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California looks to build $7 billion legal pot economy
Source: Associated Press
Jan. 29, 2017 3:00 PM ET
California looks to build $7 billion legal pot economy
By MICHAEL R. BLOOD and DON THOMPSON, Associated Press
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The future of California's legal marijuana industry is being shaped in a warren of cubicles tucked inside a retired basketball arena, where a garden of paper cannabis leaves sprouts on file cabinets and a burlap sack advertising "USA Home Grown" dangles from a wall.
Here, in the outskirts of Sacramento, a handful of government workers face a daunting task: By next year, craft regulations and rules that will govern the state's emerging legal pot market, from where and how plants can be grown to setting guidelines to track the buds from fields to stores.
Getting it wrong could mean the robust cannabis black market stays that way — outside the law — undercutting the attempt to create the nation's largest legal marijuana economy. The new industry has a projected value of $7 billion, and state and local governments could eventually collect $1 billion a year in taxes.
California is "building the airplane while it's being flown," lamented state Sen. Mike McGuire, a Democrat whose sprawling Northern California district includes some of the world's most prized pot fields.
He questions if the state can meet January deadlines to create a coherent system that accounts for the loosely regulated medical marijuana industry, now two decades old and developing its own rules, while transforming the enormous illegal market into a legal, licensed one.
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California looks to build $7 billion legal pot economy
By MICHAEL R. BLOOD and DON THOMPSON, Associated Press
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The future of California's legal marijuana industry is being shaped in a warren of cubicles tucked inside a retired basketball arena, where a garden of paper cannabis leaves sprouts on file cabinets and a burlap sack advertising "USA Home Grown" dangles from a wall.
Here, in the outskirts of Sacramento, a handful of government workers face a daunting task: By next year, craft regulations and rules that will govern the state's emerging legal pot market, from where and how plants can be grown to setting guidelines to track the buds from fields to stores.
Getting it wrong could mean the robust cannabis black market stays that way — outside the law — undercutting the attempt to create the nation's largest legal marijuana economy. The new industry has a projected value of $7 billion, and state and local governments could eventually collect $1 billion a year in taxes.
California is "building the airplane while it's being flown," lamented state Sen. Mike McGuire, a Democrat whose sprawling Northern California district includes some of the world's most prized pot fields.
He questions if the state can meet January deadlines to create a coherent system that accounts for the loosely regulated medical marijuana industry, now two decades old and developing its own rules, while transforming the enormous illegal market into a legal, licensed one.
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Read more: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2017-01-29-US--California%20Marijuana-Controlling%20the%20Market/id-9933158d973a4cad9a8f1adaf93f28af
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