San Diego receives cannabis equity grant to boost local cannabis industry

Finally, San Diego is getting grants from the state as part of a program designed to help cities boost their local cannabis industries.

The Southern California city announced last month that it was receiving $880,000 from the California Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz) as part of a statewide grant program aimed at promoting equity in the regulated marijuana market.

As part of the initiative, California provided millions of dollars to cities across the state with their own cannabis equity programs.

Major cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Oakland all participated in the scholarship program. Last spring, officials in San Francisco announced they received $4.5 million from the state of California to fund its cannabis equity grant program.

But last month’s $880,000 gift was the first such grant awarded to San Diego.

That’s because just last year, San Diego established its own scholarship program, which, as the San Diego Union-Tribune noted, “came several years after other major cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Sacramento, and Long Beach. ”

“Obtaining this important source of funding is critical to launching our cannabis equity program,” said Lara Gates, deputy director of San Diego’s Cannabis Business Division, in the city’s announcement. “These dollars will provide a solid foundation for our initial cannabis stock candidates to enter the legal cannabis market.”

In its announcement of the grant last month, the city said that “the money will support residents who wish to enter the legal cannabis industry in San Diego by funding grants to cover permit and license fees and associated start-up real estate costs and access to the cannabis industry workforce at the same time.”

These funds “will be distributed locally and will support state efforts to promote economic justice for populations and communities harmed by cannabis prohibition,” the city said in the announcement, adding that the grants “will help potential business owners obtain permits.” – and pay royalties, access education and training, and real estate rental assistance for entrepreneurship in various sectors that support local cannabis businesses” which include “finance, marketing, advertising and legal services” among others.

In determining qualifications for the grant program, the City of San Diego found that “the biggest barriers to entry into the industry are lack of capital, lack of training, difficulties in finding suitable locations, and complex government regulations,” according to the Union-Tribune.

“Historic drug law enforcement created profound disparities in business ownership, wage earning, and mass incarceration within the criminal justice system for African American/Black, Hispanic, and Native American/Indigenous communities,” Kim Desmond, the San Diego chief of race and equity, said in the Announcement last month. “An acknowledgment of historical institutional racism and systemic injustice is key to understanding the differences in the cannabis industry.”

The money awarded to San Diego “represented the seventh largest grant, after Oakland and Los Angeles with nearly $2 million each, as well as Sacramento, San Francisco and Long Beach with $1.5 million each, and Humboldt County with $1.2 million.” Dollar,” says the Union Tribune.

The city of San Diego said it was “one of 16 cities and counties statewide that received a total of $15 million in grants funded by tax revenues from sales of recreational cannabis statewide.”

In its analysis of cannabis justice last year, the city of San Diego found that Black and Hispanic residents made up about 50% of all arrests for cannabis since 2015, despite making up just 29% of the city’s population.

The assessment also found that nearly 70% of cannabis business license holders are white.