Pubdate: Sat, 23 Apr 2016
Source: Sacramento Bee (CA)
Copyright: 2016 The Sacramento Bee
Contact: http://mapinc.org/url/0n4cG7L1
Website: http://www.sacbee.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/376
Author: Jeremy B. White

SHE HASN'T SMOKED POT, BUT CALIFORNIA'S WEED CZAR READY TO ROLL

Lori Ajax Is First Head of Bureau of Medical Marijuana Regulation

Former Alcohol Regulator Will Oversee Landmark Medical Pot Rules

California Must Be 'The Model to Follow,' Ajax Says

Having struggled fruitlessly for years to get his marijuana delivery 
business a proper storefront, Stephen Zyszkiewicz had plenty of 
questions for California's first state weed czar when she came to 
speak to the industry in Oakland.

He also had some advice.

"If you work there," Zyszkiewicz told Lori Ajax, the chief of the 
fledgling Bureau of Medical Marijuana Regulation, "you should 
probably try cannabis."

Marijuana's effects can vary from person to person, and scientists 
are not quite sure what to make of the common distinction users and 
growers make between cannabis sativa and cannabis indica.

Laughter rippled through the packed room of pot attorneys and 
business owners, who know she's said she never smoked the stuff. But 
though Zyszkiewicz remains concerned about getting a license, and 
about high taxes or stringent regulations making regulated weed so 
expensive that the black market flourishes, he came away from the 
event hopeful.

"It was better than I expected," he said. "They weren't just talking at us."

Two decades after California voters authorized medical marijuana, the 
state's massive cannabis industry is entering a new era. New laws 
mandate a sweeping regulatory regime. People such as Zyszkiewicz, 
accustomed to operating on the margins of legitimacy, are puzzling 
over how to get on board.

At the center stands Ajax, a career Department of Alcoholic Beverage 
Control official who is swapping policing booze for overseeing bud. 
She'll be directing traffic for the cluster of state agencies 
responsible for issuing licenses and regulating the industry. A white 
board in her office tells her how many days remain before a January 
2018 deadline to get the rules in place.

When I was in alcohol, I don't think people really cared who the 
alcohol chief deputy was.

Ajax said she didn't plan to take Zyszkiewicz up on his offer. With 
the self-effacing instinct of a practiced bureaucrat, she professed 
bewilderment that people are so interested in her history with the 
substance she'll now oversee.

She's in high demand these days. After Ajax finished speaking at the 
Oakland event, a cluster of people swarmed toward her to ask about 
everything from labeling to diversity in the industry. She received a 
standing ovation at a California Cannabis Industry Association event 
in Sacramento. A man with a grey ponytail approached and pressed into 
her hands a copy of his book, "The Newbie's Guide to Cannabis & the Industry."

Such a guide could be instructive. Her experience with the industry 
is practically nonexistent. She said the circles she moves in never 
really gave her the opportunity to try pot. She deflects questions 
about whether cannabis has medical benefits ("it doesn't matter what 
I think"), if she'll vote for full legalization ("that is between me 
and the ballot box") and how she voted on the 1996 initiative that 
authorized medical marijuana and, eventually, made her job possible.

"I don't remember. But I don't think it matters," Ajax said. "It 
doesn't matter what I think. I have to just move forward with what 
I've been tasked to do."

During the Oakland forum, many of the answers from Ajax and her 
lieutenants were some form of "we don't know yet." They will lean 
heavily on the industry for guidance.

"What we know is licensing and regulation," Adam Quinonez of the 
California Department of Consumer Affairs said as he introduced Ajax. 
"What we don't know very well yet is the cannabis industry."

Her first official visit was to an Oakland dispensary called 
Harborside Health Center. Owner Steve DeAngelo, perhaps the closest 
thing the industry has to a mogul, said Ajax was surprised by "some 
of the more unusual products," such as THC-infused skin patches, in 
the dizzying array that goes far beyond the beer-wine-spirits triad 
of her former province. Ajax recalled seeing topical creams.

Despite Ajax's freshness, DeAngelo was pleased with her 
open-mindedness. He noted that she "pretty studiously did not take an 
opinion on policy issues" and avoided "preconceived notions or stigma 
about cannabis."

