Will California soon be like Amsterdam?

A California lawmaker, Assemblyman Matt Haney, has proposed a bill to legalise the sale of food and non-alcoholic beverages at cannabis retailers and lounges.

Recreational and medicinal use of cannabis has been legal in California since 2016. Buds are generally sold in dispensaries, which are not allowed to sell other products.

Compare this to Amsterdam, where you buy the weed from a coffee shop. This brings in a lot of tourism and buzz in the city, with people gathering together and consuming cannabis in a social environment.

This difference might be about to change, as California considers adopting a model of coffee and food lounges that can also sell cannabis.

What is the current state of legal cannabis in California?

Recreational and medicinal use of cannabis has been legal in California since 2016. You can buy cannabis if you are:

  • 18 or older with a physician’s recomvvmendation (medicinal use)
  • 21 or older (adult use)

Some cities and counties may have stricter laws about cannabis, when compared to the overall state approach.

One of the most awesome points about Cali cannabis laws, is that you can also grow up to 6 cannabis plants at home if you’re at least 21 years old.

How is cannabis currently sold in California?

The state has a well established set of dispensaries selling a range of globe leading cannabis. Some of these places are seriously swanky, and would definitely be awesome if you could sit down and enjoy the afternoon there with a coffee.

Why is this changing now?

A California lawmaker, Assemblyman Matt Haney, has proposed a bill to legalise the sale of food and non-alcoholic beverages at cannabis retailers and lounges.

The proposed legislation aims to offer customers an enhanced cannabis experience,. Retailers will be able to serve food, drink, and hold events.

Haney claims that cannabis retailers are losing out to the black market. He think that the rules stopping the sale of food and drink at dispensaries is threatening the ability of the industry to be successful.

In the new model, sale of alcohol would be still not allowed.

What else is going on with cannabis in California?

This new bill comes at a time of consideration and evolution for the cannabis scene in California.

On the one hand, the state dishes out arguably the best weed in the world, and the recreational model has been a real success.

At the same time, there has been recent calls for deeper investigation into corruption in the industry. Reports of deaths of cannabis workers who were working to process the farms has raised the spotlight on the continued unlawful elements, and the continuing use of the black market to buy weed.

The low down

Any cannabis model that looks to bring people together into social and safe settings like coffee shops, has to be a positive. There are so many benefits, such as creating an injection into local economies, and also increasing tourists.

There will be challenges; attracting people to get high in groups in public will always raise more concern than somewhere people just go to buy the bud.

But these are smaller concerns. Many dispensary owners have claimed that they don’t need to be able to sell coffee, but that the state needs to lower the already incredibly high taxes imposed.

Either way, it’s clearly not an easy game to be in, but Cultivated Zen are happy to see the roll out of cannabis being extended in California.

Creating a more formalised buzz and leisure scene around cannabis only serves to normalise its use, and show it can help heal the world.

What a time to be alive.

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