up 13% of the city’s total population from 2010 to 2016, they accounted for 44% of cannabis related arrests during this time.
In comparison, White residents made up 27% of the city’s total population at the time, but accounted for 17% of cannabis arrests.
Now that cannabis is legal in California, the City’s Cannabis Social Equity program aims to make up for the damage done to marginalized communities during its prohibition.
Qualified social equity applicants must have a net worth of less than $250,000 and have an annual family income at or less than 80% of the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale Area Median Income—$72,100 per year for a two-person household.
In addition, applicants must have previously been arrested for a cannabis related crime, currently receive unemployment benefits, or live in an area where over half of residents have an income at or below the Los Angeles Area Median Income.
However, the current social equity program cannot be called a success by any stretch of the imagination.
As of June 24, only one out of 117 social equity applicants had opened a cannabis business, according to the Office of Cannabis Oversight.
Armstrong admitted that the City had fallen short when initially creating many of its cannabis policies.
“Over the years, the City has been working on increasing equity in various policies and programs,” Armstrong said. “It was clear that there was a lack of community engagement and transparency when developing City policies and programs and cannabis was no exception.”
City staff identified delivery-only cannabis businesses as a way to increase opportunities for equitable ownership in a memo to the City Council on Aug. 5, 2020.
On Jan. 5, 2021, the City Council asked the Office of Cannabis Oversight to put together a study on the feasibility of licensing and regulating delivery-only cannabis businesses.
During the June 16 town hall, Adam Hijazi of the Long Beach Collective Association said that social equity applicants should be given priority when it comes to future delivery-only licenses.
“Licenses should be available for social equity applicants,” Hijazi said. “I don’t think this is a question of opening up other deliveries for other applicants. I think that should be the first priority to be looked at and really the real intent of the study.”
During the same meeting, resident Joseph Montes agreed that social equity applicants should be given priority in delivery-only cannabis licenses, due to the fact that they didn’t have an opportunity to apply when the first 32 medical cannabis storefront licenses were allocated.
“I think that this is a good way to kind of somewhat balance things out for us,” Montes said.
In an effort to include the entire community in its upcoming consideration of delivery-only cannabis businesses in Long Beach, the City is asking people to take a short survey on the topic, which can be taken until June 30.
After reviewing all the community feedback it has received, the Office of Cannabis Oversight will conclude the feasibility study and present the findings to the City Council in July.
