POLITICS
Straight to the Dome Adult Use is on the Horizon B Y N I C K M U R R AY
P H O T O G R A P H E D B Y S E A N PAVO N E
If you came away from my last Maine Cannabis Chronicle legislative update with a sense of despair, worry not; some progress has been made since we went “Straight to the Dome” in the spring issue. The state of Maine, after dropping its first contract with METRC for adult-use seed-to-sale tracking, decided to take up the offer from the Florida-based biotech company to track the medical program instead. BioTrackTHC’s system will be used for the budding adult use market. These systems will be used to track Maine cannabis along the process from cultivation, to production, to retail. Now that the legislature and Governor have approved the rules package from the Office of Marijuana Policy, this process can finally begin in earnest. We are looking at early 2020, for the first adult use sales of legal cannabis in Maine. You’re not stoned, (well, you might be) but it’s taken a while to get here. Maine voters passed Question 1 in November 2016, to make cannabis legal for adults over 21. The legislature’s Marijuana Legalization Committee met for much of 2017, holding hearings, work sessions, and submitting two bills. Many were left to wonder what all the work was for when then Governor LePage vetoed both attempts to implement the adult use market. It seems like the only changes that came out of the long process were a reduction in the number of flowering plants in a personal garden from six to three, and a ban on social clubs.
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MAINECANNABISCHRONICLE.COM
Now, not only are Mainers allowed to grow much less than they intended after passage of Question 1, they also don’t have a place to consume cannabis products legally outside of a private residence. It’s been frustrating for industry entrepreneurs and consumers alike. The sad part is that when all is said and done, Maine will be the state which took the longest to get its legal cannabis market up and running. The western states that legalized in 2012 and 2016 all had sales within two years of the vote. Massachusetts had its first adult use cannabis sales the week of Thanksgiving last year, barely more than two years following their vote. The absurd delay in Maine has harmed many folks who were ready to jump in feet first once legalization happened. Some entrepreneurs have been sitting on empty warehouse space waiting for the state to get its act together. Could you imagine paying rent on a building for two years or more before you could do anything with it? This was a gamble in itself since each town would have to approve every site along its own cannabis business guidelines. However, the state has been responsible for most of the headaches up to this point. Mainers are used to seeing cannabis stores, despite what status quo politicians and prohibitionists would have you believe. Since the legislature passed an expansion of the medical program last year, dozens of caregiver storefronts have popped up in our cities. Just drive down Portland’s Forest Ave or Lisbon Street in Lewiston for a micro-tour of boutique cannabis shops. Adding insult to injury, the Governor of Illinois just signed a sweeping bill making that state the first in the country to establish a legal cannabis market through the legislative process. Every other state has legalized cannabis at the ballot box.
