Self study brings about self awareness. Individually self study can help oneself move into a better place in life. Collectively self study can help larger groups of people. For anyone reading this who does not understand what self study means that is the problem in a nutshell.
Pick any situation or set of circumstances and assess where you are with it and ask yourself how it is going? Are you getting the results you wanted from it? Did the thought of results ever come to mind when you entered said situation? Most of us sleepwalk through life and come up for a quick breath to find that things are not going according to plan when we never had a plan to begin with. Or if we had a plan we did not take the time for periodic reassessments. Or I suspect there is more of a combination of the two in most situations a quasi plan that required more well thought out short and long term designing perhaps not as arranged as a color by numbers but less erratic than an etch-a-sketch.
Self study can begin at any time of the situational journey. The City of Sacramento is doing a self-study which can be viewed here of their cannabis industry which very well may shape the future of the cannabis industry in the city. The study has clear goals that will “inform public policy on land use, fiscal/economic, and other regulations”
The goals revolve around four questions:
“What is the scale of the industry and its constituent elements in the city?.
How does the industry affect the city’s economy, real estate, and neighborhoods?
Do city taxes paid by the industry cover its related City-service costs and generate revenue for the City?
Based on the literature and case studies, what alternate directions should the city explore regarding municipal oversight of the industry?”
The community concern and testimonies over overconcentration of cannabis uses in North Sacramento prompted the study. In response to that in “February 2021 the Planning and Design Commission passed a motion to initiate a study regarding cannabis uses in North Sacramento”. The study is underway until the end of 2021 and is being conducted by Economic & Planning Systems (EPS).
Part of what the city is exploring is where new cannabis businesses can open their doors in the northern part of the city. The study found that “in District 2 ninety-five properties had received entitlements to establish one or more cannabis related uses since the city began accepting applications for cannabis”. Many of those businesses had multiple “approvals for more than one operation”. The study can be found here.
A draft ordinance has been developed. The proposed ordinance restricts all cannabis operations from locating within certain distances from residential zones, schools, parks, or places of worship.
In this writer’s humble opinion if cannabis is going to be destigmatized it should be placed on a level similar to or the same as alcohol or tobacco. It might be incumbent upon those making recommendations as to where, at the very least, a retail shop can be located to give cannabis the same considerations alcohol or tobacco have. When most supermarkets and convenience stores sell both alcohol and tobacco and both are located within the range deprived of cannabis then how can cannabis ever rise above the stigma it holds? Part of self-study is to understand how much bias there still is surrounding cannabis by those doing the study.
Author: Sherri Margolin (Dark Matters)