State’s hemp farmers want to grow cannabis
A bill that would allow existing hemp growers in Connecticut to cultivate THC-laden cannabis is likely dead in the water, according to legislators.
“The likelihood of the bill being raised? It’s not probable,” said Deputy House Speaker Juan Candelaria, D-New Haven. “There’s a bunch of us that will make that decision. I just don’t see that happening to be honest with you. I just don’t. I could be wrong.”
The bill was passed out of committee on March 23, but might never come to the floor of the state House for a vote. Candelaria was one of only four votes against the bill in committee, three of which came from members of the legislature’s Black and Hispanic Caucus: Candelaria, Rep. Raghib Allie-Brennan, D-Bethel, and Rep. Farley Santos, D-Danbury. Sen. John Kissel, R-Enfield, also voted against the measure.
The proposal faced vocal opposition from the state’s Social Equity Council. Ginne-Rae Clay, the council’s executive director, testified in February that allowing hemp growers to cultivate cannabis for the recreational market would put social equity growers at risk.
“This could lead to oversupply issues and result in generally diminished retail prices as has occurred in Massachusetts, making it difficult for social equity licensees to benefit from the legalized market,” she told the legislature’s General Law Committee in February.
The state’s social equity program was intended to provide cannabis-related business opportunities in communities most affected by the war on drugs, called “disproportionately impacted areas.”
Both Candelaria and Rep. Jason Rojas, D-East Haven, echoed Clay’s sentiments. Candelaria said the intention is to avoid “saturating” the market, and “making sure that the same guidelines or application process that was applied to everyone else gets applied to the hemp growers.”
“It’s about being cautious with how much capacity we want to build out there so that we don’t undermine the health of the marketplace,” Rojas said. “All those folks went through a process, a very expensive process, competitive process, to get a license. Now we’re just going to allow individuals who are already established to just enter that marketplace without some of the same considerations? I think that’s why the Social Equity Council was concerned about just allowing those hemp farmers to enter the market.”
Kristina Diamond, Social Equity Council spokesperson, said the council opposes the bill “for several reasons as it would have a significant impact on the social equity DIA cultivators.”
“The SEC was created to ensure the adult-use cannabis industry is grown equitably and that revenues generated by this industry are returned to the communities hit hardest by the War on Drugs,” Diamond said in an emailed statement. “Allowing hemp farmers to cultivate adult-use cannabis will upset this effort and undermine the goal of addressing systemic inequities in the DIAs.”
There are only four cannabis producers currently selling product to Connecticut retailers, though the state has issued licenses for 16 more, plus additional smallscale growers, called “micro-cultivators.”
Rojas did say that “there are legitimate concerns on the other side, that cultivation shouldn’t be just limited to what I call the ‘legacy operators,’ which are the four current cultivators that are in place.”
Mike Rell, a lobbyist working on behalf of hemp growers, said it’s not mutually exclusive, a question of social equity applicants or hemp.
“The bill that is before the legislature has two equity joint venture components per hemp license,” he said. “There’s a direct connection between the hemp producers and the Social Equity Council in the bill.”
The current bill would only allow hemp growers to cultivate a total of 250,000 square feet of recreational cannabis, and pay license fees of $12 per square foot, a total of $3 million.
“That represents just a small fraction of the total amount that can be grown by the MSOs other cultivators,” Rell said.
Brant Smith, a hemp grower in Cheshire, said he’d heard that the bill was likely to not make it to the House floor for a vote.
“I’m getting the sense that they want to dig their heels in on this,” he said.
Smith also noted that though the Social Equity Council warned that allowing hemp farmers into the recreational market could force down the wholesale price of cannabis potentially threatening the growers licensed under the social equity framework, the total is a small fraction of what is being grown.
“It’s less than 3% of the approved grow at this point,” he said. “We can set up a craft business. We would enable 20 to 30 Social Equity businesses to come alive.”
Smith got into the hemp business after the federal government passed a bill legalizing its manufacture in 2018. Since then, he said the price of hemp has cratered, putting singlecrop farms like his in jeopardy.
For me, it’s crucial that I convert. Otherwise, I’m going to have to close down because right now I grow quite a bit. We put out about 80 pounds a week, but the price I get, basically I break even and I’m not in business to break even,” he said. “I’ve kept it open because I have 23 employees that depend upon this as a livelihood.”