DCC launched the Real CA Cannabis initiative to help consumers find licensed dispensaries & regulated products.

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The California Department of Cannabis Control (DCC) recently published an announcement regarding recent cannabis taskforce seizures. As of April 11, the Unified Cannabis Enforcement Taskforce (UCETF) seized over $53,620,600 in illegal cannabis during the first quarter of 2024 (spanning between January 1, 2024-March 31, 2024).

Law enforcement seized 331,866 pounds of unlicensed cannabis product, destroyed 54,137 cannabis plants, and seized $34,858 in total cash, in addition to confiscating 11 firearms and arresting four people.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom released a press statement regarding the Q1 seizures. “California is home to the largest legal cannabis market in the world,” said Newsom. “As we continue to cultivate a legal marketplace, we’re taking aggressive action to crack down on those still operating in the shadows—shutting down illegal operations linked to organized crime, human trafficking, and the proliferation of illegal products that harm the environment and public health.”

UCETF acting chief, Nathaniel Arnold, praised the agency for continuing to provide results as it tackles the state’s illegal cannabis industry. “UCETF continues to strengthen its momentum by focusing on priority targets and strategically removing operations having a significant impact on the illegal cannabis supply chain,” Arnold said. “We are utilizing all the available resources from our partner agencies and are committed more than ever to providing public safety, protecting the environment, and helping the regulated market succeed and thrive.”

The DCC’s Law Enforcement Division Chief Bill Jones noted that UCETF’s success so far has been a group effort between numerous agencies. “A key to UCETF’s success is a collaborative approach relying on intelligence gathering, targeted investigations and leveraging the expertise of our members,” Jones said. “The Taskforce continues to play a crucial role in protecting the legal cannabis market while eliminating the often-dangerous activities associated with unlicensed cannabis operations.”

The UCETF works with the following agencies to investigate and act on illegal activity: “Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, Department of Cannabis Control, Employment Development Department, Department of Fish and Wildlife, California National Guard Counter Drug Task Force, California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, California State Parks, and the Department of Tax and Fee Administration,” with the addition of other “federal and local partners.”

Eighteen search warrants were conducted in Q1 2024, including two in Alameda County, one in Fresno County, five in Kern County, one in Los Angeles County, two in Riverside County, one in San Joaquin County, and six in Orange County.

The UCETF was created by Newsom in October 2022, and since then it has seized $371,199,431 in unlicensed cannabis product from a total of 236 warrants.

Within the first month of operation, UCETF conducted 13 search warrants in Los Angeles. It eradicated 7,503 plants and 936 pounds of cannabis flower over the course of two days. After that initial announcement, UCETF released numbers by quarter, as seen below.

Q4 2022

Warrants Served: 30

Cannabis Seized: 19,401 pounds

Plants Eradicated: 29,687

Retail Value Seized: $32,012,854.50

Q1 2023

Warrants Served: 21

Cannabis Seized: 31,912 pounds

Plants Eradicated: 52,529

Retail Value Seized: $52,644,020.50

Q2 2023

Warrants Served: 92

Cannabis Seized: 66,315 pounds

Plants Eradicated: 120,970

Retail Value Seized: $109,277,688

Q3 2023

Warrants Served: 60

Cannabis Seized: 61,415 pounds

Plants Eradicated: 98,054

Retail Value Seized: $101,349,657

Q4 2023 

Warrants Served: 24

Cannabis Seized: 13,393 pounds

Plants Eradicated: 20,320

Retail Value Seized: $22,294,571

Q1 2024 

Warrants Served: 18

Cannabis Seized: 31,866 pounds

Plants Eradicated: 54,858

Retail Value Seized: $53,620,600

UCETF Totals So Far (Q4 2022-Q1 2024)

Warrants Served: 236

Cannabis Seized: ~234,588 pounds

Plants Eradicated: 401,458

Retail Value Seized: $371,199,431

So far, the UCETF’s seizures peaked in Q2 2023, and have since been reduced significantly. The DCC did not address what the reason might be for the reduction in warrants and plant/product seizures overall.

Regardless, the DCC is committed to its efforts to protect the legal cannabis industry. “California is effectively decreasing the illegal cannabis market by leveraging the strengths and knowledge of over 20 state agencies and departments alongside our local and federal partners. The UCETF’s progress in 2023 reflects California’s ongoing commitment to disrupting  and dismantling illegal cannabis activity,” said DCC director Nicole Elliott in January. “I look forward to working with all our partners in 2024 to build on this progress.”

