Hey everyone,
I'm a 21 year old broke college student who lives in San Diego, California. A couple months ago I decided to start growing. Quickly, it became my passion, I never realized how addicting it could be. With prop 64 passing, I'm considering a career in commercial growing.
In California, what's the best way I can prepare myself for this? What boundaries will I have to cross (besides monetary)? Where do I start if I have a college student budget? What is everyone's advice on getting into growing commercially in California?
You might as well stick to your 6 plant limit. (and hope they don't require you to register and purchase a city license, like San Clemente is)*** many cities are putting forth ordinances to even grow your 6 legal plants, you must purchase a city permit, allow for city officials to inspect your home, and be listed as a cultivator, even for your 6 plants) IT may be overturned in the future as some say this is unconstitutional but as of now if the city wants it that way, prop 64 gives them the power to do it.
Nowhere in San Diego county allows commercial cultivation. You must first find a city that even will allow commercial cultivation. No cities in San Diego, Imperial or Orange County allow for commercial cultivation. Most likely you would have to look out in the Palm springs area which there are a few cities allowing for conditional use permits.
Once you find the city, you must look to see what zone they allow for commercial growing. Each city will have an ordinance which explains where this is and within that zone then you must find real estate to lease, or own. Usually they are either industrial zones or manufacturing zones. Good luck on this since everyone in the state wants to "get into the business" so real estate is scarce, prices are extremely inflated and there aren't really any properties even available in these approved zones.
Then you must show the city you comply with the local ordinances, and apply for a conditional use permit. To do this generally you have to have the real estate already, a business plan, building plants, water use permit approvals, electrical permits and approvals and the list goes on.
Once you meet all the above conditions, state licenses won't be available until 2018, but some cities will allow you to start cultivation once you meet their ordinance requirements and have the conditional use permit. The problem though is once you become licensed, you can ONLY deal with other licensed businesses. So the dispensaries you sell to must be licensed, and you may NOT deliver your product to the dispensary, and instead use a licensed distributor, who takes your batch for testing (mold, pesticides, potency, terpenes...etc) Your product must pass in order for the distrubutor to be able to bring it to the dispensary, and if it does not pass, you have to destroy it.
Also you must purchase and use a seed to sale tracking software solution and every seed, clone, plant, harvest and waste product needs to be logged multiple times through the process and every bit of the plant accounted for.
So with a college persons budget, this will not be possible. This is why I was so against prop 64 passing because I read the bill over and over and knew this was coming, plus I work professionally in the industry and saw this a mile away. Basically unless you have hundreds of thousands of dollars to get started, the chance of getting into the business is very very slim as a owner/license holder. The best thing to do is work for an established company and hope that more cities allow cultivation in the future because as of now the only people getting in are those with extreme lobbying teams, millions in capital, and connections to city officials.
I wish that more people would have actually read the entire bill before voting because we are about to witness the death of our grassroots movement and welcome in corporate weed. I tried to warn people but.... got censored... Well were stuck now with it.. Everyday another article comes out and shows how this corporate takeover of our industry is in full swing. Just look at the companies balance sheets and SEC filings that already have Conditional use permits... all of them have 1 thing in common, millions of dollars of investment money behind them. All we can do now is as residents attend city meetings and push for allowance of canna biz in cities because right now most cities are flat out banning it.
