Cannabis Control Commission Turmoil Threatens Massachusetts’ $7 Billion Industry
The Cannabis Control Commission is in chaos, and the state’s $7 billion pot industry is paying for it.
Months of scandal and a call for receivership have many questioning who is at the helm of the state agency, and what their dysfunction means for consumers and marijuana companies.
Samantha Kanter dreams of opening a restaurant that serves weed-infused dishes, with cannayoga classes in the back. It should be allowed in Massachusetts, she said. Social consumption — gathering places where people can use marijuana products on-site — was legalized by voters in 2016, blessed by the Legislature six years later, and touted in January as a 2024 priority by a cannabis regulator.
But Kanter is still waiting.
The Cannabis Control Commission, which oversees the pot industry in Massachusetts, has not finalized rules for social consumption, leaving businesses adrift and consumers restless. Without clear rules, Kanter has no path to pursue a cannabis license for the restaurant she envisions.
“They haven’t made any movement. They have not given us any proper excuse or even feedback. They keep pushing deadlines back, when we’re held to deadlines every day,” she said. “The CCC has no repercussions for this. All faith I have is lost.”
It’s just one example, advocates and industry insiders say, of how the dysfunction at the CCC is hurting companies, customers, and the $7 billion cannabis industry at large. Amid leadership turmoil and turnover, the agency is slow moving and has dithered for years on reforms, including widely supported changes to medical marijuana, cannabis delivery, product testing requirements, and THC potency levels. And so, many agree, Massachusetts — once a leader in legalized cannabis — is falling behind.
“The CCC is slowly killing the industry,” said Jason Reposa, founder of Good Feels, an infused beverage company that sells THC drink enhancers. “They cannot act fast enough.”
Many of top posts at the CCC — executive director, chair, and general counsel among them — are either empty, or being filled temporarily. Its chair, Shannon O’Brien, was suspended as commission chair after an investigation alleged she made a series of racist and “culturally insensitive” remarks. In June came allegations of a toxic workplace inside the agency. Soon after, state Inspector General Jeff Shapiro asked lawmakers to appoint a receiver to manage day-to-day operations and reimagine the “rudderless” commission.
The Legislature has not gone that far. Instead, Representative Daniel Donahue, chairperson of the Joint Committee on Cannabis Policy, said lawmakers plans to hold public hearings this fall to revisit the commission’s structure and “identify the best path forward.”
For its part, the CCC believes it can right its own ship.
Acting chair Ava Callender Concepcion said the agency — whose commissioners are appointed by various statewide elected officials, but operate independently — intends to hold more public hearings, move quicker, and increase transparency about its day-to-day operations.
A new governance charter aims to clarify responsibilities of the top brass, one of the inspector general’s biggest criticisms. And commissioners have begun crafting new regulations for the growing and selling of cannabis products out of an update to the marijuana law the Legislature passed in 2022, with a goal of having those rules in place by years’ end, Concepcion said.
“The agency of 2017 is not the agency of 2024,” she said. “We want to be a resource. We want to be able to provide information and to provide clarity.”
It may be too little, too late. At a recent hearing, state lawmakers called the CCC “inconsistent” and “disappointing,” with commissioners “on a power grab” and problems dating back to “day one.” Many licensees are at least as frustrated, saying the agency focuses on small-bore issues, while larger problems strangle their business.
One example? The “two-driver” rule for cannabis delivery companies. Intended to prevent robberies, the measure makes ferrying weed to residences far more expensive and onerous for businesses. In December, commissioners voted to eliminate the rule. But seven months later, delivery drivers have yet to receive the official green light from the CCC to drive alone.
The agency also took almost two years to finalize regulations on host community agreements — contracts between a municipality and a cannabis business — and has not weighed in on controversial proposals that would allow marijuana retailers to operate more than three locations. (A CCC spokesperson said changes to that measure would require the Legislature.) Another administrative order allowing cannabis businesses to transport product over state waters to Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket only came after a dispensary closed due to lack of supply and sued the commission, by which point some-500 medical marijuana patients on the islands were at risk of losing access to legal cannabis.
And the commission’s primary job of approving and inspecting of new licensees can take months, business owners said, with agency staff slow to answer questions while companies foot the cost of rent and equipment they cannot yet use.
Payton Shubrick, founder of 6 Brick’s dispensary in Springfield, said the lengthy timelines strangle businesses already burdened by high opening expenses, federal taxes, and weed prices. Without a competent commission, more will go under, she said.
“With no cannabis businesses, you have no Cannabis Control Commission,” Shubrick added. “It leads you to wonder, where is the leadership? Where is the accountability?”
The wait time for CCC inspections is down to 2 weeks from four months in 2019, but Concepcion said there is still room for improvement.
Then consider medical marijuana. The commission has scarcely updated regulations in the medical market since they were first conceived in 2013, said Jeremiah MacKinnon, executive director of the Massachusetts Patient Advocacy Alliance. That’s despite pleas to eliminate requirements that medical cannabis operators must grow, harvest, and sell their own marijuana, and pay a $50,000 annual fee to operate. McKinnon said these rules keep many small businesses out of the medical market.
That means less competition among providers and more inconvenience for patients. Indeed, the number of medical marijuana patients certified by the state has declined by 13 percent since December 2020.
In 2018, the state’s 25-member Cannabis Advisory Board recommended revisiting the issues with medical marijuana, and in 2020, CCC promised again to address it. It has not, and three attempts to change the rule with legislation on Beacon Hill have stalled.
“It almost seems to me like they are waiting for someone else to do the heavy lifting,” MacKinnon said. “At this point, many [patients] feel that this commission is not the agent of change that we had hoped for.”
Even when the CCC does implement reforms, some say it fails to consult with professionals.
No current commissioners have run a cannabis business. But tweaks to marijuana testing requirements were created in November without consultation from scientists. The testing rules are “so vague,” said Megan Dobro, cofounder of Westfield testing facility SafeTiva Labs, that different labs find varying results, and retailers are free to shop around in pursuit of higher THC potency calculations.
“It was clear [the CCC] did not have guidance from the testing labs on the ground,” she added. “Again, it left more questions than answers.”
The CCC is hiring to fill nearly 10 vacant positions and expects to bring on 13 new employees starting in August. Commissioners also expect to hire a permanent executive director in October, almost one year after Shawn Collins resigned from the post. O’Brien, the suspended chair, has wrapped up termination hearings and now awaits a decision from state Treasurer Deborah B. Goldberg.
In the future, Chris Zawacki, chief executive of retailer and cultivator Green Meadows, wants the commission to leave the theatrics behind and listen closely to cannabis businesses.
“I don’t know what the CCC’s challenges are behind closed doors, and I think they don’t understand us as operators,” he said. “But the fact of the matter is, we need each other to make the cannabis industry work.”
