One new CCC member assured stakeholders that the agency is “working diligently in the background” to address diversion, other pressing issues
Following a brief and rather introductory meeting on May 28, today the three new members of the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission held their first full public session together.
Among the many changes coming as a result of new legislation signed into law by Gov. Maura Healey in April, the size of the body was reduced from five commissioners to three, with appointment authority consolidated under the governor (previously, the governor, treasurer, and attorney general had appointing responsibilities). The legislation also “requires that one commissioner have a background in social justice, and the other two commissioners must have backgrounds in public health, public safety, social justice, consumer regulations, or the production and distribution of marijuana or marijuana products.”
The housecleaning on today’s agenda included even more specific assignments. Chris Harding, the new CCC chair, will head up the body’s Legislative Review Working Group, the Secret Shopper Working Group, and efforts looking into advertising, hemp, and federal rescheduling. Xiomara DeLobato, the social justice expert, will manage the Access to Medical Cannabis Working Group and serve as the point person for the Social Consumption license class. Anthony Wilson, whose background is in “cannabis law, municipal government, and small business development,” will run the Audit Working Group and listening sessions about Independent Testing Labs.
Addressing inversion and diversion
The commissioners were also designated certain topics, some of which they briefly addressed in their opening comments on Thursday. Wilson, for example, is assigned to cover “inversion,” the illegal introduction of unregulated products into a legal market. He said that the phenomenon and its inverted cousin, diversion, are issues he has heard a lot about from industry stakeholders, and that these problems are potentially not as high on the commission’s priority list as they should be.
Wilson read a complaint from a Michigan regulator about a licensee there “who is diverting products into the illegal market,” and possibly through Bay State licensees as well. In March, the commissioner added, the Michigan regulator received “complaints from the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission that marijuana products with Michigan Metrc tags were discovered in a Massachusetts marijuana facility.”
“I just wanted to tell the industry that you may not be hearing everything,” Wilson said, “but the commission has been working diligently in the background on a number of issues.”
Making things run more smoothly
Wilson added that progress at the commission could come faster and much more efficiently, while certain parts of the meeting were specifically focused on streamlining operations. Among the potential changes, Executive Director Travis Ahern proposed adjustments to the “Commission’s current practice of presenting all license renewals for vote at a public meeting,” since that process “creates scheduling dependencies and administrative friction that can make it difficult for [licensees] to meet renewal deadlines and for staff to efficiently manage high-volume renewal periods.”
Most of the meeting was routine and uneventful, with Commissioner Harding wrapping things up soon after the three-hour mark. Some CCC meetings have lasted longer than six hours in the past, but the new chair said that he hopes to do more planning ahead in order to keep them shorter. To that end, they punted some items to the next meeting, on June 17, including further discussion of emergency regulations to comply with the extensive new law passed in April. On Thursday, the new members passed a motion ordering the legal team to prepare draft language to reflect the increase in purchase limits from one ounce to two ounces, which is already in effect, as well as the new definitional changes around ownership, which have not yet taken hold.
As for the technical deadline to make those adjustments by June 19, ED Ahern explained in a recent interview with TJM that, per the letter of the new law, the CCC has 60 days from April 19 to implement a long and complicated list of changes, from ‘modernizing’ license caps, to ‘boosting public accountability requirements.’ Realistically, though, the agency will not be able to get all of that work done in just two months, and has communicated with state lawmakers about prioritizing certain elements.
Updating the licensing freeze
Before wrapping up, the new members also revisited some motions that their predecessors passed, including a freeze on new cultivation licenses which they voted on during their last-ever meeting, on April 16. In response to “unchecked canopy expansion has created structural oversupply,” as former Commissioner Kimberly Roy put it, members approved a four-month pause on new licenses, and agreed to reassess the situation after that point. At today’s meeting, their replacements updated the move.
All three commissioners voted in favor of a motion “to amend the previously approved motion dated April 16, 2026 regarding the temporary licensing freeze involving indoor and outdoor marijuana cultivators to allow the licensee freeze to go into effect subject to the additional requirement that staff gather and provide data from other jurisdictions around similar licensing freezes and their effect on equity applicants and licensees within 90 days.”
To be continued …
An earlier version of this article mistakenly noted that the new commissioners paused the licensing freeze. We regret the error and have updated the article.
