The AUMA initiative appropriately prohibits sales of marijuana to minors and prohibits anyone under the minimum age be allowed in any store that sells marijuana and marijuana products, including staff. This provision is stronger than regulations for retail alcohol stores, which explicitly allow underage people in convenience stores. However, AUMA fails to include other important provisions that will prevent underage access and appeal including vending machine, internet and mail order sales, coupons, promotional discounts, and sales of flavored products, including THC-containing e-liquid. The AUMA initiative also prohibits marijuana businesses within a 600-foot radius of “a school providing instruction in kindergarten or any grades 1 through 12, day care center, or youth center that is in existence at the time the license is issued, unless a licensing authority or a local jurisdiction specifies a different radius.” AUMA establishes a series of discretionary criteria for determining whether a license should be issued, including “excessive concentration.” However, this term is not adequately defined and is applicable if such limitation did not impede development of the legal market or perpetuate the illicit market. The effectiveness of these licensing criteria is severely hampered because they are discretionary and lack specificity. An important provision in AUMA is that local governments will be permitted to adopt retail licensing restrictions stronger than the state law. Good public health practice, cannabis grow equipment based on provisions for tobacco retailers, would prohibit marijuana retail stores within 1,000 feet of schools and parks. There would be requirements against issuing new licenses in areas that already have a significant number of retail outlets, which would not be contingent upon whether or not such limitation impeded market growth.
Retail marijuana businesses would be prohibited from selling marijuana through vending machines or self-service displays, using coupons including digital coupons, promotions, discounts, sale of flavored products , and other offers that would encourage underage initiation and frequent use, as well as impulse buys. In addition to these prohibitions, the law would also mandate that retailers be required to verify government-issued identification cards through age-verification systems for face-to-face sales. Electronic commerce such as internet, mail order, text messaging, and social media sales would be prohibited because these forms of nontraditional sales are difficult to regulate, ageverification is impossible, and they can easily avoid taxation. The state would establish a minimum set of restrictions for marijuana retailers that local governments could not weaken and local governments would be permitted to adopt stronger regulations than the state law, including additional annual licensing fees and penalties for noncompliance . The stated goal of the AUMA initiative is to simultaneously “legalize marijuana for those over 21 years old [and] protect children.” However, there are no provisions that will prevent marijuana retail stores from being located within 1,000 feet of a college or university property, recreational center or facility, public park, library, or a game arcade, malls, movie theaters, churches, substance abuse treatment facilities, or hospitals, where underage people are likely to congregate. Furthermore, it will be legal to sell marijuana in ways that will increase underage persons’ access and appeal, through vending machines, self-service displays, and coupons, and through nontraditional sales, such as the internet, mail order, text messaging, and social media. Under the AUMA initiative it is likely that marijuana legalization will have a negative impact on the health of young people and communities of color.
Experience from tobacco and alcohol control shows that retailer density is positively associated with youth and young adult smoking and alcohol use. It is likely that marijuana retail density will have the same impact. There are also no provisions that will require new marijuana retailers be located a minimum distance from other retail stores or that will limit the number of marijuana retailers in a specific geographic unit . This is a key problem with tobacco retailers and alcohol outlets in poor communities, and is an emerging issue in Colorado’s minority, mostly Latino, neighborhoods with retail marijuana. Similar to tobacco and alcohol, it is likely that marijuana retail stores and marijuana cultivation sites will be over-concentrated in low-income communities and communities of color. In order to uphold the social justice goals on which the initiative stands, it is important that clustering and over-concentration of licensed marijuana facilities is prevented. While an age-restriction for marijuana and compliance checks to deter sales to underage persons are included in the initiative, it severely limits the capacity to use the licensing system to enforce this restriction on retailers by suspending or revoking licenses for businesses that sell to underage persons. In particular, the initiative states that retailers will be penalized if they “intended” or “knowingly” sold to underage persons. Experience from tobacco and alcohol control demonstrates that requiring knowledge makes enforcement difficult, if not impossible, and compliance much less likely. Further, the initiative’s language requiring licensees see documentation prior to selling or transferring marijuana is weak and at risk of being violated by marijuana retailers. The initiative states a licensee shall not sell marijuana unless presented with “documentation which reasonably appears to be a valid government-issued identification card showing that the person is 21 years of age or older [emphasis added].” Rather than creating a duplicative system, a public health framework would model the marijuana retail licensing system on existing inspection systems or the Target Responsibility for Alcohol Connected Emergencies programs in California.
