By: Denny Cristales
Online Editor
Although cannabis enthusiasts had plenty to celebrate on Election Day in November— when California voters approved Proposition 64 to legalize the possession, cultivation and sale of marijuana for recreational purposes— there are still regulatory measures Los Angeles County is intending to take with the popular plant.
Los Angeles County’s Office of Cannabis Management recently created an advisory group to develop recommendations for the region on how to devise regulations for commercial- and personal-use cannabis in unincorporated areas, according to a Los Angeles County press release last week.
The office is coordinating with other county departments to formulate and present those recommendations to the county Board of Supervisors by the end of this year.
There are 88 incorporated cities in Los Angeles County, according to its website. Incorporated cities are areas with their own city councils. More than 65 percent of the county is unincorporated, and the Board of Supervisors and county departments provide municipal services for those areas as a result.
The advisory group intends to meet a total of eight times from June 29 to August 31.
The office of each LA County Supervisor recommended some of the members for the team, which consists of health and policy experts, community leaders, cannabis-industry representatives and stakeholders.
Joseph Nicchitta, countywide coordinator for the Office of Cannabis Management, and three other staff members will prepare the agenda and topic information for the advisory-group meetings. The County intends to prepare the items a week in advance and make them available for public review on its website.
“Our job is to staff the meetings and to give the advisory-board group information, share our perspectives with them and just be a resource for them,” Nicchitta said. “We’re working to our goal, which is these recommendations the board has asked us to come up with for cannabis regulation.”
Key topics for the meetings include youth access and exposure to cannabis, taxation and revenue, operational standards for cannabis businesses and the cultivation of cannabis for personal use.
The advisory group’s meeting schedule and full list of members can be found at lacounty.gov/advisory-cannabis-working-group.
The June 29 meeting agenda showed that group members were asked to make recommendations that achieve the following objectives with cannabis: preventing underage use; preventing adult abuse; preventing unlawful production, distribution and sale of cannabis; establishing beneficial and equitable health outcomes; and protecting the peace and safety of neighborhoods.
Objectives also include establishing equity in licensing cannabis business ownership, protecting the environment and allowing feasible economic growth for the cannabis industry.
Nicchitta said each meeting format involves a discussion about a specific cannabis issue and then a group workshop to draft a recommendation. The advisory group will then compile all its recommendations during its last meeting in August.
The County will make the public-input and advisory-group suggestions available to the public on its website in September, Nicchitta said.
The County will then prepare and present a recommended regulatory package that is responsive to both reports to the Board of Supervisors for consideration by the end of 2017, he added.
The advisory group is just one component of a wide public-engagement process on the issue of cannabis regulation, Nicchitta said. The meetings are open to the public, but they are not designed to gather community feedback.
However, the meetings are associated with hearing sessions that will be conducted concurrently beginning Thursday, July 13. These public-input meetings will gather community input that will be communicated to the advisory group and used as a reference to draft cannabis-regulation recommendations based off the public’s concerns.
The schedule, times and locations for the public-input meetings are available at bit.ly/2taSgB9.
The Office of Cannabis Management has also been diligent about observing other cities and states, such as Colorado and Oregon, about cannabis regulation, according to Nicchitta, but he said the primary source for counsel is the public and the advisory group.
“This process, because it’s just a total clean slate for us— we don’t have any regulations in place now— it’s actually really conducive to go to the public first and get a sense of where everyone’s at to draft regulations,” he said.
As it stands, all commercial-cannabis activity is prohibited in unincorporated areas in Los Angeles County. There is a ban in place that will continue through the adoption of regulation.
Nicchitta said that once the Board of Supervisors makes a decision on cannabis regulation, it is likely that the existing prohibition on commercial cannabis will be repealed.
There are general regulations on personal-use cannabis that allow the cultivation of the plant, but certain guidelines only permit the farming of it indoors.
More information about guidelines and regulations can be found at cannabis.lacounty.gov.
Nicchitta said the process should be helpful for LA County as it begins to establish a firm precept for commercial- and personal-use cannabis for unincorporated areas, a region that would be the fourth largest city in the state if the total population of roughly 1 million were taken into account.
He added that he hopes the recommendations reflect the concerns of experts, stakeholders and the public.
“It’s really a big undertaking for this working group, and I think they brought a lot of enthusiasm to the table during this first meeting, so I know they are up for the challenge,” Nicchitta said. “I look forward to seeing this through and seeing what they come up with.”
