Senate ready to review marijuana laws and host community agreements

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April 3, 2022

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Colin A Young

BOSTON – Next week the Senate plans to debate legislation targeting ongoing issues with it Host Community Agreements And social justice in the growing legal cannabis industry in Massachusetts.

There was no objection Thursday among members of the Senate Ways and Means Committee to introduce a redrafted version of a bill to put stricter limits on legally required contracts between marijuana companies and their host communities, create a cannabis social equality trust and establish essential businesses for cities and towns to allow businesses On-site cannabis consumption. Five of the committee’s members, three Democrats and two Republicans, chose to retain their rights and did not dissuade, positively or negatively.

Senate Mode Bill on the agenda for Thursday, April 7, and set a 3 p.m. deadline on Monday for senators to propose amendments.

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The legislature has always maintained a laissez-faire approach to marijuana policy. Lawmakers missed their opportunities to act before voters agreed to decriminalize medical marijuana in 2012 and legalize adults in 2016, but then delayed and rewrote large parts of the 2016 ballot law that legalized marijuana. Otherwise, the legislature has largely sidestepped cannabis issues although some provisions in the bill the Senate plans to take up next week mirror those of a bill that passed the House in early 2020 but never appeared in the Senate.

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The bill would make grants and loans, including interest-free and forgivable loans, available to participants in the Commission on Cannabis Control’s Social Justice (SE) program or priority Economic Empowerment (EE) applicants through the Cannabis Social Justice Trust Fund. Each year, the fund will have 10 percent of the money in the Marijuana Regulatory Fund, where revenue brought in by state marijuana taxes, application and licensing fees and industry penalties are deposited.

For fiscal year 2021, only a 10 percent share of the cannabis tax revenue ($112.37 million) would have amounted to about $11.24 million for the trust.

Massachusetts was the first state in the country to require fairness and inclusion to be part of its legal framework for cannabis and was the first to launch programs specifically designed to help entrepreneurs and businesses from communities that have been disproportionately affected by decades of marijuana bans.

But in more than three years since the first legal sale here, only 6 percent of the licenses issued to the cannabis industry have gone to SE program participants or EE priority applicants, the Joint Commission on Cannabis Policy said when it released the draft legislation. Of the more than 1,000 applications submitted to the CCC as of November, only 232 came from SE or EE applicants.

Senator Sonia Chang Diaz, who co-chairs the Joint Committee on Cannabis Policy, said the bill, which will be discussed in the Senate next week, “will take major steps to change that.”

“By lowering high entry costs and providing new avenues of capital for social justice entrepreneurs, this bill addresses the long-identified problems that have kept the cannabis industry in the hands of a majority white and already wealthy,” said the senator, who is also running for office. Governor, he said. “It’s a major achievement, not only for racial justice in this industry, but toward closing the worsening wealth gap in our state in general and repairing some of the damage from the war on drugs.”

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The Senate bill also includes a provision that appears to redirect one percent of marijuana tax collections from social stock companies to the municipalities where those companies are located.

Invoice text indicates “an amount equal to 1 percent of the total sales price received under this section [dealing with the state’s 10.75 percent marijuana excise tax]from a marijuana retailer representing a social equity business” while the Senate Ways and Means Committee summary of the bill indicates “an amount equal to 1 percent of total sales received in the marijuana excise tax from marijuana retailers representing Social Justice.” A spokesperson did not respond Immediately Thursday on a request for clarification.

On the issue of Host Community Agreements (HCAs), the bill would direct the CCC to “review and approve Host Community Agreements” as well as “regulate and implement all Host Community Agreements.” The CCC can only approve temporary license or renewal requests if it certifies HCA compliance.

The bill would also more specifically define what can and cannot be included in contracts, and would codify a municipality’s right to waive the requirement to obtain an HCA as few have already done.

HCAs have given businesses, potential businesses, and regulators a fit, basically since the CCC began licensing business here. Entrepreneurs, lawyers, lobbyists and regulators have cited stories of cities and towns demanding more companies than the state’s marijuana laws allow, for up to 3 percent of total sales. The CCC began wrestling with the issue in 2018, decided it lacked the power to intervene or deny an application based on the HCA and voted in January 2019 to formally ask the legislature to grant it that power.

The bill that will be considered in the Senate also addresses an issue that has kept social consumption sites — establishments where adults can buy and use marijuana — from becoming a reality in Massachusetts.

More than two years ago, the CCC approved regulations that paved the way for institutions where adults can use marijuana together in a social setting. But the agency says the pilot program it has designed for up to 12 communities “will not be able to begin without a change in state law or passage of legislation that first allows cities and towns to allow social consumption in their communities.”

The Senate bill includes language that would create a process for voters “to request that the question of permitting, in a city or town, the sale of marijuana and marijuana products for consumption at places of sale, be brought to the attention of city or town voters.”

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Senate ready to review marijuana laws and host community agreements

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Are you looking for medical marijuana growing guides and books about cannabis? Then you should not miss our online bookstore with hundreds of books about marijuana.

********

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Senate ready to review marijuana laws and host community agreements

*************

Are you looking for medical marijuana growing guides and books about cannabis? Then you should not miss our online bookstore with hundreds of books about marijuana.

********

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