State House bill targets cannabis ‘gifting’ parties
HARTFORD — Organizers of cannabis-gifting parties could get hit with multi-thousand-dollar fines under legislation approved in the House of Representatives on Tuesday aimed at ending the underground marijuana economy that emerged after the full legalization of the drug last year.
The bill, which passed 98-48 after an hourlong debate in which opponents of last year’s adultuse cannabis legislation again warned that it should not have been legalized, next heads to the Senate.
Others who voted against the bill, included Rep. Robyn Porter, D-New
Haven, who helped lead last year’s adult-use legislative effort, and Rep. David Michel, D-Stamford, who opposed what they said would be new restrictions and the hindrances for veterans and medical marijuana patients who attend the gifting parties.
“For right now, these bazaars are a way around the regulated marketplace,” said state Rep. Michael D’Agostino, DHamden, co-chairman of the legislative General Law Committee, stressing that the bill would not prohibit true gifting events in which friends or acquaintances exchange or give each other cannabis without commercial transactions.
The legislation is a response to such events as the High Bazaar, formerly held on weekends in Hamden, where more than 1,000 visitors would pay $20 or so to enter a warehouse in an industrial zone, where dozens of vendor tables would display cannabis in various forms, exchanging cash or other items of value for the drug. “You can gift to your friends and relatives, you can host a brownie party at your house,” D’Agostino said.
“It’s where people go in and they can pay a cover charge or they could buy a T-shirt and get an ounce of cannabis,” he said. “It’s a barter exchange marketplace that’s set up and it’s caused by a loophole in our laws that allows the gifting of cannabis.”
Under the bill, those who sponsor such gifting parties could be fined $1,000 by the state Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection, and as much as $1,000 by local officials. D’Agostino, who last year brought the adult-use cannabis bill to approval in the House, said that going back to the complicated issue was inevitable.
After the House vote, Joseph Raymond Accettulo of Hamden, an organizer of the High Bazaar, said that the group known as the CT CannaWarriors plans ask the cannabis community to boycott the state’s four current cannabis growers.
“I just feel that the lawmakers have let down the cannabis community,” Accettulo said in a phone interview. “It’s very apparent that we need to work harder as a community. Obviously, somewhere along the way there is not a real understanding of what the cannabis community is about and how beneficial these community gatherings are for a large portion of these lawmakers’ constituents with good, clean, craft-grown cannabis.”
The legislation also includes provisions to end the annual fees required of patients in the medicalmarijuana program, saving patients about $5 million a year starting July 1, 2023.
It would also allow physicians’ assistants to write medical cannabis prescriptions. “That’s a big change, a good change we have wanted to make for some time,” D’Agostino said.
The legislation would limit billboard advertising, including a ban on the use of marijuana leaves. The billboards could not be used between 6 a.m. and 11 p.m.; and they would be prohibited within 1,500 yards of a school or church. Out-of-state companies would be prohibited from using the billboards unless they are licensed in Connecticut.
Another provision would require members of the Social Equity Council, which will help award cannabis business licenses of those in neighborhoods that were traditional targets in the failed war on drugs, to attend at least half the scheduled meetings or lose their positions.
Also, current cannabis cultivators would be allowed to undertake two more joint ventures. Another provision would allow towns and cities that are willing to host cannabis businesses, to also decide which businesses and how many could locate depending on the number approved statewide by the Department of Consumer Protection.
But ending the gifting events, which became more prominent after last year’s July 1 full legalization of cannabis, is the centerpiece of the bill. “These bazaars are social events where people who maybe were used to an underground environment are now slowly coming out,” D’Agostino said. “They’re more social. Veterans with PTSD feel it’s a safe space. I get that. And we are committed to looking at that and making sure that there’s maybe a way to do that down the road in a regulated structure. But right now those bazaars are a way around the regulated marketplace.”
State Rep. Anne Hughes, D-Easton, said that small farmers in her district would like to become a part of the new cannabis industry, but they find the application process difficult, while multi-state corporations seem to have an inside track with investment capital and property acquisition. “Some are giving up,” Hughes said. “They are not sure whether it’s worth putting a lot of effort into the lottery system.”
Hughes, who voted for the bill, said opposed the monetary penalties. “These are legacy entrepreneurs that have been trying to very responsibly create good, high quality local product from trusted members and they would like to continue to do so,” she said. “I have problems if we are not effectively giving access to those folks to continue homegrowing a good product that they would like to share.”
Last year’s law allows adults over 21 to grow a half dozen marijuana plants starting July 1, 2023.
State Rep. Michael Winkler, R-Vernon, who also voted for the bill, said that he is troubled by the overall issue. “I can see a lot of the Puritans in this legislation,” Winkler said. “We say it’s legal, but we over-regulate it. We say we’re going to help mom and pop get involved, but it’s going to the large producers. There is an existing marijuana culture out there. We are doing everything we can to stamp it out. We’re telling people who had this culture and want to swap marijuana in these large meets that they can’t do it.”
But House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora, R-North Branford, said he believes the increase in wrong-way motor vehicle crashes might be linked to the last year’s legalization. He opposed the legislation last year and still opposes it.
“I certainly remain concerned at what we’ve done to our youth,” Candelora said. “We haven’t even begun to see the impact of this. “Something is going on here and I would hate to think that it could be these policies that are being put forth in the state of Connecticut. As we move forward I hope that we continue to do this responsibly in a bipartisan fashion to try to put these demon back in the bottle.”