Cannabis dispensaries in San Francisco will be allowed to operate closer to schools under rules the Board of Supervisors approved Tuesday.
The new regulations, passed on a 10-1 vote with Ahsha Safai in dissent, will reduce the school buffer zone from 1,000 to 600 feet, the amount recommended by the state. That revision signaled a remarkable shift in city lawmakers’ thinking on cannabis from the beginning of the month, when several supervisors were trying to push the industry out of their districts.
UPDATE: San Francisco Mayor Expected to Sign City's Recreational Cannabis Regulations Into Law
Supervisor Katy Tang, whose district has no dispensaries, wanted to keep the 1,000-foot school buffer and also apply it to day care facilities. She proposed several restrictions that all went down to defeat.
Israel Nieves-Rivera of the Department of Public Health said that such rules would cluster cannabis on the east side of San Francisco, which already has the highest concentration of dispensaries, and “place it in black and brown neighborhoods.”
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