Marijuana, even the medical kind, keeps being a highly controversial subject all throughout the nation. On one hand, the stigma associated with it is slowly going away, but on the other, people are still paranoid about the wacky tobacky. In a highly paranoid and thus ironic move, California cities fully ban marijuana rather than lose control over regulations.
- 100 cities and over 25 counties in California banned all types of marijuana
- If they didn’t have legislations in place by March 1st, they would have to submit to state authority
- Town officials voted to completely ban cannabis so as not to come up with proper legislations
- Eventually a Bureau of Medical Marijuana Regulation will oversee such issues, but not anytime soon
- State officials promised to take care of the March 1st deadline
The whole issue started with an obsolete deadline that should have been removed in October, forcing counties and cities to have proper legislations in place regarding marijuana by March 1st.
If they do not have the proper legislations in place by the time the deadline comes along, they would have to surrender all rights to regulate the matter, and they would have to follow state guidelines.
Rather than spend time thinking of actual, functional regulations, most city authorities decided to just ban marijuana altogether and be done with it.
These bans apply to all forms of marijuana, legal or recreational, for growers, dispensaries, and even personal use.
A very large number of confused and lazy city and county officials have rushed to ban the plant, at the chagrin of dispensary owners, growers, and personal users.
Previously, some cities would allow the growth of personal in-door plants for users which had recipes, as long as they would submit to occasional checkups by the necessary fire safety and lawmaking authorities.
Because of this, state officials said that they would try to amend the legislation supporting the March 1st deadline, but whether the counties and cities that already voted to ban the plant would make subsequent legislation changes remains unknown.
Some California cities and counties like Sacramento and the Yolo and Placer Counties are more open-minded, actually bothering to come up with some sort of marijuana-friendly policies, but it’s still not enough.
Sometime in the future, a Bureau of Medical Marijuana Regulation will be in place to take care of such issues, but that will most likely take more than two years to be established.
With so much still to be decided, the future of medical and recreational marijuana in California remains to be determined.
Image source: Wikimedia
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