What’s the maximum amount of product you can buy at an adult-use dispensary in Massachusetts? Nobody seems to agree.
Maybe it’s because I visit medical dispensaries when I’m shopping for quantity. Or perhaps it is due to my tendency to purchase just an elite eighth of flower or maybe a gram or two of concentrate when I visit adult-use stores.
But whatever the case is, it’s now clear that I haven’t paid enough attention to the absurd rules around cannabis purchasing limits in Massachusetts.
Of course, I’ve heard the cries of others for some time. Most recently, at a Beacon Hill hearing of the Joint Committee on Cannabis Policy, stakeholders advocated for increasing the amount that someone can take home in a given day. Among the measures that could quickly put more money in the registers of companies of all sizes, state Rep. Chynah Tyler spoke on behalf of a bill that would increase the purchase limit for adult-use customers from one to two ounces.
“Many of our cannabis businesses operate in an overly restrictive environment already,” she said. Comparatively, the representative noted how you can buy as much booze at the liquor store as one wants or bet your life away at Encore Casino. Her bill, Tyler added, could help distressed operations become more sustainable.
How raising purchasing limits could help Mass better compete with neighboring states
Also speaking at that hearing, Canna Provisions founder and CEO Meg Sanders said that she supports raising purchasing limits to at least match that in neighboring states in order to keep Mass companies “competitive.” Their stores are close to the New York and Connecticut borders, and while those states have their own programs, specialty shops like hers still draw from those markets, and limits, well, they limit the amount of money coming in.
While I apologize to frustrated industry people and everyday shoppers alike for not paying closer attention to purchasing rules sooner, I assure one and all that I’m now committed to the subject. The interest cemented after I maxed out at a dispensary over the weekend. Here is what I ordered: 4 100mg bags of gummies (400mg total); 2 eighths of flower (1/4-ounce total); and 1g of concentrate.
Again, that is significantly more than I typically try to buy; still, I was puzzled by the news that I was over the allotted line. I’m familiar with the one-ounce flower cap, and I understand that funky formulas come into play when there are different types of items in your cart, but I only had a quarter ounce of green and barely enough edibles to fuel a poker night or book club meeting. Could they possibly be right?
Hardly there to complain, I worked with the budtender to get compliant. Per their point-of-sale system, that meant surrendering one of the 100mg bags of edibles, as well as the dabs. Even after shedding those, though, I wasn’t even allowed to add another eighth to my basket.
The agent helping could tell I was somewhat disappointed, and told me that she has to similarly let down countless customers who drive long distances for discounts every shift. In a climate where dispensaries are shuttering at wild rates, arbitrary and unreasonable restrictions are costing retailers millions of dollars annually.
Looking for answers about cannabis purchasing limits in Mass
Since I’m supposed to fully understand this stuff, I was embarrassed to openly ask the industry about allotments on LinkedIn. But as it turns out, very few experts or weed compliance specialists themselves fully get it—or, to put it more accurately, they don’t agree with one another about how purchasing limits work. If that sounds completely nuts, that’s because it is. I don’t mean to insult any of the brave souls who attempted to decipher whether I should have hit the Mass limit with the aforementioned order, so I’ll anonymously quote and paraphrase some of their responses below to demonstrate the insanely complex rules around tallying.
Some people wrote that I indeed hit the cutoff: “100mg edibles = 5.67g of flower, so you’d be at 17.01 for those. Adding 7g of flower would get you to 24.01, out of 28.35 allotment. So, with 4.34 remaining allotment, they could not sell you another 100mg edibles or 1g concentrate, as each have another 5.67g of flower [equivalent].”
Then there are those who thought I should have at least been able to buy one more eighth (3.5g) of flower: “The equivalencies are totally whacky in other categories besides flower and prerolls. It sounds like … your purchase would be 24.01g towards your 28.35g allotment, so you’d be able to buy another 4.34g of flower.”
One person quoted the related regs and split the difference: “You can buy: Up to 1 oz. of flower, OR Up to 5 grams of concentrate, OR Up to 500 mg of edibles, OR A combination of flower, concentrate, and edibles that added together do not exceed the equivalent of 1 oz. of flower. … You should have been able to buy the 100mg edibles, but the 1g of concentrates would have put you over the 1 oz of flower or their equivalent math in the regulations.”
False equivalencies and confusion around Mass cannabis potency limits
Finally, some commenters added interesting dollops about the innumerable nuances and trap doors in the regulations. For example: “The potency of the concentrated product determines exactly how much of the limit it applies to; for example, if something is 85% potent, and is a 1 gram concentrate, it isn’t the actual 5.6g full limit. It is theoretically 5.6 x 0.85 or 4.76g of equivalency.”
Are you confused yet? Frustrated? I suppose that’s the experience of every single person working on the retail side of Massachusetts cannabis for years now.
Needless to say, we’re not done with this topic. Among the things we’ll be exploring in this realm: the apparent lack of tracking between stores, which makes these rules as worthless as they’re damaging to retailers; the lack of uniform enforcement by Cannabis Control Commission investigators around purchasing limits; related pending legislation; and the need to also increase the amount of weed that people can carry in the commonwealth.
Overall, though, we will be looking closely at how, as one commenter simply described, “The limit is ridiculously low. We don’t have true legalization, we have prohibition-light.”
“It’s the biggest pain for retailers,” another wrote. “Customers don’t read regs, they just want a reasonable amount of weed to buy when they shop … 28 grams is such an arbitrary number.”
