Marijuana sales delay brings finger pointing
Photo | Matt Wright
Marijuana plants growing at Sira Naturals' Milford facility
As it becomes evident that there will be no legal recreational marijuana sales in Massachusetts in early July, advocates behind the 2016 legalization ballot question placed the blame Wednesday on municipalities and the attorney general.
"We're not going to see any legal cannabis sales on July 1. I question if we will see any in the entire month of July," Jim Borghesani, the spokesman for the 2016 Yes on 4 ballot campaign and now of the Marijuana Policy Project, said outside the State House on Wednesday. "This is an unflattering distinction for Massachusetts. Every state that legalized prior to use has met their date for start of sales, we will not."
Lawmakers and the Cannabis Control Commission (CCC) had adopted July 1 as the target date for the start of retail marijuana sales, though the state's new marijuana law did not establish a firm launch date. The Legislature in 2017 approved a reworked version of the legalization law voters passed in 2016.
Borghesani said he places "a lot of blame on municipalities" because many have dragged their feet on establishing zoning for marijuana businesses and have not moved quickly to agree to the host community agreements prospective businesses must have executed before applying for a license from the CCC.
He also faulted Attorney General Maura Healey for her recent approval of a request from the town of Mansfield to extend its temporary moratorium on marijuana businesses through June 2019. The town is weighing zoning change to facilitate marijuana businesses. Healey's office said the decision does not mean all similar extensions will be approved, but marijuana advocates have blasted it as a setback for legalization.
"Now, with this decision by our attorney general, she is adding potentially six more months of delays to a system that has already been delayed time and time again," Borghesani said Wednesday.
Caroline Pineau, who is trying to start a marijuana business in Haverhill, said Wednesday that the biggest roadblocks for her are "zoning and getting my municipality of Haverhill to figure out its local policy surrounding cannabis."
"Without that, I can't secure an actual location and I can't apply for my license," she said.
Regardless of what the attorney general has ruled or what municipalities have or have not done, no adult-use marijuana can be sold in Massachusetts until it is tested and approved for sale by an independent testing laboratory. As of Tuesday, the CCC had not received a completed license from a business seeking to operate a testing lab, though one potential lab had begun to work on an application.
The CCC on Tuesday formally asked its staff to prioritize the review of license applications for independent testing laboratories, critical links in the supply chain without which no retail shops could open.
During an appearance on WBUR's Radio Boston on Wednesday, Hoffman said that he expects at least three testing labs currently working with the medical marijuana program to apply for licenses from the CCC "very quickly."
Borghesani said he was not sure why no testing labs had applied for licensure by the CCC yet, but suggested that the labs already testing medical marijuana could be tapped to analyze pot bound for the adult-use market in the meantime.
"I do know there is a possibility of using the existing testing labs from the Department of Public Health for the medical cannabis, to use that for product," he said. "I do think there is a remedy, at least a temporary remedy."
Hoffman said the CCC has spoken to all of the testing labs that work with DPH and said it will not take long for those labs to get up and running once the CCC licenses them.
"Once they get their licenses they're pretty much ready to go because they already have the labs up and operating," he said.
Will Luzier, who served as campaign manager for the successful 2016 legalization ballot initiative, said the ramifications of the delay in launching legal and taxed marijuana sales extend beyond the marijuana industry and could affect state government's bottom line.
"There is included in the state budget for this year an allocation for revenue from marijuana taxes. The longer that this process is delayed, the more the shortfall will be on the budget for those revenues," Luzier said, referring to the $63 million in projected revenue the governor, House and Senate all used to build their fiscal year 2019 budgets.
One group that Borghesani said is shielded from the blame for the delay: the regulators of the CCC itself.
"I think they're doing everything they can. But they can't get applications until the towns complete their host community agreement. I think they've worked very diligently," he said. "Unfortunately, we're not going to see sales start July 1."
Hoffman apologized Tuesday "that people have expectations that were not met" and reiterated Wednesday that he and the CCC would rather ensure a smooth launch for the legal marijuana industry than a quick one.
"We made the decision -- rightly or wrongly, you can criticize us but we made the decision explicitly and publicly -- that we were going to do this right. That was more important to us than hitting a deadline, particularly a deadline as I said that is not a legislative mandate," Hoffman said on WBUR. "I hope I don't sound defensive, but that has literally been our guiding principle, that we're going to do this right and we're going to do it right for the long-term."
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