Santa Barbara will still have more Starbucks than pot shops.
The Santa Barbara City Council voted Tuesday to allow five recreational cannabis retail shops. They relaxed requirements for onsite security guards. They voted to allow an unlimited number of wholesale operations. For personal use, they said residents could have one cannabis plant outdoors and five indoors. (State law requires cities to allow six plants for personal use, but cities can prohibit the number of plants grown outdoors.)
Councilmembers expressed varying degrees of comfort with permitting recreational cannabis. Randy Rowse was the only one to say “no” to everything. He objected to allowing one plant outside for personal use. His colleagues stressed that doing so makes the city eligible for state grant money for education and enforcement. But Rowse said the “money doesn’t exist yet,” calling the concept of such a deal “a real slap in the face.”