By Shelby Huffaker, MPH | Chair, San Diego Chapter of Americans for Safe Access
For years, the City of San Diego was prepared to implement a comprehensive cannabis social equity program. This initiative was shaped by extensive community feedback and careful consideration of the shortcomings seen in earlier cannabis social equity programs. But, like a joint canoeing after a couple of tokes, the program was ashed before it ever had a chance to succeed.
“With Gloria and Whitburn a pattern has emerged of telling voters what they think voters want to hear then doing the opposite. Why should their promises be believed this election cycle?” explained City Council candidate for District 3, Coleen Cusack in a statement to the San Diego Chapter of Americans for Safe Access.
To understand why the program failed, it is important to know what the cannabis social equity program entailed and the history of events leading up to the 2025 budget cycle.
The Cannabis Social Equity and Economic Development (SEED) Program
In 2022, the City charged the Development Services Department’s Cannabis Business Division (CBD) with developing and coordinating the Cannabis Social Equity and Economic Development (SEED) program, as it would later be called.
The SEED program proposed the following: 1) loosen restrictions on where cannabis retail outlets could operate (e.g., transit priority areas) to create 36 additional permits solely for qualifying equity applicants; 2) create incubator opportunities for equity applicants to partner with existing production facility operators; 3) remove the real estate requirement to submit an application and provide grants to SEED license holders to help offset some of the costs for leasing and/or purchasing a building; 4) waive licensing, permitting, and inspection fees; 5) expand the allowable operating hours to align with state maximums (current operators in San Diego are restricted to 7am-9pm); 6) provide recruitment, education, training, and small business support services (e.g., technical and legal assistance); and 7) provide tax incentives for existing operators to hire equity applicants.
Qualified applicants would have been an individual, immediate family member or a legal guardian convicted or arrested for a cannabis-related crime. In addition, applicants would have to meet two additional criteria demonstrating that they: 1) lived in a disproportionately impacted area of San Diego for five cumulative years, 2) would be considered low-income, 3) lost housing in San Diego, 4) attended school in San Diego County for at least five years, or 5) were placed in the foster care system.
Importantly, the SEED program would have only allowed equity licenses to be transferred to other equity applicants and equity applicants would be required to own at least 51% of the business, ensuring equity applicants would not be used as puppets for other dishonest entrepreneurs (a common pitfall of other cannabis social equity programs).
Running on Empty Promises: Mayor Todd Gloria
In an interview conducted when he was running for Mayor in 2020, Todd Gloria stated:
“[O]n this issue of social equity, I don’t necessarily always know where the barriers are for individuals, and so I’m gonna need your help to identify those barriers and to the extent the city can remove them, allow us to remove them. And if it’s a state or federal issue, allow me to use the bully pulpit of the mayor’s office as well as our cities’ paid lobbyists in both capitals to try and advance an agenda to remove those barriers to equitable distribution of the benefits of the cannabis industry.”
Advocates took this as a sign that the liberal mayor would be supportive of a cannabis social equity program. However, Gloria’s actions proved otherwise.
In 2022, the CBD conducted a cannabis social equity assessment and subsequently received $880,000 in state grant funding to implement the program. However, Gloria failed to include funding to match the grant in his draft budget proposal for fiscal year 2023-2024 (a good budget year for the City). Activists got to work and secured $1 million in the final budget to implement the program while continuing to advocate vigorously for the adoption of the program at City Hall. Despite numerous presentations by the CBD to various committees, including the Land Use and Housing Committee, it never reached the consent calendar.
Late in the summer of 2023, the SEED program underwent a major transition as it was abruptly transferred from the CBD to the Department of Race and Equity. Compared to the efforts of the CBD, the Department’s handling of the SEED program was lackluster at best. In December of 2023, the Department failed to apply for the phase 2 GoBiz social equity grant, which would have provided an additional $2 million in funding.
Advocates showed up en masse at the Mayor’s State of the City Address, protesting his lack of action. The SEED program continued to languish, leading to Gloria’s eventual decision to cut all funding for numerous social equity programs, including the SEED program, in the draft budget for fiscal year 2024-2025. The budget was approved with some funding restored for other programs, but not the SEED program. The City must now return the state grant funding it received, effectively dooming the program indefinitely (additional state grant funding is not guaranteed given California’s own budget woes).
One can only speculate why Gloria, despite having the opportunity to implement a robust cannabis social equity program shaped by many years of community feedback, took every step to undermine the program. One possible answer is alignment with special interest groups within the cannabis industry, as the SEED program would introduce increased competition for existing cannabis retailers.
Running on Empty Promises: Councilmember Stephen Whitburn
“It’s clear that Jesus Cardenas in his dual role as paid lobbyist for cannabis retailers and Chief of Staff for Councilmember Stephen Whitburn has influenced and continues to influence the office of the councilmember in his policy making decisions,” stated Coleen Cusack, Whitburn’s Democratic challenger for the District 3 councilmember seat in the 2024 election. “The councilmember’s actions and inactions in opposing funding and withholding support are incongruent with his empty promises.”
In a similar interview during District 3 Councilmember Stephen Whitburn’s 2020 election campaign, Mr. Whitburn described his experiences attending local planning groups and the overwhelming support for cannabis retail outlets he received from residents, particularly medical cannabis patients.