As with tobacco and alcohol enforcement programs,marijuana retailers would be required to ask for identification from anyone that looks under the age of forty. Marijuana retailers would be required to enter government-issued identification cards into age-verification system for face-to-face sales or the transaction would be cancelled. Violations would be for cases in which retailers do not ask for identification before selling marijuana to consumers and for cases in which the retailer asked for identification but still sold marijuana to an underage person without the state having to prove intent. The AUMA initiative maintains separate medical and retail marijuana markets, complicating policy efforts to prevent initiation and reduce marijuana use. The experience in Colorado, where the separate medical and retail marijuana markets are being maintained provides strong support for a unitary market. In Colorado, although legalization advocates claimed that retail marijuana legalization would reduce the number of medical marijuana users, the medical marijuana industry has continued to grow. Regulatory in consistences between the medical and retail markets are likely driving medical marijuana market growth. For example, marijuana possession and cultivation limits are higher for medical marijuana than retail marijuana, medical is more affordable because it is exempt from state and local excise taxes, and persons under age twenty-one can purchase marijuana through the medical marijuana program but not through the retail market. It is important to avoid complexity in the marijuana regulatory environment because complexity favors large corporations with the financial resources to hire powerful lawyers and lobbyists. A public health framework for marijuana legalization would create a unitary market, in which all legal sales are regulated as retail marijuana and marijuana products, and the medical market is eliminated. A unitary market would simplify regulatory efforts, including licensing enforcement, vertical grow rack implementation of underage access laws, prevention education programs, and taxation. A unitary market would also avoid sending mixed messages to the general public about the safety of marijuana, particularly as more research accumulates on the adverse health effects. Without a unitary market, it is likely that California, which has a stronger medical marijuana advocacy community and industry than Colorado, will experience similar regulatory distortions. It is important to note that in 2015 the State of Washington merged its medical and retail marijuana markets. Licensed marijuana retailers that want to also sell medical marijuana are required to obtain a medical marijuana endorsement that meets the Department of Health’s requirements. The AUMA initiative focuses funding on youth-centered substance abuse treatment programs without a specific mandate dedicated to the primary purpose of preventing and reducing marijuana use and protecting the public from secondhand smoke exposure. The experience from tobacco control is that dedicating taxes solely to youth-based and school programs is not the best way to prevent initiation or minimize use, and may have counteractive effects. Evidence-based tobacco prevention and control programs aimed at the general population are the most effective way to prevent youth initiation. AUMA assigns the Department of Health Care Services , an agency that provides information to the public on how to improve access to health care services, such as Medi-Cal and Family Planning, responsibility to educate on and prevent substance use disorders in youth. The initiative allocates $5 million from the General Fund to the DHCS to develop and run a public information campaign on the provisions of AUMA, penalties for sales to minors, dangers of driving while intoxicated by marijuana, potential harms of using while pregnant or breastfeeding, and potential harms of over consumption. In contrast, the California Department of Public Health’s media budget for tobacco control was $43 million when it first aired in fiscal year 1989/90. There are no funds earmarked to provide for the continued public information program or for an ongoing statewide media campaign aimed at the general population informing the public on the harms of marijuana use, production , driving under the influence, secondhand smoke, industry manipulation, or offering cessation services for users.
The Legislature will have to appropriate these funds from the General Fund to continue such a public information campaign. Beginning in Fiscal Year 2018-2019, AUMA would require sixty percent of the left over marijuana tax revenue to be allocated to youth programs “designed to” educate and prevent substance use disorders. These programs may include prevention and treatment services for youth and caregivers, early intervention services, grants to schools to develop school-based intervention programs , grants to programs to address substance abuse for homeless youth, family-based interventions, and workforce training to increase the number of available behavioral health staff with substance use disorder prevention and treatment experThise. The DHCS is given broad latitude to determine where the funding is allocated and how much a particular program will receive. For example, the DHCS may dedicate most of the funding toward prevention and early outreach or it may dedicate most of the funding toward workforce training. If funding exceeds demand for youth substance abuse prevention and treatment services, then funds may be dedicated to treatment for adults with substance use disorders. Because these programs will not impact market growth, it is likely that the marijuana industry will either not oppose or may lobby to continue their funding. As is the case in tobacco and alcohol control, dedicating taxes to programs other than marijuana prevention and control may be popular among policymakers and likely will be promoted by marijuana companies to displace effective denormalization campaigns. Often these programs are not controversial and fund important causes like early childhood education, college scholarships, or to fund state school projects , or focus prevention programs on pregnant women and children, or provide funding to healthcare services unrelated to preventing tobacco or alcohol use. Without a specific legal requirement, the emphasis on substance abuse prevention and treatment programs suggests that funding will not go towards preventing and reducing marijuana consumption. For the same reasons as the tobacco and alcohol companies, marijuana companies may endorse these programs to boost their public image and strengthen relationships with policymakers. Marijuana companies may also launch voluntary youth prevention programs or corporate social responsibility projects, to displace effective denormalization campaigns used to prevent and control marijuana use. Similar to the alcohol industry’s “drink responsibly” campaign, which is ineffective at informing the public on the actual harms of alcohol use, in 2014, the Marijuana Policy Project launched its own “Consume Responsibly” campaign, with the “goal to educate [consumers] about the substance, the laws surrounding it, and the importance of consuming it responsibly.” It is likely that marijuana responsibility messages on consumption will be used to promote marijuana and marijuana products rather than providing accurate public health information to deter and minimize use. As noted above in California use of tobacco, a legal product, has been dropping while use of marijuana, despite being illegal, is rising.