Last year in September, there was a raid on a legal cannabis business called Se7venleaf in Costa Mesa, which at the time was thought to be conducting business illegally. Law enforcement seized 100 pounds of cannabis flower, various boxes of cartridges and vaporizers, among many other business-related items (security cameras, devices, and documents). In late March, the Costa Mesa police were forced to return all of the seized items. “They didn’t like that they had to return the stuff,” said Se7venleaf co-owner Matteo Tabib. “They didn’t like that they were wrong, and they didn’t like that they were embarrassed and that nobody was charged. They gave no consideration that me and Michael and our employees’ lives are not in a good place right now.”

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The California Department of Cannabis Control (DCC) granted $19,942,918 to 16 academic institutions with plans to research cannabis on April 26. The grants will be dedicated to research initiatives exploring the effectiveness of cannabis on “mental health of young people, novel cannabinoids like Delta-8 and Delta-10 THC, and a first-of-its kind study of California’s legacy cannabis genetics, intended to preserve the history, value, and diversity of the communities that steward them,” a press release stated.

According to DCC chief deputy director Rasha Salama, the goal is to have these particular initiatives lead the way in cannabis studies. “It is the Department’s aspiration that these studies will advance the body of scientific research, further our understanding of cannabis, and aid to the continued development and refinement of the legal framework,” said Salama. “These studies will provide valuable insights on topics of interest to California’s consumers, businesses, and policy makers and the Department looks forward to sharing them once they are completed.”

Grants were awarded to institutions in six categories, including cannabis potency, medicinal use of cannabis, health of the cannabis industry, monopolies and unfair competition, California legacy genetics and genetic sequencing, and “other” topics. A total of 98 proposals were considered, and 16 were chosen from that pool based on “strong scientific methodology, their ability to provide useful information for policymaking, their advancement of public understanding of cannabis, and their potential to generate foundational research that will support exponential future knowledge.”

The institution that received the highest grant amount of funds was Cal Poly Humboldt with $2,699,178, which will be sued to tackle the topic of “Legacy Cannabis Genetics: People and Their Plants, a Community-Driven Study.” 

According to a press release, a nonprofit organization called Origins Council and the Cannabis Equity Policy Council is partnering with the Cal Poly Humboldt to work on the initiative. “This research seeks to empower and protect California’s legacy cultivation communities who have overcome great adversity to innovate and steward one of the most important collections of cannabis genetic resources in the world,” stated Origins Council executive director Genine Coleman.

Additionally, the University of California, Irvine and University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) received $2 million each, and both will be conducting cannabis potency studies.

UCLA-based studies secured six grants, and University of California, Berkeley (UCB) received grants for three. Other institutions included University of California, San Francisco, University of California, Davis, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and Cal Poly Humboldt.

One particular collaboration between UC Irvine and UCLA will conduct the “first double-blind, placebo-controlled, federally compliant, drug-administration study evaluating the intoxicating effects of inhaled cannabis plant compared to inhaled concentrates. It is expected [to] establish a clinically significant threshold to define high and low THC concentrations.”

In February, the DCC also announced a new grant program offering $20 million to help support and expand the state’s cannabis industry. “Expanding access to California’s retail cannabis market is an important step towards protecting consumer safety and supporting a balanced market,” said DCC director Nicole Elliott. “The retail access grant program ultimately seeks to encourage legal retail operations in areas where existing consumers do not have convenient access to regulated cannabis.” The grant application window ends on April 28, and $10 million of the grant funds will be awarded by June 20. After that, an additional $10 million will be “available to previous awardees as they issue licenses.”

The DCC released a statement in early March regarding the enforcement statistics from the past two years. According to the agency’s report, the DCC led 61 search warrant operations in 2021, but conducted 155 in 2022. In 2021, the DCC seized more than 41,726 pounds of cannabis (approximately $77,772,936 in value), but that number increased to 144,254 pounds in 2022 (estimated to be more than $243,017,836 in value).

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California will offer millions of dollars in grants in an effort to expand access to the regulated cannabis industry, the state announced last week.

The Department of Cannabis Control said that the grant program will be the first of its kind in the United States, and will “provide local jurisdictions with resources to expand access to regulated cannabis products to underserved areas.”

