California set for New year buzz with marijuana

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California adults not content to ring in the New Year with the traditional fizz of champagne can look forward to celebrating with the buzz of marijuana, purchased for the first time from state-licensed retailers of recreational pot.

LOS ANGELES — California adults not content to ring in the New Year with the traditional fizz of champagne can look forward to celebrating with the buzz of marijuana, purchased for the first time from state-licensed retailers of recreational pot.

Reuters

Dozens of newly-authorised marijuana stores are due to open for business across California on January 1, launching yet another chapter in America’s drug culture and the largest regulated commercial market for cannabis in the United States — one valued at several billion dollars.

The rollout is expected to be gradual and bumpy. The state only began handing out licences in mid-December, issued on a temporary basis because implementing regulations were still under review.

Newly-permitted retailers will rely on a hodge-podge of marijuana producers in the state’s illicit “gray market” to stock their shelves for the next six months, until state-licensed growers can harvest their first crops.

And many jurisdictions, notably Los Angeles and San Francisco, will be closed to business in the recreational pot sector for days or weeks because of additional local approvals applicants must win.