SACRAMENTO – A veteran of the state agency that oversees alcohol sales in California was tapped by Gov. Jerry Brown on Thursday to lead a new arm of government that will do the same for medical marijuana.
Brown appointed Lori Ajax as the first chief of the Bureau of Medical Marijuana Regulation, a division of the Department of Consumer Affairs that was created through the passage in September of the state’s first comprehensive licensing scheme for medical marijuana businesses.
Ajax is chief deputy director of the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, where she has worked as an investigator and administrator since 1995.
Some of the key features of the medical marijuana framework the Legislature approved – such as requiring wholesale distributors to serve as links between growers and retail pot sellers and limiting how many licenses an individual person or business can hold – were modeled after California’s alcohol license laws.
The state does not expect to start licensing California’s well-entrenched and already large marijuana industry until 2018 at the earliest.
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Alcohol-control Veteran to Lead California Cannabis Agency
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