"She seemed to be genuinely interested and to appreciate the 
legitimacy of our medical cannabis mission," DeAngelo said. "She 
struck me as someone who was really trying to find an appropriate 
balance between being an enforcement agent and being someone who was 
essentially in charge of designing a whole new industry."

In fact, some pot workers say they actively wanted a blank slate. 
When the California Growers Association heard the new bureau was 
launching, executive director Hezekiah Allen said, they conveyed to 
Gov. Jerry Brown's office two criteria for its chief: experienced 
bureaucrat, and zero industry experience.

"The experience of a cottage cultivator in Siskiyou County has been 
very different from the perspective of a larger retailer in the East 
Bay. ... We find some really entrenched perspectives," Allen said. 
"You know how people talk about activist judges?" he added. "We 
wanted to avoid an activist bureau chief."

Industry infighting has risen as people have learned how their 
business could be affected by anything from the cost and number of 
licenses to who can hold one.

A major source of dispute is a rule that prohibits growers and 
dispensary owners from transporting and distributing their own 
product. Many worry about their businesses being dismantled. Despite 
the bureau's inability to change the law, Ajax was repeatedly pressed 
on the issue. Allen said, "A tremendous amount of political pressure 
is being applied to anyone who will listen."

"Many of our businesses, which are already operating in multiple 
areas, are going to have to find some way to come into compliance. .. 
How do I do that in a way that respects the value I've created as a 
business operator?" said Dan Grace, president of Dark Heart Nursery. 
"The rules ... are causing untold anxiety throughout the industry."

The bureau will also have some discretion to decide when someone's 
criminal record bars them from getting licenses, a key issue for an 
industry in which many players have incurred past drug convictions.

Pot may be novel for Ajax, but she has ample experience governing 
vices. In her decades working for the Department of Alcoholic 
Beverage Control, she had to administer alcohol laws legendary for 
their complexity. The "tied-house" system rigidly separates the 
people who make, transport and sell alcohol, with enough exceptions 
layered in to confuse even seasoned business owners.

Alcohol business owners with whom she worked gave her high marks for 
helping them navigate those laws, particularly as the rise of craft 
breweries forced some reassessment of the industry.

"I had a lot of good conversations with her about the beer business 
in general," said Glynn Phillips, owner of Rubicon Brewing Co. in 
Sacramento. "She said many times: We want you guys to go out there 
and make money and generate tax revenue for the state and create jobs 
and all that."

Roberts and Tom McCormick, head of the California Craft Brewers 
Association, used the same metaphor: When the ABC shows up at your 
business, it's like being pulled over by a state trooper.

"There's often tension between my members and the ABC, the same kind 
of tension as when you see a CHP cruiser behind you on the freeway," 
McCormick said, but when Ajax came to speak to skeptical brewery 
owners, "she was the highest-rated speaker at our conference."Such 
experience could guide Ajax with, for instance, small-scale growers 
who, like craft brewers, worry about getting their product to market 
amid competition from larger businesses. But Ajax noted there are 
major differences between pot and alcohol. The opportunity to try 
something new helped lure her away.

"I was intrigued by the development of a new department and being 
able to regulate something that's not like alcohol," she said. "It's 
not very often that in state government there's a new bureau or a new 
department."

In some ways, Ajax will be starting from scratch. The rules her 
bureau lays down will help dictate who can or cannot thrive.

"Imagine being (the auto industry) in Detroit in 1895," said Matt 
Kumin, an attorney who works with medical marijuana industry. "We 
haven't even gotten to stoplights and green lights."

But while a highly regulated industry is a new development, the 
cultivation and sale of marijuana has been going on for decades. Old 
hands are wary about the future and about a wave of moneyed newcomers 
who will try to shape the rules.

"I don't want the (bureau) to reinvent the wheel. Marijuana has been 
grown in California for the last 40 years," Charles Pappas, who 
co-founded a San Francisco dispensary shuttered by the federal 
government, told Ajax in Oakland. "I hope you listen to the people 
from Humboldt and Mendocino that have been doing it for years and years."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom