The California Police Chiefs Association and its allies are circulating a petition to stop the state’s Bureau of Cannabis Control from allowing unlimited pot delivery services across the state.
After the Bureau of Cannabis Control proposed a new regulatory text to clarify, the California Police Chiefs Association, League of California Cities, and United Food and Commercial Workers Western States Council announced their opposition based on concerns that opening up delivery services anywhere in the state would destroy the security procedures developed for licensed dispensaries and staff.
Delivery services are seen as an end run around Proposition 64’s ballot language, which promised “local regulation and taxation” to allow counties to opt out of offering legal recreational marijuana — and to allow those that opt-in to set their own tax rates.
According to CBS News, tax charged on marijuana sales in Oakland, for example, includes a 6 percent state sales tax; a 3.25 percent Alameda County sales tax; a 15 percent state tax on marijuana; and a 10 percent Oakland tax on recreational marijuana. The combined total tax burden is 34.25 percent.
With neighboring Berkeley cutting its cannabis dispensary tax from 10 percent to 5 percent in March, recreational customers can already obtain a discount by driving a short distance. But the coalition opposing the Bureau of Cannabis Control’s proposed regulations expect that delivery services would create a taxation race to the bottom.
The expected marijuana taxation boom has turned to a bust, with the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration reporting that California’s cultivation, excise and sales tax collections for the first six months since the Prop 64 went into effect on January 1 were only $135.1 million. That is far below the already revised-down January state budget projection of $175 million from adult-use cannabis.
There was a bill in the California Legislature to clarify the business and professional code language for delivery services, but it never emerged from committee.
ABC News reported that the San Diego Police Department arrested 34 subjects on July 31 in a crackdown on black market delivery services. The San Diego Police Department has shut down 11 illegal marijuana delivery services. According to a report by the San Diego Public Safety & Livable Neighborhoods Committee, the police department has shut down 11 illegal marijuana delivery services since January 1.
The Weedmaps website features hundreds of delivery services across the state, with some in counties that have banned legal recreational marijuana sales.
Photo: file