Leicester

Becker College in Worcester has become the third in the city this week to say it is shifting classes online for the fall semester as worries mount about rising coronavirus cases in Massachusetts and travel restrictions in place from those coming from many other states.

Employees at marijuana company Cultivate’s cultivation facility in Leicester have voted to join the United Food & Commercial Workers Union, according to a Tuesday announcement.

The coronavirus pandemic has forced Central Massachusetts business to take on new roles in preventing further spread of the disease, including enforcing mask-wearing in public and – at times – turning away would-be revenue-generating customers who don’t abide by the mandate.

Over the course of the last year and a half, the medical and recreational cannabis retailers have grown into two very different yet overlapping businesses, largely coexisting and occasionally competing.

Leicester’s Cultivate was the first recreational pot shop to open in Worcester County, and among those to reopen their doors to adult-use customers on Monday.

The global coronavirus pandemic has upended significant swaths of the economy in Massachusetts and the relatively-young legal marijuana industry is no exception.

When they looked in their email a few weeks ago and found subpoenas from U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling's office looking into their relationships with marijuana businesses, leaders in communities across Central Massachusetts, and the rest of the state, were surprised.

A federal grand jury is looking into the mandatory agreements and payments between host communities and marijuana businesses, according to a report in the Boston Globe.

A Massachusetts cannabis dispensary industry group representing dozens of cannabis firms said the legal market is getting lumped in with the illicit market.

Cultivate, one of the early players in Massachusetts’ recreational cannabis industry, has purchased land in an Uxbridge business park to build a cultivation facility to supplement they existing Leicester operations.