Pt. 2—The ED addresses hemp regulation, closures, worker safety, lab testing, and social consumption
This is the second part of our massive interview with Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission Executive Director Travis Ahern. You can read the first part here to see what he has to say about the agency budget, staffing, social equity, the Massachusetts Medical use of Marijuana program, and more.
CF: If it was up to you, would hemp come under the CCC’s purview, or would it go somewhere else?
TA: To boil it down to a simple answer, the answer is yes. It is the same plant, and it’s being regulated two different ways, and that has a negative impact in a lot of ways on our cannabis businesses. So, for example, the way that the House bill would come out, we would be put in a place for out-of-state hemp beverages, for example, of endorsing those products.
Once we endorse them, we hand them over to the ABCC [Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission], and the ABCC does their thing. But a cannabis beverage is going to have to be at a dispensary. So, now you’re putting a cannabis beverage at a disadvantage over a hemp beverage. That’s one specific example, but ultimately the answer is, at a national level, we’re all talking about why are we regulating the same plant two different ways? We know why, right? It’s the federal farm bill on hemp and it’s the scheduling of cannabis. And yet, does that make sense from a policy perspective? No, it doesn’t.
Now let’s talk about worker safety. One of the real bombshells of the CCC, in my opinion, and going back through all the documents that came out in the O’Brien lawsuit, is the amount of time that commissioners didn’t even know about the death of Lorna McMurrey at Trulieve. What can really change soon and what do you have your eye on, and how does that never happen again? How does the CCC stay on top of these things?
I think the communication issue that was flagged that you mentioned is addressed by just constant communication between the executive director and commissioners and having those things in place, which I’m comfortable has been done from an employee safety perspective, prior to my arrival but also since my arrival, and obviously with my background as well. OSHA [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] will touch us where other federal agencies will not. If we ask a question of OSHA, if we rely on them, they will assist us where some other federal agencies feel like they can’t. So OSHA is a good partner here, comparatively to other federal agencies.
Additionally, I think I can’t give you a full answer of how nothing will happen again. I think the answer is vigilance on our part. It’s vigilance on the part of SOPs [standard operating procedures] that we require of the businesses to make sure that they have employee safety protocols in place. And I think the other thing that you see as an example of that moving forward is as the commissioners have talked about social consumption. We can’t set up a scenario where somebody working at a social consumption establishment is required to have secondhand smoke all day for eight hours a day. And so that is contemplated within these regs. We have comments back on that to say how do we actually operationalize that, and those conversations need to be finalized. But those are the types of discussions that need to happen at the forefront, and then the policies can come after the regulations. If you followed along with the discussions of social consumption regs, it has certainly been at the forefront.
I just want to talk about closures for a second. As a reporter, they’re kind of hard to track. I know people don’t always relinquish licenses in the same way. You’re all so busy getting people started at the beginning of the business cycle, what can you tell me about that unfortunate part of the industry, which is a real thing right now for sure.
I think ultimately I generally look at the reasons when we see somebody go out. My parents are in the Berkshires. I look at numerous businesses on a corner in Great Barrington, and a couple of them go out of business and a couple of them are still operating, and I say that’s kind of market dynamics. I don’t know that I have concerns about that. I look at other ones where we’re looking at folks that are saying they can’t work with their municipality. I look at folks saying they can’t know what the challenges that they’re facing are, and then there are those things that are within our purview.
I think the other thing that I believe that most folks know, but maybe not folks who are not following along, is the difference between the beginning of cannabis in Massachusetts and now is the competition along the borders of the state. So, again, in the Berkshires, you’re now having New York dispensaries on the other side of the border. On the southern border, you’re looking at Connecticut or Rhode Island. North Shore, again, North Shore doesn’t have direct competition … but you do have Maine, and Maine has been a market factor as well.
When we look at the numbers that are closing, I understand why it’s a story. But we also are seeing the market demand. We’re seeing the gross revenue numbers in the state going up despite what has also been a concern about the average price. We’ve had a lot of discussions that are probably more preliminary as it relates to the average price in relation to tier relegation, for example, but also theoretically what we’ve seen in other states with licensing freezes. And so we’ll review all of those things, but ultimately from a bottom line perspective, we have had businesses go out. We’ve also had businesses come in. While those gross revenues continue to move forward, and the ones that are coming in as well, I also want to hear what their challenges are.
And it’s always about financing. So we’ve been working on that a lot as well. Commissioner [Kimberly] Roy, Commissioner [Bruce] Stebbins, and I have met banking institutions that are in the space to sort of see where they are, where they’re looking to go. And I’d say that they’re all looking to be ready to pounce on rescheduling.
So, lab testing. We could do four hours on just testing. I figure I’m happy to talk about any element because it really is just so amorphous, but maybe start with the context of the Assured Testing Laboratories enforcement. Is that something that I assume started before you were around? What was your role, and did you have any frustrations with the process? Speaking for the public, I would say the criticism leveled would be confusion around it not being a recall around the products. It was obviously a huge, just massive thing to deal with, and how do you feel it went, and anything you would do differently next time?
I think the actions of the agency were to ensure that lab testing is what the public is expecting and the consumer is expecting. So whereas there were findings that question whether or not that lab was following their SOPs and doing everything appropriately, we took action. And so I think ultimately, because of the severity of it, we went the direction of the summary suspension order, which shut them down immediately, and then we worked through with them and came to an agreement on how they may be able to reopen.
