Uxbridge

Outdoor growers face a litany of hurdles to bring product to market, but the end result can be an environmentally friendlier option to indoor production.

The company has opened a new home improvement shop in Pembroke and is celebrating the one-year anniversary of the opening of its Uxbridge location, which was the company’s 13th location.

Current rules require two employees to be in any vehicle that is transporting cannabis, but commissioners voted in December three to one to approve a change to eliminate that requirement. Business owners are waiting for the commission to formally rewrite and approve the regulations, a process that has taken four months.

Just as cannabis businesses are gearing up for the holiday known as 4/20, an unofficial celebration of marijuana where dispensaries see some of their largest crowds of the year, eleven companies in Central Massachusetts received $430,000 from the first grants from the Massachusetts Cannabis Social Equity Trust Fund.

Clark University, the Leominster East Side Community Center, and the MetroWest YMCA Regional Early Learning Center are among the 20 Central Massachusetts entities slated to benefit from $23.08 million in federal funding pending final approval by the U.S. Senate and President Joe Biden.

Worcester joined a growing list of municipalities no longer collecting community impact fees from cannabis businesses in January 2023, after collecting nearly $5.2 million in those fees from fiscal 2019 to 2023.

“Hopefully this is a cautionary tale for those municipalities that are still resistant to refunding unsubstantiated community impact fees,” Thomas MacMillian, the legal representative for Caroline’s, told WBJ in an email.

Cresco Labs is suing two Massachusetts dispensaries over a lack of payment for goods produced from Cresco’s Leicester based production and cultivation facility.

Nearly six years into the full legalization of recreational cannabis in Massachusetts, dramatic changes to the marketplace will require businesses that were early entrants to double-down on their efforts to differentiate themselves, and new entrants need to position themselves differently.

Smaller cannabis companies are white labeling and collaborating as they try to survive a fierce pricing competition against large corporations in an increasingly saturated market.