In a meeting designed to provide an update for cannabis operators, Santa Barbara County’s pot czar gave a stern warning: Get up to date with your documents or face the consequences.
“Our goal is keeping people in compliance until they don’t want to be in compliance anymore, and then we have enforcement,” Deputy CEO Dennis Bozanich said on Sept. 17 in Santa Barbara. Bozanich is the lead public official in Santa Barbara County when it comes to cannabis. It’s a job he’s held since 2016, when California voters approved Proposition 64 and legalized recreational marijuana.
At the county-run meeting held in Santa Barbara and broadcast in Santa Maria, Bozanich and staff stressed to cannabis business owners that if they do not start working to acquire county issued licenses, they may miss out on getting approved for the state iteration.
If that were to happen, then the grow site, processing facility, or whatever type of cannabis related business the person owned would be vulnerable to law enforcement action because they would technically be a black market operation.
Currently, only 40 percent of cannabis operators in Santa Barbara County with temporary state licenses have approached staff for an annual county land-use permit. It’s a number that Bozanich called “disappointing,” and he expressed frustration with the apparent lack of cooperation from a large chunk of the local cannabis community.
All temporary licenses issued by the state are set to expire on Dec. 31 of this year. The pathway set by the county for legalization involves cannabis operators acquiring a county issued land-use permit and business license. The marijuana business owner then takes those documents to the state for an annual license.
“This is a pathway to keep you in compliance so we don’t have to do enforcement,” Bozanich said.
Finding ways to encourage black- and gray-market cannabis operators into the legal pipeline has been a challenge for county staff over the past year. Many marijuana growers have foregone the legal process entirely in an attempt avoid what they see as overburdensome taxes, licenses, permits, and other regulatory measures.
Meanwhile, law enforcement in Santa Barbara County hasn’t been aggressive as it waited for funding for the Sheriff Office’s Cannabis Compliance Team. On Sept. 6, the office, along with California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s Office, conducted several sweeping operations ranging from Tepusquet Canyon to Nipomo.
More than 1,400 marijuana plants were ultimately destroyed as part of the operation, and investigators found additional evidence for other illicit grow sites.
On Sept. 17, Bozanich said the enforcement action was partly driven to help cannabis businesses already in compliance. He told the Sun it was unfair for black market growers to reap the benefits of a tax- and regulatory-free system while their legal counterparts suffered losses for getting above board.
The county plans to broaden its action in the coming months toward shutting down illegal sites.
“There is more planned,” Bozanich said. “We are firmly committed to doing this going forward.”
–Spencer Cole
This article appears in Sep 20-27, 2018.