The Sacramento Police Department can soon begin fining people who illegally grow cannabis on commercial properties and vacant lots after the Sacramento City Council voted 8-1 on Tuesday to update cultivation policies.
Under the previous version of the city law, police have only been able to issue fines for illegal grows at residences since 2017. The enforcement program has faced dozens of lawsuits from landlords, but city staff said they wanted to expand it because illicit grows have decreased in homes and increased elsewhere.
Police found and seized nearly 120,000 cannabis plants through residential search warrants in 2018, according to a staff report. The statistic dropped to about 12,000 in 2022. City staff are seeing illegal grows move out to warehouses, storage facilities and vacant lots, the city’s cannabis manager Davina Smith said in a May 16 law and legislation committee meeting.
Council member Eric Guerra on Tuesday said while some illegal grow houses still exist in the city, the enforcement program has been successful.
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” Guerra said. “In fact, let’s expand it.”
Without a cannabis business permit, city law allows growing no more than six marijuana plants in a private residence within a single room. Breaking the rules can cost $500 per extra cannabis plant. Both property owners and renters can face fines if they know — or reasonably should have known — about cultivation at a home, commercial building or vacant lot.
Residents must also keep plants out of sight from any windows and keep the room locked. Police have said the requirements help reduce crime and robberies.
Council member Lisa Kaplan voted against the policy update. She opposed the outside visibility and single room rules, arguing the city doesn’t regulate guns, alcohol or tobacco in the same way. She said police might disproportionately enforce the two requirements on Black and brown families.
“I understand the public safety aspect of it, but we can't regulate the hate speech somebody puts in their window, so why are we regulating whether somebody can put a cannabis plant in their window?” Kaplan said. “I think there’s conversations of equity that we need to have further as it relates to cannabis.”
Guerra disagreed and said people of color asked him to support expanding the illegal grow laws. Council member Caity Maple added that the update can also bring funding into communities because the city’s cannabis tax is tied to the Measure L children’s fund. The city sets aside the equivalent of 40% of the city’s estimated cannabis business tax revenue for the fund each year.
Maple said the cultivation policy update also supports participants in the city’s Cannabis Opportunity Reinvestment and Equity (CORE) Program, which helps people disproportionately affected by the war on drugs start cannabis businesses.
“We need to make every effort that we can to protect the legal cannabis businesses that exist in our city, including our CORE applicants,” Maple said.
Tuesday wasn’t the first time the council has updated the city’s cultivation laws. Officials in December 2019 approved a change designed to reduce penalties against landlords who reasonably did not know about illegal cannabis grows on their rental homes.
Sacramento issued property owners over 400 fines totaling about $94 million for illegal cultivation from August 2017 to August 2019, a CapRadio investigative series found. By January 2020, the city had collected less than $6 million after most property owners appealed the administrative penalties.
The issue of whether landlords should be responsible for illegal grows sparked dozens of lawsuits, including one from Zuhu Wang, who owns a South Sacramento house. Wang was fined over $130,000 for a tenant allegedly growing 275 cannabis plants at the property. The city paid nearly $700,000 to settle Wang’s lawsuit last August.
Sacramento County also fines property owners and renters for illegal cannabis grows. In unincorporated areas, it can charge $1,000 per plant above the allowed six.
The updated city policy expanding penalties to non-residential illegal cannabis cultivation goes into effect in late July.
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