Central Coast dispensaries gear up for recreational marijuana changes

Getting to sell recreational marijuana may be lucrative to businesses come the first of the year, but getting to this point has been a process.

As one local business tells me, getting the temporary license is just part of it.

Business is booming at Capitola Healing Association Inc. (or Chai), a medical marijuana dispensary in Santa Cruz.

On an average day, they get more than 400 hundred customers. And soon, there may be more.

The first of the year marks the first day the dispensary gets to sell medical and recreational marijuana.

But as the general manager told us, it sounds a lot easier than it is.

“There’s so many new rules and so many new laws some of them are conflicting each other so everyone has different answers for what you can do what you can’t do and how you’re supposed to do things.”

Right now products are being sold deli style, weighed out based on how much customers want come the first of the year the system will be switched over to prepackaged products.

That’s where technology like these tablets come into play, helping the business comply with state law.

State law has given businesses like Chai a temporary license that lets them sell recreational pot for 120 days.

“Because our time-frame for getting regulations done was so aggressive near the end we were able to only go through the emergency regulatory process so part of that was issuing temporary licenses instead of permanent licenses.”

And with that license in hand chai already has a discount for the first customers at their door this new year.

Chai of course won’t be the only place to sell recreational pot on the Central Coast. Monterey Bay Alternative Medicine in Del Rey Oaks is also licensed to sell.

The California Bureau of Cannabis control tells us they’re in the process of issuing 200 hundred more temporary licenses. Those will let the businesses start selling after the new year while the bureau reviews them for permanent licenses.