The state said that “areas where national surveys find high cannabis consumption but have little to no access to legal cannabis retail” will be prioritized for the “Local Jurisdiction Retail Access Grant,” and that the program “seeks to incentivize local best practices by prioritizing programs that support equity operators and utilize existing licensing and permitting practices.”

The department said that the “$20 million grant program will initially award up to $10 million in grants by June 20, 2023,” with an additional $10 million being made available “to previous awardees as they issue licenses” after June 30.

More than six years after voters there approved a measure legalizing recreational pot and clearing the way for a regulated market, California’s state-sanctioned cannabis industry has fallen on hard times. 

In 2021, the value of California’s legal cannabis crop plunged by 40%, according to a report released in November, a drop that has been attributed to the pervasiveness of the illicit cannabis market in the state. 

That trend has lawmakers and regulators alike concerned, and left scrambling for solutions. 

One Democratic lawmaker, Matt Haney, introduced a bill earlier this month that would aim to improve the experience at the state’s cannabis cafes by allowing those licensed consumption lounges to serve food and beverages, as well as host live events. 

“If we want this legal industry to survive in California, we have to change these laws. They’re losing to the illegal cannabis industry, and one thing that the legal cannabis small business can offer is an experience,” Haney told the Los Angeles Times. “Cannabis businesses told us that they may have to close their doors unless the laws change. The regulations that prohibit them from offering other products like food are a huge burden.”

In the announcement of the new grant program last week, the state’s Department of Cannabis Control said that lack of access “to California’s legal cannabis marketplace threatens consumer safety and perpetuates the illegal market.” 

“By financially supporting the creation of pathways to retail licensure and creating incentives to ensure consumers have access to legal retail, these grant funds are intended to help reduce illicit market activity and provide consumers with access to legal retail stores and regulated products,” the announcement said. 

Nicole Elliott, the director of the California Department of Cannabis Control, said that expanding access “to California’s retail cannabis market is an important step towards protecting consumer safety and supporting a balanced market.”

“The retail access grant program ultimately seeks to encourage legal retail operations in areas where existing consumers do not have convenient access to regulated cannabis,” Elliott said. 

The department said that the program marks “the first time a state has offered grants to provide access to retail cannabis licensing at the local government level.”

“With over 60 percent of California jurisdictions not offering local retail licensing for cannabis, the retail access grant program can provide much-needed assistance to cities and counties, as they partner with the state to ensure consumers have sufficient access to regulated cannabis,” the department said in the announcement. 

“Of the 33 counties in California that currently do not offer cannabis licenses, there are nine counties where the rates of cannabis consumption are substantial despite only having one or zero licensed cannabis retailers.”

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The sense of urgency has been laid out as California’s capitol recently recorded its hottest day on record, with the hottest recorded temperatures in some areas in nearly a century.

On August 31, Governor Gavin Newsom issued an emergency proclamation urging businesses of all kinds to conserve power as much as possible. On September 6, he ramped things up. “This heat wave is set to be the hottest and longest on record in California for September,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in an announcement. “We are now heading into the worst part of it—the risk of outages is real. Your efforts have paid off so far, but we need everyone to double down to save energy after 4 p.m.”

The California Department of Cannabis Control also issued and tweeted a Flex Alert urging growers to do their part, which was shared by Emerald Triangle’s Redheaded Blackbelt on September 6.

“An emergency proclamation has been signed by the Governor due to the extreme heat wave,” the release reads. “Starting now, we are asking all cannabis licensees to voluntarily consider reducing their energy load by: turning off the lights or any major sources of power; and begin using a backup generator, if safe, and available.”

The Department of Cannabis Control also urged growers to use less energy during the hours of 2-9:00 p.m., saying that growers can rearrange chores in some cases.

At 5:18 p.m. on Tuesday, September 6, temperatures hit 116 degrees Fahrenheit in the state’s capitol Sacramento—hitting an “all-time record.” (That’s 46.6 degrees Celsius.) Nearly 100 years ago, the previous record was set at 114 degrees Fahrenheit (45.5 degrees Celsius) on July 17, 1925, according to the National Weather Service.

Within minutes, the state’s grid operator announced that it had issued Level 3 energy emergency alerts, with imminent rolling blackouts “very possible,” the grid operator California ISO (CAISO) tweeted. The grid operator hinted that people need to get a bit creative in order to save energy, and that the time to do so would be now.

