Testimonies also addressed advertising restrictions, medical marijuana, purchasing limits, and Cannabis Control Commission oversight
In one sense, things are looking up around the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission. The agency’s new Executive Director Travis Ahern seems to have a handle on the stressed bureaucracy, while initiatives like social consumption which have long been on the back burner are seeing light.
On the other hand, there is no shortage of problems and complications afoot. Among other pressing issues, confusion over laboratory testing standards threatens more than just market integrity, while the state’s Medical Use of Marijuana Program, the reason Massachusetts got dispensaries in the first place, is in serious trouble.
On Wednesday, stakeholders from every corner of commonwealth cannabis traveled to Boston or appeared remotely to express concerns about the above plus other woes. Before the legislature’s Joint Committee on Cannabis Policy, they presented arguments on all sides of more than 20 bills, broke down the state of the industry from various unique perspectives, and in some cases, excoriated regulators for neglecting to address some of these problems on their own.
We will publish some of the testimonies from Wednesday in full at Talking Joints Memo over the next week. Below, we parsed comments from the hearing by topic …
License cap expansion
While a range of issues came up for discussion on Wednesday, there’s no doubt that the retail dispensary license cap was the main attraction, with eight bills in play that could allow a person to own more than three stores and invest in subsequent establishments at a rate higher than the currently allowed 10%.
The topic dredged up tension in the week leading up to the hearing, with the group Equitable Opportunities Now sending a letter to House Speaker Ron Mariano “on behalf of nearly 60 cannabis business owners, social equity applicants, advocates, and community leaders … express[ing] deep concern and disappointment over proposals to weaken Massachusetts’ cannabis license ownership limits—one of the most important safeguards for equitable industry participation.” In the hearing room, both sides took the chance to pitch committee members.
Tito Jackson, a former Boston city councilor and current owner of Apex Noire dispensary in Boston, spoke in favor of raising the license cap alongside Payton Shubrick of 6 Brick’s in Springfield. Together they argued that the industry is in a tough spot at the moment, and that companies like theirs need the option of an exit plan via selling to a larger company that’s looking to expand its footprint in the state.
“This is a difficult industry,” Shubrick said, “the rules are constantly changing depending on your [CCC] investigator, and it’s getting harder to meet the day-to-day needs. … I cannot exit the space and I can not improve my business model. … Increasing the cap doesn’t mean that everyone has to sell; however, not giving people that option is problematic.”
Jackson also argued that claims have been overblown by opponents of these bills who say the proposals could open the doors for monopolies. With nearly 400 retail stores across the state, even allowing for a business to own nine stores would keep them under a 3% market share (critics contend that market share is calculated by revenue among other variables, as opposed to simply the percentage of storefronts). In subsequent testimonies, however, bill opponents explained how the impact of such changes on the ground—and especially on smaller independent outfits—could nonetheless be devastating.
Sen. Liz Miranda testified to her colleagues that social equity advocates by and large “don’t want one or two businesses dominating the Massachusetts cannabis market.” She said she spoke with friends and constituents on both sides of the ownership limit debate leading up to the hearing, and ultimately decided against giving more leverage to “multi-state conglomerates and shell companies” which, the senator alleged, are already skirting ownership limits.
Armani White and Sean Berte, who are opening a shop called Firehouse in Hyde Park, recently published a guest editorial on Talking Joints Memo to push back against raising the cap. On Wednesday, White pleaded for lawmakers to “listen to the majority of us who say [license expansion] is going to hurt us.” Ian Powell, a social equity advocate and cannabis media maker, said the issue is “about fairness.” “These bills,” he said, “give out-of-state companies the greenlight … to swallow the market whole.”
Speaking in favor of lifting the cap, attorneys Kevin Conroy of Foley Hoag and Mike Ross of Prince Lobel painted a grim picture of cannabis financing in Mass. Saying he represents several companies in the provisional phase of licensing who can’t find enough money to cross the finish line, Conroy said, “We believe these bills will allow for greater investment in cannabis in the Commonwealth. … We have exhausted high net worth individuals and family offices.”
While several large out-of-state companies support different versions of cap expansion, the New York-based Ascend Wellness, which operates Mass stores in Boston, Newton, and New Bedford, dispatched a small delegation to the hearing. Danielle Drummond, the company’s VP of social equity, suggested that lifting the cap would enable Ascend to assist more local social equity businesses through investments and training programs, while also helping companies like Ascend find more stability. “We have to be looking holistically at what the market needs,” Drummond said.