I can’t talk about everything related to enforcement actions. What I liked about that agreement [with Assured] was that the answer is not that we are looking to shut them down by a monetary fine that would not allow them to operate. But there needed to be penalties in there, which were in there because of the severity of the instance. I like that it addressed what we found to be an issue where we need to regain trust with that testing lab because we need to be able to work with them in the future. And so we have protocols now in place that will allow us a period of time to make sure that everything is being double checked, that we have visibility in to do more than we would normally have, and that there will be a probationary period.
To your point on the public health and safety advisory, I think ultimately we did get feedback that folks would have liked to see where something was sold. We had the opposite feedback from a previous advisory, which was to say, Why are the retailers getting named? We put a product on the shelf that we were told was tested from a licensee that is approved by the CCC. So the ultimate path forward lies somewhere in between those things. Ideally, what I would like to see is that this is a reset in the testing space. And because of the time period that the enforcement action took place on and just the sheer amount of data that came out of that, I fully appreciate the fact that there was some criticism about how easy it was for a consumer or patient to access the data.
Considering the agency’s budget troubles, is the development of a state-run lab off the table right now?
We have some recommendations that will come through [a CCC consultant] of how we would handle a state-run lab. We have some other discussions as well that may overlap with that, including a secret shopper program. We have what is basically what we can afford to currently do with the resources we have of a secret shopper program. To do that on a scale that I believe the public would want us to be doing it on, which again just adds to consumer confidence, we just don’t have the resources to do that.
So between a secret shopper program that requires storage of evidence, etc., and an internal reference lab, both of those will ultimately come down to funding. If we are unable to get funding, then we will continue on with what we have tried to do at the moment in terms of the very small and limited secret shopper program that we have, and also working right now what we have is agreements with our existing ITLs (Independent Testing Labs) when we need access to testing space that we can access them. The problem with that from a sustainability standpoint, from a process standpoint, is it’s not ideal because we also regulate those ITLs. … It’s not optimal.
Some of the criticisms leveled have been from people in the testing space that they haven’t been listened to enough. But now that there are lawsuits between many of them, are there conflicts of interest there? Has the infighting or the litigation made the situation especially difficult?
Our director of enforcement training Armond Enos has been working with the ITLs in listening sessions. Commissioner Roy participates in those. I believe Chair [Shannon] O’Brien indicated she would like to participate. So, the reality is yes, there’s some litigation between ITLs that we just have to be mindful of, and we set the ground rules, and they respect that. And we’ve tried to work so that we also, in addition to hearing from external consultants on what they feel we should do with protocols and regulations, that the ITLs also have a voice in it. And to their credit, and despite the awkwardness that you mentioned, they did provide to us their written thoughts on our protocols and ways to modernize. And so I think at this point, between the consulting services, between the feedback from the ITLs, and from our excellent testing staff, we are looking to probably by the end of this calendar year, early 2026, to present the commissioners with options for them to consider to update our protocols and regulations around testing. The legislature is also very invested in that, and so I think that will be something that will be good for all parties.
That brings us to social consumption. It’s really going to touch a lot. It’s going to impact your bandwidth and budget. It’s going to touch on tangential issues like badging because of new license types. It’s going to be a Herculean task. It already has been. Once these regs are written, how do you see things moving along? And of course there is the social equity exclusivity period to consider. … What are you able to gauge from your seat?
I can’t kind of jump ahead of the work that the commissioners will do and that I’ll be doing with staff, but I can give you my initial thoughts. Some of this comes from me as a former municipal official as well. And so this is just as long as we’re clear that this is totally my outlook.
How the current four commissioners are looking to finalize the reg package will theoretically change some of these things. [The regulations can still change]. The cool down area was the most discussed informal comment period, but anything is technically within further discussion before finalization. So just high level, my thoughts on this from my six months, and this was a train in motion prior to my arrival: We will see.
There was a discussion originally about having a pilot program to say here the communities are going to start out. That is [no longer in the regulations], so that cannot happen formally, but it will happen informally. We know, and we have worked with, and we have been out on the road talking to anybody who wants us to—a number of communities that are raising their hand and saying, We’re in, we’ll be ready to go. And that’s the Somervilles that are excellent partners and always at the forefront. But there are other folks that I wouldn’t obviously have just kind of pinpointed from my own municipal experience. So, we’ve got Cape Cod. [Some are] closer to the City of Boston like Somerville, and we’ve got central and western Mass towns and cities that are looking for this. And so I think what we’ll end up with is basically an organic pilot program.
That will dictate the rollout because if it’s five or if it’s 10 communities, those are the communities where we’re going to be seeing license applications. And quite frankly, some of the communities we’ve spoken to do not currently have a social equity applicant. That will impact some of this, but also whether those existing businesses start to partner with social equity applicants to be prepared is something. So, I think those communities will set the example, and those communities are going to be the first ones to do their bylaws. They’re going to be the first ones to kind of get through that stage and have a process in place because they have to opt in.
The easiest thing for us to get off the ground with the resources we have right now is the supplemental license type [for existing licensed cannabis operators in Mass]. These folks are in the system right now. These folks that work and they have existing agreements within their municipalities. They still have to work that out with their municipalities, but it’s the easiest one for us to get up and running from an IT standpoint and from a process development standpoint. That one I don’t have any concerns that we can’t get going very soon after the regs are finalized.
For hospitality [licenses] and for event organizers, those ones are going to require a lot more work within our IT platforms are a major concern right now, as well as process development. These are not one license type, it is three license types within a new existing opportunity. So with that again, I think if supplemental is kind of the first one out the door, then I do see a rush because that probably looks like a relatively small initial phase? … Once we get to hospitality, once we get to event organizer, then I think by that point, with numerous communities online, with numerous businesses operating the space, I think that’s when we’ll kind of start to see some plateauing.
