[dropcap class=”kp-dropcap”]T[/dropcap]he Board of Supervisors in San Francisco have selected 11 people to serve on the city’s first legal cannabis task force.
48 applicants have sought after 14 vacant seats for San Francisco’s new Cannabis State Legalization Task Force. The group’s members, including outspoken cancer and HIV survivors, will advise the Board of Supervisors on regulating cannabis in the industry. City Supervisor Scott Wiener created the task force.
Erich Pearson, who holds one of the chairs, is founder of SPARC, a large dispensary in San Francisco. “We need to determine how many cannabis users we are going to have in San Francisco and how many stores that’s going to take to distribute that cannabis once it’s legal,” Pearson told the Examiner.
Members of the task force have offered suggestions including expanding the city’s ‘green zone’ to include the financial district and reducing cannabis billboards surrounding the airport. The task force will also address funding and will educate the community about the state of the industry.
San Francisco’s Cannabis State Legalization Task Force has selected the following members:
Jesse Stout, medical marijuana attorney with Greenbridge Corporate Counsel
Erich Pearson, SPARC co-founder
Michelle Aldrich, long-time marijuana advocate
Sara Payan, dispensary employee at The Apothecarium
Jon Ballesteros, Senior VP of Public Policy for the San Francisco Travel Association
Barbara Fugate, retired 911 dispatcher
Tom McElroy, architect
Laura Thomas, Deputy State Director, California, for the Drug Policy Alliance
Terrance Alan, chairman of SF Late Night Coalition
Sarah Shrader, medical marijuana advocate, attorney
Daisy Ozim, TAYSF, transitional age youth collaborative community organizer
The group will oversee 28 legal dispensaries in San Francisco. The task force’s first meeting will commence in January.