The passage of Proposition 64 made recreational cannabis legal throughout California, but Marin residents won’t be able to pick up a pack of Acapulco Gold at their corner store anytime soon.

State licensing of retail outlets isn’t slated to begin until Jan. 1, 2018, and the new law allows local jurisdictions to ban sales in their communities. Anyone seeking a state license to sell recreational cannabis from a storefront will have to first obtain a use permit from the local jurisdiction where the store will be located.

Currently, there are no legal medical marijuana storefronts in Marin, although there are numerous legal delivery services. The county of Marin is in the process of locating four spots where it will allow medical cannabis to be sold.

But Marin Supervisor Damon Connolly said it is unlikely that supervisors will allow recreational cannabis to be sold from the medical cannabis dispensaries once they open.

“Our assumption is that medical cannabis dispensaries and non-medical retail outlets will be treated differently and not co-located,” Connolly said. “I think it is serving two different populations and different needs.”

Connolly and Marin Supervisor Judy Arnold have been overseeing the effort to approve sites for medical marijuana dispensaries. The county’s Community Development Agency staff is reviewing 11 applications for medical cannabis dispensary licenses. Hearings to receive public comment on the applications won’t be held until January at the earliest.

Tom Lai, assistant director of the county Community Development Agency, said, “We’d like to avoid confusion to the public by clarifying that recreational cannabis will not be allowed to be sold from a medical cannabis dispensary.”

Connolly said, “Ideally, as state regulations are developed under Prop. 64, we’d like to work with our 11 cities and towns to identify suitable locations for sales of non-medical cannabis, as there are insufficient commercial areas in the unincorporated areas of the county.”

For its medical cannabis sites, the county is considering only sites that are more than 800 feet from schools, parks and smoke shops and located in one of three zoning districts: retail business, planned commercial or village commercial residential.

MUNICIPAL POLICIES

If the county doesn’t approve sites for the sale of recreational cannabis, the question becomes, which Marin municipality is likely to do so?

On Wednesday, the city of Novato enacted a 45-day moratorium prohibiting outdoor cultivation of cannabis for recreational use and regulating indoor growing. Under Proposition 64, people 21 or older are allowed to grow up to six plants within a private residence, as long as the area is locked and not visible from a public place.

The county and a number of Marin municipalities — San Rafael, Mill Valley, Belvedere and San Anselmo — are all considering similar actions. On Dec. 8, Ross officials will discuss prohibiting cultivation and all retail sales of recreational cannabis, at least temporarily.

San Rafael Mayor Gary Phillips said it is too early to predict what his City Council will choose to do. But Phillips said he could envision a scenario in which every jurisdiction in the county decides against allowing commercial sales.

“I really don’t know what the other communities will do,” Phillips said. “But there are consequences. We have a pretty full plate with consequences right now. I’m not sure we need to add to that.”

Fairfax Mayor Renee Goddard said, “I’m a mom of two teenagers and one of the coordinators of the Ross Valley Healthy Community Collaborative, which deals primarily with youth and adult substance abuse. I’m on the conservative side on this one.

“Some people don’t believe that more access leads to more use, and some people believe strongly that it does,” Goddard said. “My feeling is we need to take our time and create a very clear regulatory structure.”

COURIER SERVICES

Despite the absence of legal medical cannabis dispensaries in Marin, medical cannabis remains readily available in the county through delivery services. Weedmaps, an Irvine-based website, lists 17 delivery services in Marin operating out of San Rafael, Corte Madera, Mill Valley, Novato, Tiburon and Marin City.

But Scot Candell, a San Rafael lawyer who represents medical cannabis dispensaries, said Proposition 64 gives local jurisdictions the authority to ban delivery of recreational cannabis as well as local recreational cannabis dispensaries.

If a local jurisdiction decides to allow deliveries of recreational cannabis, however, it has to open its doors to all comers, Candell said.

“They can say no delivery can end up here,” Candell said, “but they don’t have the option to say we only want deliveries from our licensed delivery services.”

POTENTIAL TAX HAUL

If the county of Marin doesn’t approve the sale of recreational cannabis from local storefronts, it may be foregoing considerable tax revenue. The state Board of Equalization reported that in 2014 the 1,623 medical marijuana dispensaries registered with the state reported $570 million in taxable income, which amounted to $49.5 million in tax due to the state.

Local jurisdictions will not receive any of the 15 percent excise tax that will be charged to retailers of recreational cannabis. Proposition 64 does, however, grant counties the power to impose a tax on cultivation, processing, distribution and selling of recreational marijuana and marijuana products. And both the county and cities would receive additional sales tax revenue.

“I would be real surprised if Marin would not allow dispensaries,” said Dr. Larry Bedard, a retired emergency medicine physician and longtime Marin Healthcare District board member. Bedard, a medical cannabis advocate and Proposition 64 supporter, has asked Marin General Hospital to consider allowing patients there to openly use cannabis to treat certain conditions.

“Marin would be a great place for cannabis tourism,” Bedard said. “I’m hopeful we’ll have coffee shops in areas of Marin. They’re starting to do that in Colorado because they’re having a lot of tourists come, but there is almost no place you can smoke it. You can’t smoke it in public.”