A Level 3 emergency alert is only one step ahead of flatly ordering rotating power outages. CAISO warned residents that the peak electricity demand last Tuesday hit 52,061 megawatts, which shattered the previous high of 50,270 megawatts, which was set on July 24, 2006.

USA Today reports that over half a million customers in California were given advanced notice to prepare for potential rolling blackouts on Tuesday afternoon, Pacific Gas & Electric tweeted.

Elliot Mainzer, CEO of the California Independent System Operator, told USA Today that the danger of blackouts is real, but that there are things residents can do to avoid it. “Over the last several days, we have seen a positive impact on lowering demand because of everyone’s help,” Mainzer said. “But now we need a reduction in energy use that is two or three times greater than what we’ve seen so far.”

As it turns out, the widespread blackouts that were expected on Tuesday, didn’t come, or blackouts were limited to certain areas.

Mercury News reports that state officials actually canceled the Stage 3 emergency alert at 8:00  p.m. and said that “conservation played a big part in protecting electric grid reliability.”

Residents of all types are encouraged to pre-cool their homes in the early hours of the morning and turn up their thermostats up to 78 degrees Farenheit in the afternoon. Residents are also urged to avoid using major appliances after 4:00 pm.

Residents can also visit FlexAlert.org for more energy saving tips.

The heat wave and vicious heat dome covering the western states of the U.S. is not limited to California or the U.S. A climate scientist told The New York Times that heat waves around the world this summer are pushing nations “to the edge.”

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The California Department of Cannabis Control (DCC) announced on March 4 that it was releasing a list of changes to the state’s regulations on cannabis. According to a press release, these changes intend to “streamline and simplify” existing cannabis regulations, as well as “enhance consumer protections and make permanent changes that are currently in effect as emergency regulations.”

According to DCC Director Nicole Elliot, these changes are a reflection of the intention of the department to continue bettering the state’s cannabis programs. “This proposal is a direct result of DCC’s engagement with stakeholders and the thoughtful feedback received through letters, conversations, meetings and previous rulemaking processes,” said Elliott in a press release. “We are deeply [committed] to creating a cannabis regulatory structure that works for all Californians, including California’s cannabis industry, consumers and communities.”

This most recent round of regulation proposals also marks the beginning of a 45-day public comment opportunity, which will end on April 19, 2022. Public comments can be sent via email, or presented during a live hearing on two different days: March 23 and April 19. The DCC also held a webinar on March 3 to educate viewers on the rulemaking timeline, and how to share feedback.

The proposed changes can be read in their entirety here, which includes a variety of suggestions, ranging from video surveillance and sale of live cannabis plants, cannabis event requirements, certificate of analysis and much more. The DCC summarizes some of these key changes to include no longer requiring distributors to have paper copies of product test results, allowing pre-packaged food and beverages for sale at consumption lounges, ingredient restrictions for inhaled cannabis products, and a ban on medical devices or applicators such as “nasal sprays, eye drops or metered-dose inhalers.”

According to an article written by cannabis attorney Hilary Bricken, “Unlike other states, California hasn’t implemented sweeping changes to its cannabis regulations with immense impacts on the industry,” Bricken wrote. “Instead, it has adopted a series of emergency rules with substantive changes here and there since 2018.”

“The DCC’s changes appear to be technical fixes and more consolidation rather than huge regulatory shifts,” she continued. “The DCC states in its Initial Statement of Reasons that the need for these rules is to ‘consolidate, clarify, and make consistent’ licensing and enforcement regulations across all of California’s cannabis license types.” Bricken goes into further detail with some of the highlights of these changes as well, choosing 15 different points of interest.

If approved, these regulations are expected to go live in Fall 2022. Emergency regulations that were established in September 2021 would also be permanently adopted as well.

California has a few bill proposals in the works currently, exploring some other necessities of the industry. On February 15, Assemblymember Bill Quirk introduced AB-2188 which would end workplace discrimination for positive drug tests when cannabis metabolites are detected. “The bill would make it unlawful for California employers to penalize or discriminate against a person when making decisions about hiring, termination, or other aspects of employment if the discrimination is based on the person’s off-duty cannabis use or the presence of non-psychoactive cannabis metabolites revealed in an employer-mandated drug screening,” said Attorney Lauren Mendelsohn of the Law Offices of Omar Figueroa in an email to High Times.

