Currently roughly 140 pot collectives serve San Jose, but today the city council voted to allow only 10. A permitting process to decide who gets to stay in business will start accepting applications in November. The council also voted that collectives had to include a registered nurse or licensed physician on their boards.
Although it was not firmly decided, the council is leaning toward requiring the 10 final winners to cultivate all of their marijuana on site. This is a major change for the way collectives are run now, with many members selling excess home-grown pot to their collective. It might also limit the quality of the stock available to patients to fewer strains and less organically-grown pot being available. However the city is concerned about the risk of robberies and home fires.
Our take? We suspect market forces would have naturally cut down the number of dispensaries in operation over time — although not as dramatically as this. We foresee a heyday for lawyers collecting fees to fight the council’s move, as well as to help with the permit application process (which one source said might cost as much as $500k).