Whitburn stated that if people have to go out of their way to access legal cannabis — like in District 3, where 77% of residents voted in favor of cannabis legalization — it is not really as accessible as it needs to be. Regarding social equity, he stated that there is “no question that we need to advance social equity and that we have a responsibility to ensure that some of the folks who were most negatively impacted by inequitable policies have a real opportunity to start a business.”
In 2023, Whitburn faced criticism over his rushed handling of a program that would have similarly expanded the number of cannabis retail licenses in the City, but without the social equity component (it failed). Whitburn’s former Chief of Staff, Jesus Cardenas, was found to have taken money from the cannabis industry (his sister, former Chula Vista Councilmember Andrea Cardenas, was also implicated, raising questions about how the cannabis retail licensing process was conducted during her time in Office).
Whitburn did not support the addition of the SEED program in the FY 2024-2025 budget cycle.
Furthermore, when the Council discussed their request for a statement from the Mayor’s office explaining why the funds allocated to social equity programs were not spent in the previous year, Whitburn expressed skepticism on the grounds that he did not know enough to make an informed opinion. Putting aside Whitburn’s obvious familiarity with the cannabis retail landscape, this raises the question: how much does one need to know about a particular topic in order to ask why funding for a program was not spent in the year that it was allocated?
Why Cannabis Social Equity?
Equity for Individuals Harmed by the War on Drugs
It is no secret that the War on Drugs was explicitly designed to target people of color. Former president Richard Nixon’s domestic policy advisor, John Ehrlichman, famously summarized the administration’s intent in an interview with Harper’s Magazine:
“We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
The data confirms Ehrlichman’s claims: from 2010-2018, Black people in the United States were 3.6 times more likely to be arrested for a cannabis-related offense than white people, despite similar usage rates. In San Diego, Black people were 2.8% more likely to have been arrested for a cannabis-related offense relative to their share of the population from 2015 to 2022.
Since people of color are disproportionately criminalized under a justice system steeped in racist policies, the War on Drugs has deepened inequities in health, dignity, and personal liberty. Incarceration separates families and communities, deprives individuals of economic opportunities, limits employment, housing, travel, and education, and increases the risk of numerous mental and physical health conditions. Involvement in the criminal justice system is linked to higher rates of overdose, homelessness, infectious disease transmission (e.g., HIV, hepatitis, tuberculosis), mental health and substance use disorders, chronic conditions (e.g., asthma, hypertension), and suicide. In addition, the effects of incarceration go beyond the individual, entrenching generational poverty and trauma into families and communities (formerly incarcerated people earn, on average, 30% less than those who have never been incarcerated).
Meanwhile, the City’s report found that in 2021, 68% of cannabis license holders in San Diego were white, despite making up 44% of the population, and 87% were owned by men. The reason for this inequity involves the numerous barriers to starting a cannabis business, including lack of access to capital and technical expertise, prior cannabis convictions, and retail caps. The cannabis social equity program, described in further detail below, would have provided small but significant wealth-building opportunities for those impacted by the War on Drugs, their families, and their communities.
Equity for Patients and Consumers
While the largest benefit derived from cannabis social equity programs is the restorative justice it provides to communities disproportionately harmed by the War on Drugs, it also has implications for cannabis consumers and patients.
As of March 2024, 36 cannabis retail outlets were permitted in the City of San Diego. With a population of 1.4 million, this equates to one licensed retail outlet per 38,000 residents. This is more than double the number of residents per licensed retail outlet recommended by California Assemblymember Phil Ting in a bill intended to promote competition with the illicit market. Indeed, only 20% of cannabis sales in San Diego are conducted through the regulated market, though a recent survey conducted by the California Department of Cannabis Control (DCC) found that 88% of adult cannabis consumers in the state would prefer to shop through the legal market. That same survey found that only 44% of consumers found it easy to identify licensed retailers and 42% found it difficult. Furthermore, an analysis conducted by Axios San Diego found that cannabis tax revenue has declined every year since 2021 due to increasing competition with the illicit market.
Shopping from the illicit market poses obvious concerns for consumers, particularly medical cannabis patients. While not all products may be harmful, a lack of regulatory oversight means that some products will inevitably contain harmful substances such as pesticides, heavy metals, and mold. They may also advertise inaccurate potency levels, leading individuals to take too little or too much cannabis for their comfort or medical needs. The legal market may not be perfect, but having regulatory standards and oversight is nonetheless a boon to public health.
In sum, data shows that: 1) consuming cannabis from the unregulated market poses health concerns for consumers; 2) cannabis consumers want to shop from the licensed market; and 3) there is an insufficient number of licensed cannabis retail outlets in the City to meet this demand. For medical cannabis patients living with mobility issues, or for any consumer facing barriers to transportation, the lack of access to regulated retailers creates health inequities that must be addressed. By helping cannabis entrepreneurs enter the legal market, the City’s cannabis social equity program would have done just that.
Conclusion
At least 11 cities and five counties in California now have cannabis social equity programs, including, most recently, San Diego County and the City of Vista. For a City that prides itself on its supposed commitment to social equity, the failure of San Diego’s cannabis social equity program is an embarrassment, a miscarriage of justice, and a threat to the health, wellbeing, and economic prosperity of our region.
To San Diego legislators we say: no more empty promises. Write to your city councilmember today to tell them why San Diego cannot wait to have a cannabis social equity program.
