Medical Marijuana Dispensaries Must Release Names, Addresses of Pot Growers, City Says
Medical marijuana patients don’t seem to care where exactly their cannabis is grown. As long as the pot has been lab-tested and is free of mold and pesticides, they’re satisfied.
But that information alone is no longer enough for the San Francisco Department of Public Health. DPH, which licenses and polices 26 storefront cannabis collectives, announced on Friday that it will ask every dispensary to provide a list — with names and addresses — of every grower with which it does business.
The result would be a catastrophe for the city’s burgeoning medical marijuana industry, according to Kevin Reed, president of The Green Cross medical cannabis delivery service.
“It’s unacceptable,” he says.
But there is a good reason for this master list: safety and legality, according to Rajiv Bhatia, head of DPH’s Occupational & Environmental Health.
“DPH is trying to ensure that permitted MCDs comply with all state and local laws,” Bhatia said in a statement. “By ensuring this, the industry will be best situated to be protected from code enforcement and criminal prosecution.”
That’s not how the city’s medical cannabis cultivators see it. A master list of names and addresses, available to anyone — including the federal government and common crooks?
“It would be a disaster,” Reed tells SF Weekly.
