San Jose's Big Middle Finger To Medical Marijuana Tax Revenue

April 20, 2011 - It seems that San Jose’s City Council, in their infinite wisdom, has decided to close down 100 Medical Cannabis Dispensaries. Apparently the 10 medical marijuana collectives that the City Council will allow to remain operational will be split up into 5 separate districts. In each of these five districts they will allow two collectives. In addition to the restriction in numbers of medical marijuana collectives that will be allowed, the new MMJ collectives will also be required to grow all of their medicine on-site at the dispensaries.

While a lot of the MMJ collective owners queued up to speak before the City Council, of the 100 medical marijuana collectives to be closed in San Jose “Medmar” feels that it fulfills one of the biggest requirements of the new Medical marijuana regulations and that is that the marijuana is to be grown on the premises. While Medmar medical marijuana dispensary has only been in existence for 13 months they claim 3000 members and no doubt a nice little slice of tax revenue as well.

Does it seem strange to anyone else that the city of San Jose is trying to restrict the number of MMJ collectives from 110 to just 10, this with the looming state and city tax deficits? Steve DeAngelo executive director of Harborside health center which runs MMJ dispensaries in both the east bay and the south bay displayed a copy of a check for $35,416 to the San Jose city council, which represented one month’s worth of marijuana sales tax that goes to the city of San Jose. To which the San Jose city manager’s office quickly confirmed it was cashing harborside health center’s check to be quickly added to the general fund. So if one was to extrapolate the $35,416 number by 12 months, you could figure that the city of San Jose is now going to be flushing down the toilet approximately $420,000 from one medical marijuana collective in tax revenue for the city of San Jose.

Assuming that harborside health center does twice as much business as other medical marijuana collectives; let’s say the average collective pays $15,000 a month in taxes to the city of San Jose. Again, multiplying that by 12 months we come up with $180,000 per collective that could be added to the general fund for S. J. Take that same $180,000 and multiply it by the same 100 collectives that they are about to put out of business and we come up with a smooth $18,000,000 for the general fund of the city of San Jose. This during a time in which the city projects a $115,000,000 deficit.

In any event I’m done whining, I think. I’m off to celebrate our communities most important and media saturated day of the year. Stay safe and legal...HAPPY 4.20 people!

Monterey Bud.