More and more best in class medical cannabis stores in San Francisco and the Los Angeles area are opening to all adults 21 and older this February as the statewide rollout of commercial legalization continues.
Almost 250 retail outlets have received a temporary state license to conduct adult-use sales, and new ones are being added almost daily. Among them, outlets in San Francisco and Los Angeles are the most hotly anticipated to go recreational — and going recreational they are.
Topping the list in San Francisco:
— Urban Pharm, 122 10th St., San Francisco
— The Green Door SF, 843 Howard St., San Francisco
— BASA Collective, 1326 Grove St., San Francisco
All three are now serving adults age 21 and older with a valid identification.
Down in Los Angeles, check out:
— Greenwolf, 2950 Los Feliz Blvd, Los Angeles
— and MedMen LAX, 8740 S. Sepulveda Blvd, Los Angeles.
They are among the few providers in the city of 4 million people to have a state license to sell to all adults.
Los Angeles’s legal cannabis rollout has been mired in red tape after two decades of regulatory neglect. About 48 shops are now open to adults in the L.A. area with another dozen open in the San Fernando Valley.
Also of note, a handful of adult-use clubs have opened in the Venice Beach and Marina Del Ray area.
We not seeing any clubs adult-use clubs open on the South Coast including Santa Barbara. Thousands of square miles in the Central Valley is also a no man’ land for legal cannabis.
California has had medical cannabis since 1996, but only moved to regulate the multi-billion trade at the state level in 2015.
In 2016, California voters approved Proposition 64, which legalized cannabis for all adults 21 and older — with dual, state and local licensing required for all operators.
The state’s Bureau of Cannabis Control began issuing licenses to shops with local approval in Dec. 2017. Today, the BCC has issued over 2,500 licenses to operators from across the supply chain. Medical dispensaries need local approval before they can get a state license, but very few cities and counties are issuing them.