Please take action at this link to write to your State Senator, asking them to vote for AB 2555, to extend cannabis compassion programs in California.
The high cost of medical cannabis, particularly its taxation, has made it impossible for many patients who are financially challenged to obtain a sufficient and steady supply of their medicine.
SB 34 (Weiner, 2019), exempted cannabis donated to financially challenged patients from taxation. Provisions of that law will expire on March of 2025, and must be renewed, in order to continue to supply needy patients with cannabis. AB 2555 seeks to keep these critical donation programs in place.
The bill passed both the Assembly and Senate Revenue and Taxation Committees by a unanimous vote of 7-0 after veterans groups, patient advocates, and Cal NORML testified in its favor (pictured above with the bill’s author Asm. Quirk-Silva). The bill is now heading to the Senate Appropriations committee.
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Also, please write to your Assemblymember and ask them to vote for SB 1059, to end double taxation of cannabis.
SB 1059 (Bradford amends the definition of gross receipts in the Sales and Use Tax Law to exclude the amount of any state cannabis excise tax and sales and use tax imposed on a cannabis retailer, preventing double taxation at the local level.
Cannabis is already heavily overtaxed relative to comparable goods in California. Compounding taxes simply leads to an artificially inflated purchase price and incentivizes consumers to purchase cannabis from the unlicensed, untested, and untaxed market.
The bill passed through the Asm. Rev & Tax committee on June 24 and the Asm. Business and Professions committee the following day, by a unanimous 18-0 vote. Testifying in favor of the bill was Cal NORML director Dale Gieringer, speaking about the unfairness of cannabis taxation and, addressing the committee analysis’s conclusion that only LA is doubly taxing cannabis, said that policies vary across the state; he showed a receipt from a Northern California dispensary that included excise and sales taxes in calculating local taxes.