In January, Assemblymember Mia Bonta sponsored a bill that would require courts to update any cases relating to cannabis convictions. “California made a promise. I’m focused on making sure that California keeps its promises,” Bonta said. “This bill would allow us to automatically seal qualifying cannabis criminal records.”

As for overall performance of California’s cannabis industry, the Americans for Safe Access annual “State of the States” review rated California as a “C+.” With high marks in “Consumer Protection and Product Safety” (154/200) and “Program Functionality” (85/100) and lower marks in “Affordability” (40/100), ranking it average among states in the country.

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California Governor Gavin Newsom indicated on Monday that he is open to making changes in the state’s taxation of the legal cannabis industry and urged local governments to allow legal cannabis companies to operate in their jurisdictions. After releasing a state budget proposal for the 2022-2023 fiscal year, the Democratic governor told reporters that regulatory changes could support California’s legal cannabis industry while curbing the illicit market.

“It is my goal to look at tax policy to stabilize markets; at the same time, it’s also my goal to get these municipalities to wake up to the opportunities to get rid of the illegal market and the illicit market and provide support and a regulatory framework for the legal market,” Newsome said at a press conference on Monday, and added, “We have a lot of work to do in this space and this year I’m looking forward to working directly with the legislature on reforms.”

Last month, dozens of activists and licensed cannabis operators sent a letter to Newsom warning of a potential collapse of California’s regulated cannabis industry. The group argued that high taxes are making licensed businesses unprofitable and promoting competition from illicit operators. 

In the budget proposal, the Newsom administration projects that the state will collect $787 million over the 2022-2023 tax year, which represents a decrease of about $34.2 million compared to the 2021 state budget. The budget estimates that of the cannabis tax revenue raised, approximately $595 million will be available to fund substance abuse treatment, environmental remediation of illicit cannabis cultivation operations and activities related to public safety.

The proposed budget notes that the Newsom administration supports cannabis reform and plans to work with the state legislature to amend California’s tax policy. The administration also plans to continue developing a grant program “that will aid local governments in, at a minimum,  opening up legal retail access to consumers.”

“We’ve plugged in budget components on the basis of an estimate in January of $787 million, so any reforms need to consider the impacts to those categories of funding and investments, how that gets offset, and we augment that support,” Newsom said when asked to clarify the language in the budget proposal. “It should consider different components of the industry, and reformers have been offered a plug-in, and so I’ll just leave it at that except to say there was intention by having that language in the budget.”

California Budget Funds New Regulatory Proposals

The budget proposal allocates $13.6 million dollars to fund several proposals for the state’s Department of Cannabis Control, including $5.5 million to develop a unified single licensing system for future cannabis business licenses and the transition of existing licensing data. In addition, $2.2 million will be spent to create a data warehouse to store the department’s data, processes, and procedures to maintain data integrity, as well as data displays and visualizations for the DCC website. Another $6.1 million will fund a multi-year consumer awareness and safety education campaign.

Blake Schroeder, CEO of San Diego-based Medical Marijuana, Inc., applauded the budget’s investment in cannabis data and licensing systems. But he criticized the overall reduction in cannabis spending, saying “it’s a shame that funds that would typically ensure more public and environmental safety in the industry are being cut.”

“Cannabis has been wrongly deemed the ‘Wild Wild West’ many times before, but there are still safety precautions, and consequences for illicit operators, that must be enforced,” Schroeder wrote in an email to High Times. “We are excited by the state’s renewed commitment to cannabis awareness programs, as this is a large part of our mission as well.” 

But Danielle Dao, founder and co-CEO of California-licensed cannabis operator Eco Farm Holdings PBC, criticized the amount spent on regulators and called for cannabis tax funds to be spent to prop up licensed operators struggling with competition from the illicit market and local bans on cannabis commerce.

“Attempting to operate a cannabis business while 60 percent of the state is comprised of counties that have banned cannabis or created lengthy multi-year processes for licensure reflects a failure from the state to enact a functional supply chain,” Dao wrote in an email.

Before the California budget is finalized, state lawmakers will also submit a proposed budget this spring. Lawmakers will then hold a series of budget policy committee hearings before drafting the final budget bill, which must be passed by the legislature and signed by the governor to become law.

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