After days of celebrating the historic California vote to legalize the sale of marijuana in the city, owners of Malibu’s solo cannabis dispensary are currently picking the pieces of their life.
Yvonne Delarosa Green and her husband, Sam Boyer, who are sole owners of the 99 High Tide Collective, invested all their cash into the marijuana business. They worked to co-write the bill that would allow dispensaries to both sell and deliver recreational marijuana within the city. This would bring in a tax revenue ranging from $75,000 to $150,000 to the city annually.
California state legalized the sale and use of recreational marijuana earlier this year. But despite this, municipalities, decided to opt out of the sale of recreational marijuana. A statistic by The Californian claimed “144 out of the 482 cities allowed any kind of marijuana business, whether recreational or medical, to operate within their borders.
On November 6th, Mrs. DeLaRosa succeeded with 70% of the Malibu city voter’s approval for the sale of recreational marijuana. Days later her house burned to the ground.
The Woolsey Fire
After years of living in Malibu, brush fires are no stranger to DeLaRosa Green. She recalls watching the news thinking that the Woolsey fire had no chance of jumping the Highway 101 to her community.
After going to bed, later in the night, she woke up to the intense smell of smoke in their three-story Malibu home. “There was no electricity and the sky outside grew dark” she recalled.
She and her husband rushed to grab their sleeping 2-year-old baby girl and their pets and fled the house. The tally of the total number of homes that were burnt to the ground hit 700. The fire made DeLaRosa Green close down her store for two weeks which made her loose plenty of business.