The Los Angeles Department of Cannabis Regulation has announced its annual license applications plan. As a primer for you, dear reader, the annual license application is replacing the somewhat patchwork emergency regulations (and their applications) that went into effect on January 1 of 2018. As state officials always understood those emergency regulations had to be finalized (our fantastic Juli Crockett broke down the final regs back in January.) With those final and non-emergency regulations having been ironed out we now get to the applications. Compliance! Licensing! Meet us at the Westwood Denny’s! (MMLG Blogger exuberance excepted, see below for what this all means.)
LA’s New Cannabis Annual License Applications Means The Industry Is Evolving
Perusing the CoLADCR (that’s City of Los Angeles Department of Cannabis Regulation and not “Cola Doctor”) website will likely give you a case of deja vu. There are the required ownership and holder documents, there’s the requirement for premise diagrams, et cetera. No real surprises from what Cat Packer and the rest of the DCR squad had been preparing businesses for. We say this a lot, but the DCR is your ally, folks. Talk to them if you have questions or concerns.
But we digress. What the annual license application means for your business in the day-to-day is pretty clear. You’ve got 60 days to review the paperwork, and hire a consultancy (probably MMLG) who will ensure that your plant-touching business has plans for limited-access areas and security, waste management plans, staffing plans, retailer plans, and more. It’s all there on the DCR’s website and it’s almost like you’ve been there before … but lost in the eye-rolling emojis at having to file more paperwork –unless you’re in compliance, the critically important paperwork that amounts to the lifeblood of your business is still just “paperwork”–is the simple fact that this is progress.
10 years ago, we had clients who were nervous about being busted in sting operations aimed at the nascent legalized medical marijuana market in California. Annual license applications are a breeze compared with the nerve-wracking weight of “maybe getting arrested today.” However any progress in biology or industry has its painful stubbing of evolutionary toes. In nature there’s the panda, a creature so poorly conceived that it evolved to subsist off the nutrient deficient stalks of bamboo. In the plant-touching world? Our evolutionary downfall has been the dearth of testing labs. Annual license applications in Los Angeles potentially could see trickle down complications from the scarcity of qualified and licensed testing facilities. Another concern is the rapid evolution that the industry is seeing. Compliance costs keep going up, but non-compliance costs and consequences are climbing even more rapidly. As the industry in California and beyond continues to grow, we should all anticipate compliance and licensing to grow as well.