Cannabis lounges in Sacramento? City council doesn’t seem too high on that idea | Opinion
Sacramento’s cannabis industry may be the best in California, the product is legal, and potentially lucrative for our city but you would never know that from listening to members of the Sacramento City Council. I’ve lived in Sacramento for six months and love it, but when I hear our council debate cannabis I feel like I’m in a more conservative place than my home state Tennessee.
Am I really in California?
Councilmembers Eric Guerra, Mai Vang, and Shoun Thou are against a pilot program to bring cannabis lounges to the city. These would be places where people could purchase cannabis and smoke it, just as people drink beer in bars and smoke cigars in cigar bars.
Like tobacco and alcohol, cannabis is available to adults for recreational use in California. When you go to cigar bars and regular bars, you accept that you will be around other people consuming the same product. In cigar bars, patrons expect to be exposed to second-hand smoke. In bars, we know that if we consume too much alcohol, we could be subject to arrest and prosecution if we abuse it and hurt ourselves or anyone else.
Cannabis lounges would be no different. But at a recent meeting at Sacramento City Hall Guerra, Vang and Thou were all worried about second-hand smoke. Some members of the council have yet to take a position, including Mayor Darrell Steinberg. Some council members are worried about teenagers getting their hands on weed and smoking it
“It’s a balancing act,” Vice Mayor Caity Maple said regarding the pursuit of a compromise between pro-cannabis people and anti-secondhand smoke people.
The reality is that this is not a balancing act, protections are already in place to address these concerns.
City code already restricts a cannabis dispensary from being within 600 feet of a school. If they want to put a dispensary near a park, church, or substance abuse center, they must get approval from the planning and design commission.
So if we were to roll out the program today, it would be under a system that keeps cannabis away from schools, parks and other places where cannabis shouldn’t be.
City Council struggles with cannabis
Vang is the first person from Sacramento’s Hmong community to serve on the council. She said she supports the CORE program, the city’s initiative to help marginalized people get started in the cannabis industry.
“I think it’s really important, especially the war on drugs and how it’s impacted communities of color. I really wanna see our minority owned businesses thrive in this industry because for far too long it hasn’t really allowed for space for our communities of color.”
Yet, when Black and brown cannabis business owners spoke about the positive effects of passing the pilot program allowing cannabis lounges, Vang was not supportive. She sided with the thinking that they should not be around. You can’t support the concept of equity in the cannabis industry while opposing steps to grow the industry.
Moreover, if the council votes to reject the cannabis lounge pilot, they would be moving the city backward to a time of unreasonable cannabis prohibition.
There are already lounges in West Hollywood and San Francisco, among many others. This is not anything radical in any sense.
At the City Hall meeting, critics kept expressing fears about kids using weed even though only adults would be permitted to use cannabis at cannabis lounges.
New Flash: not passing cannabis lounges won’t decrease the amount of secondhand smoke, it just says you can’t smoke it in a controlled space.
This is just a pilot program. The only way to know if will work is by testing it, not leaning on fear that is not grounded in reality. If there are findings that teenagers are being allowed in cannabis lounges or if there is an uptick in secondhand smoke, then that information should inform how the lounges are regulated.
Take the words of Governor Gavin Newsom after signing into law a bill to allow food to be sold in cannabis cafes.
“I commend the author (Assemblyman Matt Haney, D-San Francisco) for incorporating additional safeguards, such as expressly protecting employees’ discretion to wear a mask for respiration, paid for at the expense of the employer, and requiring employees to receive additional guidance on the risks of secondhand cannabis smoke,” Newsom wrote in his signing statement.
Sacramento needs to expand its cannabis industry
The cannabis industry makes $23 million a year for the city and that’s not all. In 2022, voters decided to tie cannabis tax revenues to the Sacramento Children’s Fund by passing Measure L.
People need somewhere to smoke. It is illegal in Sacramento to smoke in public spaces such as parks. Sure, people caught smoking would get a fine but finding a permanent place for people to smoke benefits everyone, including those who may not want to walk into a cloud of smoke while walking around their neighborhood. For all those public health nuts, wouldn’t you want people taking a drug to be in a controlled, safe space to consume?
The council has yet to announce when it’ll take the pilot program up for vote.
When California voters passed Proposition 64, that was the day that we started a path of acceptance. It was a collective agreement that people who indulge in cannabis are not outcasts, criminals or weird hippies. Everyone from every walk of life smokes weed. Allowing cannabis lounges says that we not only accept someone’s individual choice to purchase it, but we accept that it’s a part of our community.
