Supervisors ease marijuana laws | Cannabis Corner | San Luis Obispo

The San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors has not only relaxed its cannabis grower licensing rules, but also brought them into line with state requirements.

In a unanimous vote July 9, supervisors extended mobile delivery hours for marijuana dispensaries in unincorporated communities, authorized full refunds to immediately cease illegal marijuana operations and changed the start date for issuing cultivation permits.

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• Archive photo by Jayson Mellom
• SEE THIS On July 9, the SLO County Board of Supervisors adopted a rule change that District 3 Supervisor Dawn Ortiz-Legg had previously announced would be discussed.

“It’s not only costly to the operators, it’s a waste of county employee time,” Steven Herring, CEO of marijuana company Vertical Integration, told supervisors.

Herring referred to the current system of cultivation permits, which expire five years from the date the use permit is approved. While an applicant can request an extension for an additional five years, they must go through the same permitting process they went through when they applied for the original permit.

A cannabis cultivation permit is the only type of land-use permit that requires renewal after five years. On April 11, the county Planning Commission recommended that the Board of Supervisors eliminate the five-year renewal altogether while amending the land-use ordinance and coastal land-use ordinance.

Supervisors supported the Planning Commission’s recommendation and removed the five-year sunset clause for cannabis cultivation permits.

The board also set mobile delivery hours for dispensaries at 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., in line with state commercial marijuana laws. Currently, those hours are 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. for non-brick-and-mortar retail dispensaries.

“This inconsistency creates challenges for enforcement of the ordinance because businesses located in incorporated cities are subject to different hours of operation but can still conduct mobile delivery in unincorporated areas of the county,” the Planning Commission staff report reads. “A benefit of aligning the hours of operation with state law would be a potential increase in sales tax on sales made during those hours by businesses located in unincorporated areas of the county.”

These updates to the county’s cannabis regulations come on the heels of a June decision by the Board of Supervisors to halt an increase in the county’s cannabis business tax to 8 percent. After an outpouring of comments from cannabis business owners, supervisors froze the tax at 6 percent.

The modified regulations are part of an order issued by the Supervisory Board to employees in September last year, ordering them to prepare an amendment to the regulation on the purification of cannabis crops.

Supervisors added to the wave of changes by changing the practices for abatement and recovery of costs for abatement of cannabis ordinance violations, based on a proposal submitted by the county attorney and the cannabis compliance team in September 2023. The changes require detailed notice of the nuisance abatement process and investigate violations related to cannabis and industrial hemp businesses.

“The purpose of these amendments is to allow for full cost recovery in the event of an immediate cessation of illegal cannabis activity,” the Planning Commission staff report reads. “Current practice is for the Cannabis Compliance Team and the Sheriff Department to cease (take illegal plants into custody) the same day that the nuisance notice and hearing are served.”

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly reported the outcome of the Board of Supervisors’ decision to allow cannabis cultivation permits to expire. New Times regrets the error.