News Commentary: 4/20 Alert: Getting My Nose Out of Joint

Who says city bureaucrats have no sense of humor? Or maybe
it was just a coincidence that City Hall extended its deadline for cannabis
dispensary applications a year ago so that it fell on April 20, also known as
4/20.

Get it, 4/20? International cannabis day?

Turns out, it wasn’t very funny back then, at least not for
the parties involved. And it hasn’t gotten any funnier in the intervening 365
days. In fact, it’s turned into a big nasty mess of a lawsuit over how City
Hall selected the top three applicants, awarding them a franchise agreement
worth many millions of bucks a year. That lawsuit promises only to get messier
as witnesses are deposed. In the meantime — two years after recreational
cannabis was legalized by state voters — Santa Barbara remains a city without a
legal recreational dispensary. Two of the three finalists have recently been
awarded building permits — even the one targeted by the litigation — meaning
city residents might have a storefront or two from which to purchase legalized,
recreational, adult-use weed products by the end of summer. Even without,
there’s no shortage. The City of S.B. has two medicinal storefronts up and
running and a million gray market delivery services.