Pubdate: Sat, 23 Jul 2016 Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA) Copyright: 2016 Hearst Communications Inc. Contact: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/submissions/#1 Website: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/388 LAW CREATES NEW RULES FOR POT The Bay Area's major cities, including San Francisco and Oakland, are rewriting their medical cannabis laws in response to state legislation passed last fall. The rewrites - and the headaches they've brought - are a warm-up for what might happen if California voters chose to legalize recreational marijuana use for adults in November. There are many new aspects to the state medical marijuana regulations, and state agencies will issue further guidelines for cities by January. In the meantime, cities are left to balance a wide range of competing concerns around medical marijuana - from racial equity measures to neighborhood zoning complaints. In the Bay Area, Oakland has a head start. It passed its updated ordinances in May. Most of the updated regulations were relatively non-controversial, allowing the city to mirror the state law and allow Oakland residents to apply for the needed permits. But the city took an unusual tactic in choosing its employment regulations. Under Oakland's new rules, half of dispensary staff members need to be Oakland residents, and another half of those must live in neighborhoods with high unemployment. There's also a new equity program, whereby applicant dispensaries need to have at least one member with a 50 percent ownership stake who's been incarcerated for a cannabis-related offense or lives in an Oakland neighborhood that's been heavily affected by cannabis-related offenses. These new rules have been criticized. Their complexity is cause for concern, but it's easy to understand where the City Council was coming from. There's certainly a need to address the historic disparities in marijuana prosecutions and company formation, though it's less than obvious that this provision is the way to achieve it. San Francisco is in the process of updating its marijuana ordinances. The city has only one kind of medical cannabis permit at the moment. The new state laws allow for 17 kinds of licenses. A major issue in San Francisco will be - surprise, surprise - zoning, and its impact on the geographic distribution of dispensaries. Many of San Francisco's dispensaries are in the relatively industrial South of Market neighborhood; dispensaries are highly controversial in many of the family-oriented neighborhoods on the west side of the city. In 2014, San Francisco's planning department made a recommendation to the Board of Supervisors to reduce the school "buffer zone," from 600 to 1,000 feet. A buffer zone of 1,000 feet in a dense city effectively prohibits dispensaries in many neighborhoods. The Board of Supervisors hasn't taken action on the 2014 recommendation. The regulation update will give San Francisco the opportunity to discuss these issues again. City officials would also be well advised to consider regulations for the burgeoning delivery dispensary sector. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom