INTEREST HIGH IN BAY STATE ON CALIF. POT
Massachusetts marijuana officials are keeping a close eye on California as it becomes the latest to permit recreational pot.
“We’ll keep close tabs on it,” said Steve Hoffman, chairman of the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission. “Some of the approaches and programs they’re using in Oakland and L.A. are very interesting to us.”
Yesterday, California became the latest state to allow the sale and purchase of recreational marijuana. Sales were brisk in the shops lucky enough to score one of the roughly 100 state licenses issued so far, but customers in some of the state’s largest cities were out of luck. Los Angeles and San Francisco hadn’t authorized shops in time to get state licenses and other cities, such as Riverside and Fresno, blocked sales altogether.
Massachusetts is still in the process of adopting regulations to allow commercial marijuana sales. Hoffman said CCC officials are working on too tight of a timeline to take a field trip to California, but said he would continue to be in contact with officials there along with regulators across the country.
Licensed shops are concentrated in San Diego, Santa Cruz, the San Francisco Bay Area and the Palm Springs area.
California voters in 2016 made it legal for adults 21 and older to grow, possess and use limited quantities of marijuana, but it wasn’t legal to sell it for recreational purposes until yesterday.
Shops will be able to sell marijuana harvested without full regulatory controls for six months but will eventually only be able to sell pot tested for potency, pesticides and other contaminants, and products that have been tracked from seed to sale.
California’s Bureau of Cannabis Control was not aware of any problems or complaints about the first day of sales, but it didn’t have inspectors in the field, spokesman Alex Traverso said.
In cities including Oakland and Los Angeles, officials are putting policies in place meant to prioritize communities and populations that have been disproportionately affected by past drug laws. In Oakland, license applications from these communities and populations are given priority over others. The Massachusetts cannabis law includes a provision that requires regulators to take the same kind of populations and demographics into account.
“They’re one of the only places doing things in our legislation,” Hoffman said.
Hoffman said the CCC remains on schedule for the first dispensaries to open in July, and said the commission will have a number of hearings in the coming months.
“We’re hitting our timelines; we’ve been working really hard,” Hoffman said.