25 local governments sue over California marijuana delivery

By MICHAEL R. BLOOD
April 5, 2019

LOS ANGELES (AP) — California has entered a potentially landmark legal fight against some of its own cities over one of the most basic questions in the nation’s largest legal marijuana market: Where can you buy it?

Beverly Hills and 24 other local governments sued California regulators Friday to overturn a rule allowing home deliveries statewide, even into communities that banned commercial pot sales. Ultimately at issue is who is in charge: the state bureaucracy that oversees the market or local governments where pot is grown and sold.

When California adopted the delivery rule in January, the League of California Cities and police chiefs complained that unrestricted home deliveries would create an unchecked market of largely hidden pot transactions, while undercutting local control guaranteed in a 2016 law broadly legalizing marijuana sales.

Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors Chairman Ryan Coonerty said in a statement that the state rule damages local marijuana businesses and “betrays the promise made to the voters” in 2016.

The significance of the lawsuit goes beyond home deliveries. It represents an important early court test of Proposition 64, the law that legalized pot sales for adults in California. There have been numerous disputes over precisely what parts of the law mean, including those governing the size of cannabis farms.

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