Amoeba Music will Open Medical Cannabis Collective in Berkeley

Amoeba Music announced that it finally has received its license to operate a cannabis collective in Berkeley, according to a post by Debby Goldsberry on Facebook, who is a member of Amoeba’s Berkeley Compassionate Care Collective (BCCC) Team.

Goldsberry’s post read, “We were awarded the Berkeley dispensary permit tonight!! I am beyond excited . . . We are planning the most epic dispensary ever at the Amoeba location on Telegraph. The dispensary will go where the jazz room is not. My mind is kind of blown right now!”

Before the Berkeley Compassionate Care Collective team can start providing patients with medical cannabis, they will need to get approval from the Berkeley Department of Planning and Development to convert their jazz room into a cannabis collective.

Berkeley Compassionate Care Collective has been fighting to receive their license after the City Council voted to permit two more collectives to operate in Berkeley, which raised the number of allowed collectives from four to six. The Co-Founder and President of one of the permitted collectives in Berkeley, Martin O’Brien openly opposed Amoeba opening up a collective, because he believed it would hurt his collective that is only 612 feet away from Amoeba.

As the owner of Berkeley Patients Care Collective (PCC), O’Brien wrote a letter to Mayor Tom Bates that read, “Locating [Berkeley Compassionate Care Collective] in Amoeba Music is analogous to a new Walmart opening a few hundred feet from a mom and pop retailer.” The Berkeley City Council ultimately decided to vote in favor of Amoeba and its plans to open up a cannabis collective.

This celebratory news comes just week after a sad announcement was made earlier this month, when Amoeba announced it had sold its iconic Los Angeles location to developers. Fortunately, the Los Angeles location still has several years left on its lease before the change will happen.