Fresno’s thriving illegal marijuana market is a flower of its own doing | Opinion

California Attorney General Rob Bonta couldn’t have picked a stranger place to launch a program aimed at cracking down on illegal marijuana.

Fresno, home to the least robust legal weed market of any largely populated city in the state.

Seven years after voters legalized cannabis use for adults, two brick-and-mortar pot shops are currently operating within the Fresno city limits. Two, in a city of 116 square miles and nearly 550,000 people.

That’s fewer than the Tulare County city of Woodlake with its 3 square miles and 7,500 residents.

With ratios like that, it shouldn’t be the least bit surprising that the illicit, unregulated market for marijuana and edibles continues to flourish in Fresno.

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If every cannabis user in town was forced to shop at one of the two locations where it’s legally permitted to do so, the lines of cars would more than just dwarf those at the Chick-fil-A and In-N-Out Burger drive-thrus. They’d literally stretch for blocks.

Let’s be real.

Which is why it was odd to see Bonta, flanked by City Attorney Andrew Janz, hold a press conference last Tuesday at City Hall to announce Fresno as the first locality to join the California DOJ’s Cannabis Administrative Prosecutor Program.

The general gist of CAPP (at least one Bonta staffer must have clever acronyms in their job description) is to provide local governments with state funding and resources as they combat illegal marijuana and its associated crimes.

“Illegal, unlicensed cannabis activities continue, unfortunately, to flourish in California,” Bonta said. “In fact, illegal manufacturing and cultivation in retail make up the majority of California’s cannabis activity.”

Local operations would specifically target smoke shops, tobacco shops and hookah lounges, where Bonta and Janz said many of these unregulated sales take place.

Left unsaid was the failure by city leaders, both past and present, to both accept and prepare for the new realities of legalization. As a result Fresno is stuck with all of the ills and very little of the supposed benefits (i.e. tax revenues).

Ask any farmer what happens when they wait until very late in the growing season to plant crops, then give them barely any water. The result is never a bountiful harvest.

Fresno dragged its heels for so long on legal marijuana that by the time the gates finally flung open, California’s weed boom had already petered out. That explains why the city only has two pot stores, even though 19 preliminary retail cannabis dispensary licenses have been issued since 2021.

The investor capital needed to open such a business — $800,000 to $1 million by many estimates — is no longer there or slow in coming. Even for the big names and local “insiders” with established brand partners who were awarded licenses.

Legal cannabis stores rejected

As we’ve also found out, just because someone has a retail license doesn’t ensure they’ll get clearance to actually open a business.

Only recently, the Fresno Planning Commission squashed an adult-use cannabis store in Pinedale whose owners met every compliance criteria in the city’s Municipal Code. Its Blackstone Avenue location was more than 1,000 feet from the nearest school. All the security and parking requirements had been satisfied.

Yet the planning commission upheld an appeal by Pinedale residents apparently unconcerned about their kids being exposed to liquor stores and fast-food restaurants.

A retail cannabis store on Ventura Avenue was rejected because it was deemed too near the Fresno Fairgrounds. Which for 11 months out of the year is virtually deserted.

What are we doing here, people?

Seven years since Proposition 64, there still isn’t any place to legally purchase marijuana or THC-infused edibles in Fresno south of Gettysburg Avenue.

Meanwhile, law enforcement officials have grave concerns over how the illegal market is thriving and partner with the state attorney general for extra resources to fight this crime wave.

There’s gotta be a connection. If only someone could draw it.

I’m not saying another dozen or so legal pot stores dispersed around town would eliminate black market cannabis. It won’t. That’s been proven elsewhere in California. The state’s foray into legalization has been beset with problems.

But in Fresno, legal weed was doomed from the get go. First it was ignored, then debated for a good long while before being over-regulated and now it’s being suppressed.

And city leaders wonder why tax revenues from cannabis sales aren’t anywhere near projections, while the unregulated smoke shops and hookah lounges are making a killing.

The reasons are fairly obvious. Even, surely, to Bonta. Perhaps that’s why he sidled up to Fresno on this.