Eighteen months after California voters enthusiastically endorsed legal marijuana, just one in seven cities in the state allow recreational cannabis stores, according to a first-of-its-kind study by this news organization and its California partners. And only one in three allow any kind of cannabis business at all.

Proposition 64, approved by 57 percent of state voters in November 2016, promised to bring California into a hazy new age, making it legal for people to carry up to an ounce of marijuana and to grow it at home. But it also gave cities and counties a strong say into exactly what would be allowed and when. The result is a crazy quilt of regulation.

Our study is the most comprehensive look to date at how the industry is taking shape. Some towns — among them San Jose and Oakland — are cannabis friendly, allowing a wide range of businesses to cultivate or peddle a product that residents are free to use. Other cities — including many smaller jurisdictions across the Bay Area — are less enthusiastic, with some blocking virtually every type of marijuana-related enterprise and, in some cases, passing ordinances that seem aimed at regulating personal use as much as possible, despite the voters’ will.

– Read the entire article at Mercury News.