Now that the Obama administration has announced that it will stop cracking down on medical marijuana—sellers and users—entrepreneurs across Santa Cruz want to get a piece of the action and open their own marijuana dispensaries. “Not so fast,” says City Council to these budding, bud-selling entrepreneurs. Citing a study that found that only one-quarter of the current customers at the city’s dispensaries actually live in Santa Cruz, the city is considering placing a limit on the number of dispensaries it will allow to operate. City Planner Mike Ferry would be happy to limit that number to the two that currently exist: Greenway Compassionate Relief, and the Santa Cruz Patients Collective. Even this, he says, is more per capita than most other California cities. Santa Rosa, for example, also allows only two, but it has almost twice the population of Santa Cruz.
Though the hopeful new businessmen have vowed to fight against the proposed measure, their dreams may be dashed from another direction: Councilman Don Lane. While Lane is not concerned about the number of dispensaries per se, he does want the city to make sure that they are operated as not-for-profits, as required by state law.
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