Kevin Gilnack of Mass EON put it differently. Pointing to other measures on the docket, like one that would “create cannabis career pathways to incarcerated individuals,” he told legislators that they can “advance long overdue bills that are widely supported,” and that “protect all participants in the industry,” or “in contrast” raise the cap, which he argued could have a “devastating impact.” As Gilnack and EON wrote in their letter to the speaker: “Allowing the largest, most profitable businesses to increase their wholesale purchasing power and retail footprint would endanger the survival of local small businesses and undermine the Legislature’s efforts to encourage full participation in the industry by people from communities harmed by the war on drugs.”
Jeff Similien of LowKey dispensary in Dorchester joined Gilnack, and also implored senators and representatives to process all the “great solutions shared [in various testimonies],” since “we have to figure out what’s best and works for everybody.”
Worker safety
Coalition for Cannabis Worker Safety Co-Founder Danny Carson helped start his organization following the passing of Lorna McMurrey, who died in January 2022 after going into cardiac arrest at the Trulieve plant in Holyoke. On Wednesday, he testified beside other worker advocates including Laura Bruneau, the mother of McMurrey, who told lawmakers that her “daughter’s death was preventable.”
Pushing for a bill that would make the CCC form a department of workplace and consumer safety, Carson spoke about the unventilated rooms and moldy weed that many workers endure daily: “This is the stark reality for a lot of workers in this industry.” In his years of advocating since losing McMurrey, his co-worker and friend, Carson said he has heard numerous stories of workers coming forward with complaints and being ignored.
Al Vega, the chief of strategy and engagement at the Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety & Health, also testified in favor of the workplace safety bill, while a representative of the UFCW, which represents more than a thousand grow and retail workers in Mass, said, “It has become incredibly clear that safety is a huge concern because of a lack of guidelines. While some of that does exist in cannabis facilities, there is a gray zone.” He added that there is a running joke in the cannabis industry that in 20 years, you will see commercials for personal injury attorneys asking if people worked in the weed biz.
“Safety regulations are lagging behind industry growth,” Bruneau said. “I hope you pass this to prevent any more harm to the public.”
Market saturation
While some parties were on hand to attempt to lift the retail license cap which could potentially skyrocket the number of pot shops, others took up the issue of market saturation. Sen. Pavel Payano and Rep. Dawne Shand pitched their act “to study supply and demand for cannabis cultivation.”
“Once hailed as a booming industry, it is now showing signs of distress,” Payano said. “The retail price has dropped by more than two-thirds.” Still, the senator added, “the Cannabis Control Commission continues to issue licenses without a clear picture. … We need thoughtful data-driven decisions.”
Medical marijuana
Medical marijuana patients offered similar testimonies to what they have said before—over and over, to lawmakers and regulators alike. In short: the program which serves thousands of patients in Mass is in deep trouble, and it needs immediate relief. Frank Shaw, a longtime patient advocate and member of the CCC’s Cannabis Advisory Board, said, “Our medical program is stuck in the past.” He added, “If medical dispensaries keep disappearing and new ones can’t open because of barriers to entry, then how can we expect this program to survive?”
One solution, Shaw and others argued, is for every dispensary to be able to add a medical register. Current regulations require a company to be vertically integrated in order to sell medical products, and the licensing costs are extraordinary. Legislation supported by the Massachusetts Medical Marijuana Patient Advocacy Alliance could change that.
MPAA President Jeremiah MacKinnon testified that the CCC has done nothing to correct the downward course, but said he doesn’t see the program as being beyond repair. “These bills are not radical, they’re rational,” he said. “There are over 80,000 medical patients, they reside in your districts. We have seen our medical program grow since adult use [dispensaries opened], but we can’t take that for granted.”
Meredith Freed, a patient and longtime advocate, said, “I have watched access deteriorate to the point where I maintain my own small home grow. … I should be able to go anywhere I want and get the medicine I need.”
Employee badging
According to the CCC, every individual who is approved to work for a CCC licensee has a “unique industry identification number” for “each licensed establishment at which they are employed.” But for each establishment they work at, an individual may need a flurry of badges—separate laminates for entering different sections, buildings, verticals, and locations of a workplace.
