A invoice that may permit Amsterdam-style hashish cafes in California handed the state Meeting Monday afternoon on a 49-4 vote and is headed to the Senate. However even when the Legislature’s higher chamber approves AB 1775, legalization stays removed from a certain factor.
Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a previous iteration of the invoice in October, citing the state’s long-standing smoke-free office protections.
The invoice would authorize native jurisdictions to permit licensed hashish retailers to organize and promote non-cannabis meals and nonalcoholic drinks. The invoice would additionally permit the cafes to host stay music and different performances.
Underneath present state regulation, shoppers can eat hashish at a dispensary, however dispensaries can’t legally promote non-cannabis merchandise like espresso and meals, as is authorized in Amsterdam.
California’s symbolic place on the apex of weed tradition has lengthy been rivaled by the Dutch capital, the place hashish cafes have been authorized because the Seventies.
Assemblymember Matt Haney (D-San Francisco), who launched the laws, has framed it as a matter of equity. He argues that the cafes would stage the taking part in area for the state’s extremely taxed and controlled authorized weed business, permitting reliable companies to compete with black-market sellers who don’t function underneath the identical constraints.
“This is a bill that supports our legal small businesses that just want to diversify their businesses and do the right thing,” Haney mentioned Monday on the Meeting flooring. “The illicit illegal market is continuing to grow and thrive, while our legal cannabis market is struggling.”
Haney cited the governor’s prior veto, saying he had been working to deal with Newsom’s considerations by way of amendments to the invoice. The brand new model would prohibit hashish smoking or vaping in “back of house” of lounges, the place meals is being ready or saved, creating separation between the place individuals are consuming hashish and different work areas.
Quite than taking a blunt statewide strategy, the invoice would put the choice to permit hashish cafes within the palms of native jurisdictions. Ought to a jurisdiction determine to greenlight the lounges, it must hash out its personal allowing course of and laws.
West Hollywood put a licensing system in place a number of years in the past, and a handful of hashish lounges function throughout the metropolis’s 1.89 sq. miles. The West Hollywood companies function with workarounds that separate the meals companies, The Instances has beforehand reported.
No such licensing system exists within the metropolis of Los Angeles.
The American Most cancers Society Most cancers Motion Community, the American Coronary heart Assn. and the American Lung Assn. have all opposed the invoice, elevating considerations in regards to the well being results of secondhand marijuana smoke. They argue that the invoice would undo hard-fought office protections “by re-creating the harmful work environments of the past.”
Marijuana advocacy group Individuals for Protected Entry has argued that patrons and workers would face no well being dangers due to the extremely regulated nature of such institutions.
A Newsom spokesperson declined to touch upon pending laws.
Employees author Nathan Solis contributed to this report.
