Youth applications left wanting by California marijuana law

LOS ANGELES (AP) &#8211 When California voters legalized marijuana, they had been promised that portion of the tax income from pot sales and cultivation would be devoted to applications to teach youth how to stay clear of substance abuse.

But additional than a year soon after the start off of sales, there&#8217s no cash for these applications and concerns are looming about how they could possibly operate in the future.

The absence of funding is &#8220seriously sad and disappointing,&#8221 stated Robert Harris, a policy adviser and lobbyist for the California Society of Addiction Medicine.

Equally troubling, he added, is the lack of clear suggestions for how that funding would be divvied up, and how applications would be run and evaluated.

A report this week from the state Legislative Analyst&#8217s Workplace recommended that the Legislature could possibly have to address gaps in the law, even pointing out that the term &#8220youth&#8221 isn&#8217t defined.

A lot more desires to be carried out &#8220so we don&#8217t roll it out and throw it away,&#8221 Harris stated.

Proposition 64, which voters authorized in November 2016 and legalized pot sales for adults 21 and more than, integrated a section requiring a slice of the tax income go toward youth education to avert &#8220substance use issues&#8221 and &#8220harm from substance use.&#8221

The absence of dollars so far can be explained by two components: The impact of rigid guidelines that came with Proposition 64 and the slow start off to sales that have brought in far significantly less tax cash than initially anticipated.

The law established a lengthy list of needs for how to devote cannabis tax cash &#8211 generally, who gets it, in what order and how significantly.

Below these guidelines, most of the $150 million in tax cash that has come in so far has been devoted to startup fees and operations for state regulation.

A second tier of funding, about $25 million of the total, is slated for university analysis, the California Highway Patrol and nearby grants that could include things like such points such as mental well being therapy and legal solutions.

Funding for youth-education applications would be integrated in a third tier of spending, and so far there hasn&#8217t been sufficient tax cash to present that share, officials say.

It&#8217s achievable that by the finish of the state&#8217s fiscal year in June, sufficient pot sales will take location to pump cash into these applications. And by the following year, state analysts anticipate sales to boost and funding for these applications to soar to $160 million.