California cannabis ‘in peril’ + Lawsuit over SB 107 + Abortion coalition bill package
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CALIFORNIA CANNABIS INDUSTRY IS ‘IN PERIL,’ PANELISTS TELL COMMITTEE ON MONDAY
Leaders of California’s cannabis industry painted a bleak picture of their business at Monday’s Senate Business, Professions and Economic Development Committee.
“The industry is in peril,” said Ron Gershoni of Jetty Extracts.
“We are at grave risk. We need your help,” said Genine Coleman of the Origins Council.
Wesley Hein, of the California Distribution Association, called for a “Manhattan Project”-like effort to address the state’s marijuana regulatory structure.
“Bring the people in and say you don’t come out until we’ve gone through every single regulation,” he said. “All we’re saying is, we need to do a reset.”
Along those lines, Coleman said that the state must remove its site-specific California Environmental Quality Act requirement that presents a major hurdle to the industry.
As Tiffany Devitt of CannaCraft explained, when applying for a CEQA permit, cannabis businesses are required to provide a specific address.
That means leasing property, paying rent and going through the local application process, even though they are not assured of getting a permit, as for some local jurisdictions, “it’s literally flip a coin,” Devitt said.
Devitt said that that cannabis is one of California’s great legacy industries, akin to the wine industry, Hollywood and Silicon Valley.
But without taking concrete steps to allow more retail sales (by over-riding the control of local governments that have blocked them), cutting taxes (like the excise tax) and stepping up enforcement of the illicit market, including going after the makers of dangerous synthetic hemp products, the cannabis industry in California will continue to fail, she said.
Lawmakers largely used their time to ask panelists questions and seek clarification. One lawmaker, Sen. Steven Bradford, D-Gardena, used his time to critique the Legislature for making the issue more complicated than it needs to be.
“We’ve put regulations on an industry that no other industry faces,”’ he said.
By creating too many barriers, including high regulations and even higher taxes, lawmakers are promoting the illegal market, Bradford said.
“This is the only industry that you have to pay taxes on your product before it’s sold,” he said.
CONSERVATIVE GROUP SUES CALIFORNIA TO BLOCK TRANSGENDER SANCTUARY LAW
Last year Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law turning California into a sanctuary for families of transgender youths fleeing states that have passed restrictive bans on gender-affirming treatment for minors.
Now, a Murrieta-based conservative group, Advocates for Faith and Freedom, is suing the state in federal court. It is arguing in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California that the law violates the Due Process and Full Faith and Credit clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, “as it was passed in direct hostility to the laws of conservative states like Alabama and Texas,” according to a statement from the group.
“This action seeks to vindicate one of the most fundamental and longstanding constitutional rights: the right of parents to raise their children,” the complaint begins.
“Parents, not the government, are best suited to decide whether their child should undergo a life-altering and irreversible surgery that seeks to change the sex of the child,” it goes on to say.
SB 107, by Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, bars doctors and law enforcement from cooperating with other states’ criminal investigations into families of transgender children seeking gender-affirming treatment. It also empowers California courts to declare themselves as courts of jurisdiction in custody cases for out-of-state children who have come to the state for gender confirmation.
The law went into effect in January, and the lawsuit seeks “immediate relief” to prevent it from being enforced.
The office of California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who is named as defendant, told The Bee in a statement that they are “reviewing the complaint and will respond as appropriate in court.”
FUTURE OF ABORTION COUNCIL UNVEILS 2023 LEGISLATIVE PACKAGE
On Monday, the California Future of Abortion Council — a coalition led by several reproductive rights organizations, including NARAL Pro-Choice California and Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California — announced the package of bills it is supporting this legislative session.
The 17 , m easures, forward by the California Legislative Women’s Caucus, includes bills to strengthen California’s “safe haven” protections for seekers of abortion and gender-affirming treatment (SB 36), expand protections for reproductive health providers from out-of-state lawsuits (AB 1707), and increase privacy protections for medical records related to abortion and pregnancy loss (AB 352).
In a statement, Senate President pro Tempore Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, said that the bill package “will help California stay ahead of the curve and continue to withstand assaults at the national level on reproductive care.”
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“It’s pretty amazing how quickly the federal government can bail out a bank that fought against regulation, but can’t bail out struggling students who fought to get an education.”
- Assemblyman Isaac G. Bryan. D-Los Angeles, via Twitter.
Best of The Bee:
Hundreds of people drenched from Sunday afternoon rain still managed to celebrate the next generation of scholars, leaders and change makers during California 100’s inaugural Youth Futures Summit, via Marcus D. Smith.
This year’s partisan sniping in Congress has a broader purpose: To establish the idea in voters’ minds that the rival political party is inept, via David Lightman.
California teachers, counselors and other school employees who learn that a student is publicly identifying as transgender would be forced to inform that student’s parents, under a bill proposed by Assemblyman Bill Essayli, R-Riverside, via Andrew Sheeler.