When California Gov. Gavin Newsom last month gave the emerald light allowing cannabis dispensaries to remain open and sell marijuana during the shelter-in-place order, Assemblyman Ash Kalra (D-San Jose) saw no reason why Santa Clara County wouldn’t follow the state’s lead.
Instead, local health officials restricted recreational cannabis to delivery-only and in-house sales to medical marijuana users in an effort to promote social distancing and curb the coronavirus outbreak. “That’s when it raised my eyebrows,” Kalra says.
While Santa Clara County’s more restrictive stay-at-home mandate doesn’t necessarily make a distinction between recreational and medical, the county’s decision makers say the general rule is that healthcare operations get to stay open—dispensaries doling out medical marijuana being one of them.
The ruling, which came in a set of frequently asked questions that popped up on the county health department’s website sent shock waves through the South Bay cannabis industry. Dispensaries and advocates argued that the local rule harkens back to a less enlightened era and runs contrary to the will of California’s voters, who overwhelmingly favored legalized…
