Don’t expect to buy a latte and smoke a joint inside a San Francisco cannabis cafe anytime soon.

Despite Gov. Gavin Newsom’s legalizing cannabis cafes and a statewide law going into effect last week that allows cannabis lounges to sell food and drinks, San Francisco’s pot lounges are still unable to prepare food. The city told SFGATE this week that there’s no estimate for when they will be able to do so.

The disconnect is due to the fact that while cannabis cafes are legal at the state level, city law still prohibits pot lounges in San Francisco from selling prepared food like a sandwich or an espresso.

Assemblymember Matt Haney, the San Francisco Democrat who introduced the cannabis cafe bill in the California Legislature, told SFGATE he thought the city government would have been prepared to allow pot cafes to open up in SF after the state cleared the way.

“I honestly thought that was their plan, so I’m a little surprised that they’re not immediately ready to roll this out. It’s a bigger opportunity for San Francisco than maybe anywhere else in the state,” Haney said.

San Francisco has at least eight approved cannabis lounges, where customers can purchase and smoke cannabis. State law has historically prohibited these lounges from selling any food or drinks, but Haney’s bill lifts that statewide prohibition and allows the lounges to prepare food as long as they have local approval.

Angela Yip, a spokesperson for the San Francisco Office of Cannabis, said city departments are “continuing to work together internally to streamline local implementation of the state law” and directed further questions to the city Department of Public Health. A health department spokesperson who declined to be named told SFGATE by email that the department is working on developing requirements but declined to estimate when those rules would be released.

Haney’s bill is modeled on the cannabis cafes that are popular in Amsterdam, where people can purchase and enjoy coffee, food and cannabis within the same restaurant. Cannabis lounges are rarely legal in America, and the new law makes California one of the only places in the country where businesses can legally serve food to customers who are also smoking marijuana. While San Francisco delays allowing lounges to sell food, cannabis cafes are up and running in other California cities like West Hollywood and Coachella.

Haney was inspired to legalize cannabis cafes after visiting such establishments in Thailand and the Netherlands, where he said the cafes were enjoyable social experiences. The lawmaker said it would be a “huge missed opportunity” if San Francisco didn’t take advantage of the new cannabis cafe law.

Read more at

https://www.sfgate.com/cannabis/article/despite-newsom-approval-sf-prohibits-pot-cafes-20022813.php