The CannaBeat Podcast – Copernican Solutions for Hemp & Cannabis
Six years after Proposition 64, cannabis consultant Joanna Cedar explains why cannabis “legalization” caused most Sonoma County cultivators to exit the industry.
In her analysis, Sonoma County’s ordinance is the worst offender, because it prohibited commercial cultivation on parcels smaller than 2 acres. With that decision, Sonoma County eliminated the cottage license-type before anyone had a chance to apply. Prop. 64 isn’t blameless, of course, but nothing hurt Sonoma’s cultivators like that ordinance: at one point, as many as 5,000 parcels were used for growing cannabis. Over ninety percent (90%) are now out of the regulated market, because they shuttered or because they’re selling exclusively to the illicit market.
But on parcels large and small, through California, hemp cultivation persists. And there’s a nationwide market for hemp. Someone can drive a tractor trailer filled with hemp from California to Florida, as easily as onions. Hemp is underregulated, however, with no or minimal age-gating, testing and labeling standards.
Joanna Cedar’s “Copernican solution” to the mis-regulation of cannabis and hemp is to unite the two under one regulatory scheme. In truth, they are united in nature (they’re two names for the same plant), but our mis-regulation of the plant has become baroque.
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