Gone are the days when San Diego’s crop of cannabis dispensaries had to turn away customers and close their doors at exactly 9 p.m., an hour earlier than their counterparts in neighboring Chula Vista, La Mesa, Oceanside and beyond.
Dispensaries in San Diego can now stay open for as long as their neighbors, from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., after the city council unanimously embraced longer opening hours at a Monday afternoon vote.
It’s a long-awaited change for San Diego dispensary owners, who have for years called for the city to loosen its strict opening hours. As the city increasingly relies on dispensaries to plug the $258 million hole in the new city budget, the council has finally listened — just a day before the new budget is set to take effect.
The city is hoping dispensaries will generate a pretty penny in taxes to fill the budget gap under the new operating hours: nearly $1.9 million.
Christopher Ackerman-Avila, the mayor’s senior policy adviser, pushed the city council to allow dispensaries to open longer to enhance public safety, local competition and city tax revenue at the Monday vote. (Photo by Madeline Nguyen/Times of San Diego)“Having just passed a very delicate budget for this coming year, we hope that the revenue numbers come through,” San Diego City Council President Joe LaCava said at Monday’s vote.
Whether the city will hit that target is yet to be seen.
How late can dispensaries stay open in San Diego?
The new 16-hour schedule allows San Diego dispensaries to open an hour earlier in the morning and an hour more into the night — the maximum time allowed under state law.
Previously, San Diego regulated dispensaries more strictly, allowing them to open between 7 a.m. and 9 p.m. only.
‘Suffering’ dispensaries, city unite to back longer hours
For years, San Diegans looking for some bedtime bud have had to travel down the road to dispensaries in neighboring cities or turn toward illicit dealers, who don’t pay the same city taxes that dispensaries do.
As San Diego dispensaries have lost out on the popular late-night market, their business has plummeted over the last four years. Along with it, so has the money local dispensaries put into city coffers.
The city and San Diego dispensary owners hope the new opening hours will change that.
“We should be promoting legal economic activity,” Councilmember Raul Campillo said at Monday’s vote. “It is simply common sense.”
Dispensaries fund the city budget mainly by paying millions of dollars in business taxes, in addition to the sales taxes that customers pay when they buy products. With the extended opening hours, dispensaries are set to contribute the vast majority of the new revenue the city hopes to see for its upcoming budget: $1.7 million.
Sales taxes would generate an additional $170,000.
It’s a lofty goal for a local dispensary industry that has historically struggled to compete with illegal dealers under the city’s tighter opening hours — one that joins the slew of optimistic targets the city has set for its other budget solutions.
The city expects business taxes from dispensaries to disappoint expectations once again by nearly $3 million this fiscal year. San Diego dispensary owners, such as Rakesh Goyal, are hopeful they’ll see more business if their stores stay open later into the night.
“Our industry has been struggling for several years, and this proposal is probably the single greatest tool, especially in our battle to compete with the illicit market,” Goyal told councilmembers at a meeting about the new opening hours earlier this month.
As city leans on dispensaries for money, customers may take the fall
Longer opening hours are the city’s latest move to squeeze revenue from dispensaries to help offset its deficit-laden budget. With it, dispensaries have joined a new trash fee on the city’s list of solutions to its budget shortfall.
Customers may bear the brunt of the impact as San Diego dispensaries hike up prices to protect their bottom line.
But opening longer could help dispensaries maintain their profits without pumping prices up as much, medical marijuana lobbyist Phil Rath said.
Medical marijuana dispensary lobbyist Phil Rath, right, urges the San Diego City Council’s Economic Development and Intergovernmental Relations Committee to back longer opening hours for the city’s cannabis dispensaries at a June 11, 2025, vote. (Photo by Madeline Nguyen/Times of San Diego) Credit: Madeline Nguyen / Times of San DiegoThe council extended dispensaries’ opening hours just a month after San Diego’s increased business tax on cannabis dispensaries took effect on May 1 — the first dispensary tax hike passed by the city in six years.
The city is squeezing local dispensaries as the state is also cutting into these stores’ bottom line. The council extended dispensaries’ opening hours just as the state tax on cannabis products will jump by 25% Tuesday.
Under the tax hike, over 30 cents of every dollar San Diego dispensaries make will go to the city or state governments — a price that will be passed down to customers.
Cannabis: Cause for celebration or controversy?
Even as dispensary owners and the city celebrate the new opening hours, not everyone is supportive of the city’s turn to cannabis as it scrounges up money for its new budget.
As the city has considered longer opening hours over the last three months, members of the public have debated the city’s decision to increase dispensary access for revenue. The controversy played out in front of the council once again before it decided to make longer hours into law.
“The amount of taxes collected during the added hours will be minuscule,” Kelly McCormick, a public health educator at the San Dieguito Alliance for Drug Free Youth, told the council. “The cost to society will be high.”
While opponents of the extended operating hours worried about public safety, the San Diego Police Department did not find a spike in crime or 911 calls around dispensaries.
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