Don’t come to Oakland if you want to start a cannabis business.

You’re not welcome here, because the Oakland City Council doesn’t want to fully tap into a multibillion-dollar industry.

Last week, the council revised how marijuana businesses will be regulated, writing legislation faster than a waitress taking orders at a crowded all-night diner.

Before the revisions, half of the city’s cannabis permits were reserved for residents who were jailed on marijuana convictions in Oakland within the past decade or had lived for at least two years within six police beats in East Oakland with a high volume of marijuana arrests, convictions and jail sentences. The beats were in districts represented by Councilwoman Desley Brooks, the architect of Oakland’s equity permits, and council President Larry Reid.

Under the previous plan, permits were to be issued on a 1-to-1 ratio, meaning that if there weren’t enough equity applicants, there would be a bottleneck for those applying for general permits.

The revisions, which were supposed to solve that obvious problem, would make things worse.

The 1-to-1 ratio remains, but it will end once an equity assistance program, funded by cannabis tax revenue, reaches $3.4 million. Anyone convicted of a pot-related offense in Oakland after November 1996 is now eligible for a permit. And the qualifying neighborhoods were expanded, but applicants are required to have lived in one of the neighborhoods for 10 of the past 20 years, and their current income must be below 80 percent of the city’s average median income.

Here’s what really stinks: If you want a pot permit of any kind, you’ll have to prove you live in Oakland — and have lived in Oakland for the past three years.

The residency requirement is provincialism at its worst. Oakland could be a major player in the cannabis industry.

“It means there will be no future industry coming to Oakland,” said James Anthony, a lawyer who helps marijuana entrepreneurs start their businesses. “There will be no growth in Oakland. It doesn’t help anybody that I can see.

“It has nothing to do with equity. It has to do with the future potential of the Oakland industry and hundreds of existing jobs.”

Oakland’s established cultivators and manufacturers have been on edge about the permit system for almost a year. At least 100 cannabis businesses are already operating with hundreds of employees and significant local investments. Now they have to get in line without knowing how long the wait will be — and if they’ll have a city permit by January 2018 as required by state law.

But there is a way to cut to the front. The new ordinance will prioritize general applicants who act as “incubators” for equity applicants by providing free rent or real estate.

That sounds like a shakedown to me.

Still, I support the general idea of equity — just not through discriminatory business practices. Hasn’t Oakland had enough discrimination?

According to a report by Darlene Flynn, director of Oakland’s Department of Race and Equity, the disparity of pot arrest rates for blacks and whites is about as wide as the gulf between Republicans and Democrats on health care reform.

One glaring statistic from the report: In 2015, blacks accounted for 77 percent of all pot arrests in Oakland, compared with 4 percent for whites.

“If we were to just open permitting today, we would just be maintaining those disparities into the future, if not exacerbating them,” Greg Minor, an assistant city administrator who worked on the report, told The Chronicle.

Yes, the city has identified a problem. But its clumsy handling of the pot permit system isn’t going to right the wrongs of the past.

Where’s the data that suggest people who fit the equity criteria are clamoring to open cannabis businesses? Because by restricting the number of general applicants and adding a residency requirement, the city is reducing the amount of tax revenue that could go into the fund to help equity applicants launch successful businesses.

The bottom line is that the equity assistance program won’t be funded unless businesses are operating. So why exclude those who are eager to contribute to the pot?

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Otis R. Taylor Jr. appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Email: otaylor@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @otisrtaylorjr