The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Board seeks changes to towns getting cannabis license preference
The current map, which was approved last fall, includes a list of census tracts largely concentrated around urban areas including Bridgeport, Hartford, and New Haven. The first pass at updating this year’s map resulted in some wealthy, overwhelmingly white towns such as New Canaan, Madison and Simsbury being included.
As Connecticut’s new adult-use cannabis market takes shape, the state’s Social Equity Council wants to make changes to the list of communities that receive preferential treatment in licensing.
By law, the council must re-certify annually the list of census tracts dubbed as disproportionately impacted by the socalled war on drugs. The state’s equity programs are targeted at people who live in these communities, which are determined by unemployment and drug conviction rates, with half of all new licenses for new cannabis businesses reserved for them.
To qualify as an impacted area, a community must have an unemployment rate greater than 10 percent and historical drug-related convictions for at least 10 percent of a tract’s residents.
But the council wants to change those metrics and instead use poverty and drug conviction rates. Kristina Diamond, communications and legislative program manager for the council, said members thinks poverty rates are a better indicator of disparity than unemployment rates, which can be subject to larger economic forces.
Under the council’s proposal, no census tract with a poverty rate less than the statewide poverty rate, which is currently 10.1 percent, would qualify as a disproportionately impacted area. Drug conviction rates would also be weighted more heavily under the council’s recommendations.
The current map, which was approved last fall, includes a list of census tracts largely concentrated around urban areas including Bridgeport, Hartford, and New Haven. The first pass at updating this year’s map resulted in some wealthy, overwhelmingly white towns such as New Canaan, Madison and Simsbury being included.
The council also wants to do away with the requirement that it re-certify the list of impacted tracts every year. Diamond said the council is proposing to approve a new map in 2023, which would use the new poverty rate metric, but then to stop updating the list of tracts after that. Many council members felt it was unnecessary to update the map annually when the data is based on five-year estimates from the Census Bureau, or in the case of cannabis-related convictions, a nearly 40-year period.
The council is also seeking to clarify the definition of “control” when it comes to ownership of new cannabis businesses. Social equity partners must own at least 65 percent of the business for which they are applying for a license. That’s also true of equity joint ventures, which are partnerships involving medical cannabis operators and social equity applicants .
The council faced several lawsuits from applicants denied cannabis licenses for failing to meet social equity status, including ownership and control criteria. The applicants claimed their applications were denied based on incorrect information and arbitrary interpretations of the law.