ICYMI: California Drops Emergency Cannabis Licensing Rules

Be sure to read the rules again and again before pursuing your California cannabis license.

onNovember 20, 2017 at 4:20 PMNovember 20, 2017 at 12:31 PM

California’s Bureau of Cannabis Control (along with its Departments of Public Health and Food and Agriculture) dropped their much-anticipated emergency rules (see here, here, and here) to fully implement the Medicinal and Adult-Use Cannabis Regulation and Safety Act in California. The agencies kept a lot of what we saw from the withdrawn rules under the Medical Cannabis Regulation and Safety Act (MCRSA) (see here, here, here, and here), but there are also some new, notable additions and some interesting gap-fillers that now give us the foundation for operational standards across cannabis license types.

Though we can’t cover every single change or topic from these rules in one post (and because we’ll be covering the license types and application details in other posts in the coming days and weeks and at our SoCal Cannabis Investment Forum), I will instead focus on the following highlights of the emergency rules:

We now have a revised definition of “canopy,” which is “the designated area(s) at a licensed premise that will contain mature plants at any point in time.” In addition, canopy shall be calculated in square feet and measured using clearly identifiable boundaries of all area(s) that will contain mature plants at any point in time, including all of the space(s) within the boundaries. Canopy may be noncontiguous, but each unique area included in the total canopy calculation shall be separated by an identifiable boundary which includes interior walls, shelves, greenhouse walls, hoop house walls, garden benches, hedgerows, fencing, garden beds, or garden plots; and if mature plants are being cultivated using a shelving system, the surface area of each level shall be included in the total canopy calculation.
“Nonvolatile solvent” has been further defined to mean “any solvent used in the extraction process that is not a volatile solvent,” which “includes carbon dioxide (CO2) used for extraction and ethanol used for extraction or post-extraction processing.”
Temporary licensing has now been fully detailed to include online applications, the personal information for each owner that must be disclosed, contact information for the applicant’s designated point of contact, physical address of the premises, evidence that the applicant has the legal right to occupy the premises for the desired license type, proof of local approval, and the fact that the temporary license (which is good for 120 days) may be renewed and extended by the state for additional 90 day periods so long as a “complete application for an annual license” has been submitted to the state. No temporary license will become effective until January 1, 2018.
For the full blown “annual license,” the application requirements are pretty much the same as under the MCRSA rules except that you must disclose whether you’re applying for an “M License” or an “A License” and you have to list out all of your financing and financiers which include: “A list of funds belonging to the applicant held in savings, checking, or other accounts maintained by a financial institution, a list of loans (with all attendant loan information and documentation, including the list of security provided for the loan), all investment funds and names of the investors, a list of all gifts, and a list with certain identifying information of anyone with a “financial interest” in the business. “Financial interest” means “an investment into a commercial cannabis business, a loan provided to a commercial cannabis business, or any other equity interest in a commercial cannabis business.” The only exempt “financial interests” are bank or financial institution lenders, individuals whose only financial interest is through an interest in a diversified mutual fund, blind trust, or “similar instrument”, and those shareholders in a publicly traded company who hold less than 5% of the total shares.
As part of your licensing application, you will still need to submit a premises diagram drawn to scale along with all of your security procedures and inventory procedures (and pretty much all corresponding operational SOPs). A $5,000 bond is still required for all licensees (as well as mandatory insurance) and all owners must submit their felony conviction criminal histories as specifically enumerated in the regulations, as well as rehabilitation statements.
Several new licenses have been created (and/or brought back from the dead from MCRSA): the cannabis event organizer license (to enable people to take advantage of the temporary cannabis event license), the distribution transporter only license (which allows this licensee to only move product between licensees, but not to retailers unless what’s being transported are immature plants or seeds from a Type 4 nursery), the processor license (a cultivation site that conducts only trimming, drying, curing, grading, packaging, or labeling of cannabis and non-manufactured cannabis products), the Type N and P manufacturing licenses are back, and there’s now a Type 9 delivery only Non-Storefront Retailer license.
We also now have the non-refundable licensing fee schedules and though they vary depending on the license type they mostly are nominal, though some increase with increased gross receipts, and small and medium-sized growers will have to pay pretty robust fees.
If you want to make changes after the fact to your premises or to your ownership structure, you first must secure state approval to do so.
All growers are again limited to one Type 3 medium cultivation license each, whether it’s an M License or an A License.
A retailer can sell non-cannabis goods on its premises so long as their city or county allows it (this excludes alcohol, tobacco, and tobacco products). Retailers can also sell non-flowering, immature plants (no more than six in a single day to a single customer). M-licensed retailers and micro-businesses can also give cannabis away free of charge to qualified patients or to their caregivers.
Notably, until July 1, 2018, licensees may conduct commercial cannabis activities with any other licensee, regardless of the A or M designation of the license.
The renewable energy requirements for cultivators have been revamped hopefully to the satisfaction of cannabis growers.
Again, the licenses are NOT transferable, so we’re looking at folks only being able to purchase the businesses that hold them.
Distributors will be able to re-package and re-label flower, but not infused cannabis products unless they hold a manufacturing license. Distributors also cannot store any non-cannabis goods at their premises. The state has laid out what must take place during a distributor’s quality assurance review and the chain of custody protocol with third party labs for testing.
We have a detailed list of all permissible extraction types, including that any CO2 extractions must be done within a closed loop system.
The prohibited products list is pretty much the same as it was under the MCRSA rules (so, no nicotine or caffeine infused cannabis products).
In regards to “premises,” the Bureau’s regulations mandate that a licensee may have up to two licenses at a given premises of the same license type so long as they’re owned by the same company and one is an A-License and the other is an M-License.
In addition to other relatively onerous advertising requirements, licensees must “[p]rior to any advertising or marketing from the licensee involving direct, individualized communication or dialog, . . . use age affirmation to verify that the recipient is 21 years of age or older.” Direct, individualized communication or dialog, may occur through any form of communication including in person, telephone, physical mail, or electronic. A method of age verification is not necessary for a communication if the licensee can verify that “the licensee has previously had the intended recipient undergo a method of age affirmation and the licensee is reasonably certain that the communication will only be received by the intended recipient.”
Retailers and micro-businesses are now required to hire third-party security to protect and watch their premises.
To hold a micro-business license, a licensee must engage in at least three of the following commercial cannabis activities: cultivation, manufacturing, distribution, and retail sale. There are also now a slew of regulations surrounding each activity a micro-business can undertake.
Live entertainment is now allowed at a licensed premises so long as it follows the bevy of regulations regarding content and presentation.

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From Pilot and Above The Law

Overall, we have a close-ish copy of the withdrawn MCRSA rules that will lead us into 2018. Be sure to read the rules again and again before pursuing your California cannabis license. Applicants will have their work cut out for them on both the state and local levels.

Hilary Bricken is an attorney at Harris Bricken in Los Angeles, and she chairs the firm’s Canna Law Group. Her practice consists of representing marijuana businesses of all sizes in multiple states on matters relating to licensing, corporate formation and contracts, commercial litigation, and intellectual property. Named one of the 100 most influential people in the cannabis industry in 2014, Hilary is also lead editor of the Canna Law Blog. You can reach her by email at hilary@harrisbricken.com.