Roll up for Cannabis Equity – a Monthly Column
By Terrie Best
To say the city of Vista likes weed is an understatement. To say Vista likes weed so much they want a strain named after them is more accurate.
I listened in and gave a virtual public comment on an agenda item at their City Council meeting held on February 27th. Afterward we were treated to some very promising public discussion around cannabis social equity by the council. I’m not kidding, they want a cannabis strain. They wouldn’t mind a handful of consumption lounges, a shared cannabis workspace and don’t even think about limiting cannabis events in Vista either. They don’t want that.
The agenda item was a presentation by Kyle Tankard, Lead Researcher at SCI. SCI has been winning many contracts in California municipalities. These contracts are for licensing outlets and social equity assessments – the preliminary findings report necessary to begin giving priority licenses to individuals harmed by the war on drugs. There is an increasing amount of state funding to pay for these assessments and even more grants to act on their findings. Findings which overwhelmingly show mass disparities between arrests of people of color and their white counterparts.
At the meeting, Kyle’s presentation of SCI’s findings of course showed Vista’s population of Black folks is 3% but Black folks made up 6% of all cannabis arrests made from 2014 to 2023. Which wasn’t surprising, but what happened next certainly was. The goal of the discussion that followed was to vote to accept the findings but the council had thoughts too.
It started with Joe Green who seemed to understand that medical patients, under Measure Z, the medical-only law governing Vista, have special needs. Those needs are consumption lounges. Ten of them, to match the number of medical outlets. He understood that not everybody can consume in their own living situations. Another comment from another astoundingly supportive official lamented that there should be cannabis work lounges because folks like to consume cannabis to get through their work day. Creatives have needs!
Vista will outpace the city of San Diego when it comes to economic strides aided by the cannabis market. And, they will deserve it. They recognized how expensive the whack-a-mole method to shut down outlets was and one wise councilmember asserted that once Vista allowed outlets their cannabis code enforcement expenses went to zero. She then wondered what Vista could have done with all that extra money had they regulated sooner. Indeed.
As an attendee via Zoom, I watched an entire governing body practically hold a safety meeting (slang for a cannabis sesh) on the dais from the comfort of my own safety meeting.
That was a nod to how easy it is to engage local government. You should engage local government.
I do hope Mayor Todd Gloria is paying attention since he seems to be bowing down to the cannabis operators and limiting their competition for them by stalling the social equity program in the city of San Diego.
Their friends, the “at-every-meeting” prohibitionists, played games by not even waiting for the agenda item but using non-agenda public comment to speak on the agenda item ahead of it. Therefore, they likely weren’t treated to this dank-ass commentary from the dais.
But you can enjoy a collection of favorites here: https://www.instagram.com/p/C37ucKuL1ix/?igsh=NzBmMjdhZWRiYQ==
And the entire meeting here:
