Marijuana regulators levy $800K in fines against three Central Mass. companies
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The Botanist operates a medical marijuana cultivation facility in Sterling.
The Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission agreed to levy $800,000 in fines against three cannabis companies at their regular meeting on Thursday, including $200,000 against Garden Remedies, $350,000 against Healthy Pharms and $250,000 against The Botanist, all of which either operate in Central Mass. or else are owned by companies who operate subsidiaries in the region.
Both Garden Remedies, which has business operations in Marlborough and Fitchburg, and Healthy Pharms, which is owned by 4Front Ventures of Canada, the same company that owns the Mission dispensary in Worcester, were fined for using banned pesticides.
The Botanist, owned by Acreage Holdings, Inc. in New York, which operates a dispensary in Worcester and which plans to open dispensaries in Shrewsbury and Leominster, was fined for attempting to own or control more than three stores, which is the maximum allowed in the state.
A lengthy report before the commission said a banned pesticide was found during a January 2019 inspection of Garden Remedies’ Fitchburg cultivation and manufacturing facility, and in April 2019, an anonymous employee reported the falsified documents.
According to the report, Garden Remedies then said it would fire its director of operations and issued a two-day unpaid suspension and final warning to the executive in charge of supervising that role, among other internal personnel restructurings. On top of the fine, Garden Remedies agreed to stop using prohibited pesticides, submit to a two-year probationary period and to report any test results indicating the presence of pesticides at inappropriate levels within 24 hours.
The Botanist, in turn, was fined for pressing ahead with licensing applications which exceeded the limit for how many stores a single business may control or own. In this case, The Botanist has provisional licensing applications for stores in Worcester and Shrewsbury, while Acreage Holdings, its parent company, also has contractual agreements with Patient Centric of Martha’s Vineyard, HCI, and Mass Medi-Spa, each of which holds one provisional license, according to CCC documents.
According to CCC documents, Acreage Holdings said in a disclosure it does not own or have direct or indirect control over the operations of these businesses nor any equity interests. However, CCC enforcement staff concluded in September the commission would likely consider the agreements between Acreage and the three companies to constitute having a controlling stake in their businesses, according to the CCC report.
In January, The Botanist continued with its provisional licensing application processes without adequately restructuring those contracts, according to the CCC, resulting in Thursday’s fine. The Botanist has since either terminated or restructured its contracts with PCMV and HCI.
As for Healthy Pharms, the CCC and the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources launched an investigation after pesticides turned up in a July 2019 test report. Healthy Pharms submitted a plan for correction to the commission in August of the same year, according to the report, as well as a supplementary correction plan in September. The CCC said that not only did Healthy Pharms use banned pesticides, the company also failed to report the test findings in a timely manner, unintentionally submitted misleading information and, separately, incorrectly entered strain information into the Seed-to-Sale tracking program Metrc.
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