Just months before the state’s recreational marijuana market is set to get underway, California Governor Jerry Brown has vetoed a handful of bills attempting to place tighter restrictions on cannabis edibles, butane sales, and the consumption of marijuana at beaches and state parks.
On Friday, Brown went against the grain of a measure intended to prevent cannabis edibles from being manufactured in the form of animals, fruit, and other shapes that children might find appealing.
The proposal, which was brought to the table by Assemblyman Rudy Salas, suggested that cannabis edibles sold could not be “designed to be appealing to children or easily confused with commercially sold candy or foods that do not contain cannabis.”
However, Brown said he could not sign the legislation into law, at this time, because it “would chapter out specific provisions in the recently enacted trailer bill.”
For a second time, the governor also vetoed a measure intended to prevent marijuana from being smoked on all beaches and states parks. It was a provision tucked inside a larger bill designed to prevent people from smoking cigarettes in these areas.
But Brown said the proposal was unreasonable.
“If people can’t even smoke on a deserted beach, where can they?” Brown wrote in a statement accompanying the veto. “There must be some limit to the coercive power of government.”
Last year, Governor Brown vetoed a similar measure, citing concerns that the language was not distinctive enough.
Another bill, this one designed to restrict the state’s concentrate and edibles sector, was also vetoed on Friday.
The proposal, which was sponsored by Assemblyman Jim Cooper, would have put tighter restrictions on the sale of butane – a substance largely blamed for a number of hash oil manufacturing-related explosions.
Although Brown said he empathizes with the overall mission surrounding this piece of legislation, he refused to sign it because it would be too expensive to implement and do very little to remedy the situation. Brown also said that passing such a law would likely be a hindrance to a number of industries that use this product as part of day-to-day commerce.
Governor Brown has 15 months left in his current term.
