SACRAMENTO – With the legal cannabis market teetering while temporary cannabis growing licenses are expiring, SB 67 passed overwhelmingly with bi-partisan support out of the State Senate on Thursday.

The bill, along with the administration’s announcement last week to streamline the permitting process to help keep growers operating in the legal market, will help ensure legal Cannabis farmers don’t fall into the illegal cannabis market at no fault of their own.

“The state is moving quickly to catch up to the massive backlog of cannabis farmers’ temporary licenses that have expired. Today’s action by the Senate and last week’s move by the administration will help keep farmers from dropping back into the black market at no fault of their own,” Sen. Mike McGuire said. “We’re grateful to work with the Administration – ensuring good actors who want to comply with state law don’t fall out of our regulated market. Without valid licenses, there isn’t a legal, regulated market here in the Golden State and a crisis will take hold.”

Senator McGuire and Assemblymember Jim Wood introduced SB 67 this year, which will allow the California Department of Food and Agriculture to extend temporary licenses held by cannabis farmers while their annual application is being processed.

While the administration will be streamlining the permitting process, the state Legislature is moving forward with SB 67 – which was approved on the Senate floor today with a bipartisan 32-4 vote – to fill the gaps in timing for temporary permit holders while their annual licenses are being processed by the California Department of Food and Agriculture through the end of this year.

“I’m grateful that Gov. Newsom has put an expedited process in place to address the expiration of temporary cannabis licenses, but we remain concerned that the processing time may still not be able to address the large number of temporary licenses out there,” said Wood. “Because of that, it is important for us to continue to move SB 67 forward.”

Currently, there are more than 6,900 temporary state cannabis growing licenses in the state system that would have expired between now and July 2019. In March alone, more than 1,000 temporary growing licenses issued by the California Department of Food and Agriculture expired and another 4,000 will expire in April.

“The Humboldt County Growers Alliance applauds the Governor’s Office and Sen. McGuire for working diligently to ensure that hundreds of our members can remain in the regulated market place,” said Humboldt County Growers Alliance Executive Director Terra Carver.

The state – under current law – has no ability to extend a temporary license, despite the fact thousands are set to expire. To make matters worse, thousands of applicants who wanted to comply with the law and applied for a temporary license did so in the last quarter of 2018, leaving a massive backlog for the state regulating agencies.

As the temporary licenses come due, if the state can’t approve or deny an annual license prior to the temporary license expiring, the license holder will no longer be operating legally and will be kicked into the black market.

“While we are hopeful that the provisional program is successful, CCIA believes that SB 67 will give further assistance to the licensing authorities in processing the backlog of thousands of annual applications,” said Lindsay Robinson, executive director of California Cannabis Industry Association. “This is a critical bill for stabilizing the regulated cannabis industry, and we commend Sen. McGuire for his leadership in addressing this issue.”

SB 67 will now be sent to the State Assembly.