Charles Yon, the chief of staff for Native Sun, said the badging process has become “unnecessarily burdensome” and costly, and fanned his own cascade of state-issued laminates that he needs to enter different buildings and rooms under the purview of his own company.
“As the person responsible for all agent registration cards … I am intimately familiar with how the system works and where it doesn’t,” Yon said. “The general court has a real opportunity to simplify this system in a way that benefits everyone in Massachusetts.”
Purchasing limits
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 said, could help operators become more sustainable.
Speaking remotely from Western Mass near the New York border, Canna Provisions founder and CEO Meg Sanders said that she supports raising purchasing limits to match our neighbors and in order to keep Mass companies “competitive.”
Advertising restrictions
Sanders of Canna Provisions also testified about strict advertising rules. “We need the ability to compete,” she said, whereas dispensaries are currently policed and cited for using words like “bargain” and “bundle.”
Emma Thurston, the COO of Cal Verde Naturals in Belmont, said that manufacturing and cultivation partners pass on temporary deals to their store, but regulations currently prevent them from effectively then passing that savings on to consumers. “If you don’t have control over your inventory,” she said, “then you don’t have control of your business.”
Ruben Seyde, the founder and CEO of Delivered Inc. in hyper-competitive Worcester County, explained that his company was recently flagged by the CCC for advertising a 75% discount on product that was soon to expire.
“There is no public safety issue that these regulations prevent,” Thurston said. “This industry has an accounts receivable problem,” and stores need to be able to move product quickly.
Testing and batch sizes
Though lab testing and related fraud is the talk of the Mass cannabis industry these days, the topic was mostly on the back burner during Wednesday’s hearing, though it did come up tangentially through some of the proposals. Matt Allen of MA Craft Cultivation spoke on behalf of the Sungrown Cannabis Alliance, saying that the “system makes no sense for outdoor growers.” As one example, he said grows like his spend thousands testing dirt, only to have to subsequently test their products for the same toxins. Allen said, “We want this to be an opportunity to revive farming in Massachusetts,” but argued that it is incredibly hard to thrive in the current climate.
Allen also testified in favor of a bill that would increase the testing sample size that growers have to send to labs. That measure was derided by Dimitrios Pelekoudas of Assured Testing Laboratories, who said objective truths had been ignored in the bill’s drafting and charged that there was no consulting of subject matter experts. “Retaining batch sizes at 15 pounds,” he said, “will … continue to keep the people of the commonwealth safe.”
CCC oversight
There has been a lot of noise from state lawmakers and the inspector general about the need for increased oversight of the commission. At the start of Wednesday’s hearing, joint committee co-chair Rep. Dan Donahue noted that House Speaker Mariano has made cannabis policy a “priority this session,” and said, “We understand the need for a well functioning cannabis regulator.”
Humming a harsher tune, Sen. Michael Moore, who has been among the loudest critics of the CCC in the state legislature, testified in favor of establishing an oversight unit of the state Office of the Inspector General within the CCC. “The CCC cannot and will not reform itself,” Moore said. The senator added that his office has been informed about serious problems at the agency including workplace bullying as recently as last week, and cited the nearly complete turnover in senior staff over the past few years. For icing on the cake, Moore called out the CCC for spending several hundred thousand dollars on outside attorneys, and for moving at a “glacial” pace in general. “Only after countless years is social consumption slowly rolling out,” the senator added.
Jeff Rawson of the Institute of Cannabis Science remarked on several bills up for consideration, focusing on what he called the CCC’s “failure to protect consumers and workers,” and supporting increased oversight. Meghan Dube, a patient and whistleblower who until recently served as the CCC’s business operations manager, said the agency has tools at its disposal to protect consumers, but doesn’t use them—like the secret shopper program, for example, or its whistleblower line. “Staffers have tried to put this in place,” Dube said, adding that she personally helped to install a phone line for the specific purpose, but two years later the commission has yet to activate the resource.
Ryan Dominguez, the founder and executive director of the Massachusetts Cannabis Coalition, testified on behalf of a “comprehensive legislative package” that his trade association backed across 18 different bills. The group, which represents licensees of all sizes, is focused on expanding economic opportunities through changes like raising daily purchasing limits, as well as “removing red tape of outdated laws and regulations,” especially around badging. Dominguez argued that those kinds of measures—along with raising the dispensary ownership cap, which he said the MCC supports—will actually improve the lot of his members, whereas “simply reforming the CCC will not resolve the crisis that we’re in.”
