Marshon Williams is SO right! What on earth is holding this up? Does Oakland seriously not need the money? City Council simply needs to work up the gumption to vote against the 3 (?) council members proposing fascist ideas such as forcing cannabis businesses to accept City participation on their boards of directors, and get these businesses up and running asap. NOW. Now, now, now. Do it.

The cannabis ordinance is one opportunity to address systemic racism. We must address systemic racism at every opportunity. Racist drug laws and racist enforcement of drug laws have destroyed countless lives and torn apart countless families. On top of the massive injury resulting from physical incarceration, we have set up post-incarceration hurdles to building solid, middle class lives. We can never undo the harm, but we can, and we must, ensure equity in Oakland cannabis licensing so that we can begin to dismantle systemic racism. Getting this done right is more important than getting it done quickly.

"Getting this done right is more important than getting it done quickly."

I agree with Carroll Fife. I'm personally not a fan of pot smoking and smokers and hope the city takes in to consideration the increase stench/pollution in pot smoking on streets, subways, apartments and buildings with no-smoking policy. Second hand cigarette smoke may be more lethal than second hand marijuana smoke, but it's allergenic (my allergies have gotten worse as a result of increase use with neighbors in my building and neighboring building facing my windows) and we should be as thought as Amsterdam in how and where people are allowed to smoke pot. People, especially younger folk, think it's ok to smoke anywhere because its been legalized not realize the smoke and smell can affect others' health and general comfort.

The people who should be running the cannabis shops are rhe people most competent to run them, the people experienced with running similar or identical businesses already. Licensing of pot dispensaries is NOT the place for redress of racial injustice. Otherwise we will just get more of the same corruption we already have too much of, in Oakland. People running things who evidently are not qualified is why we are in this mess now.

Cannabis is a very important part of peoples lives who live with chronic pain from various different illnesses, cancers etc. Oakland dispensary should be run by people who are qualified like Harborside. We do need to use this better and the passing of other bills to take care of the major racial injustice that we have in our prisons and our jails. We need to get any family member out of these prisons or jails that were convicted for a minor drug offense. These non-violent crimes have destroyed more families. Need to put those families back together and we owe these families compensation all the years that they spent in prison without even a conviction because they couldn’t pay fines. That’s a crock and needs to be changed immediately. Gavin Newsom needs to be involved in this because the prisons are in different parts of California but in the meantime we can take care of our non-violent family members that are in our jails. Release all of them now.