What's Taking Rec So Long?
It’s been more than three years since Maine (barely) legalized recreational cannabis use by a ballot initiative, and we are all still waiting for legal sales to follow. While it’s legal to grow, posses, use, and give or receive cannabis there still aren’t any legal retail locations. Why? Because the state legalized recreational use before putting and sales regulations in place. What?! They said you can have it and you can use it, but they didn’t say where you could get it, how much you could get, what sort of tests distributors need to put their products through, or what information distributors had to put on their packaging—not to mention what the tax rate should be and how state officers would account for overall production. This is frustrating, to say the least, but the end is in sight! (Or, almost in sight..) The state has begun taking applications from hopeful marijuana growers waiting to open adult use stores.
In such a charged climate any slight misstep can close the door to any future recreational retail opportunities. Many have found that the best path to adult use stores is to get a foot in the door by becoming a medical distributor while preparing to meet all of the strict requirements for non-medical distribution, paying particularly close attention to seed-to-sale demands and local zoning. There are a lot of moving parts—for instance, after months of preparing to use BioTrackTHC seed-to-sale software the state decided to pull out of their agreement just after Christmas, setting back the recreational program so the state can find a new monitoring system. It also means that producers who had already invested time and resources into figuring out the BioTrack system will have to go through the process all over again with whatever program comes along to take BioTrack’s place.
There is no denying that legal sales of recreational cannabis will be a great boon to the state’s economy—Illinois legalized cannabis at the start of this year and did10.8 million in sales in the first 5 days! And since prohibition began it has been considered a victimless crime by the majority of citizens, expert and layman alike. Progress has been slow, but the goal is almost realized. There isn’t an official date by which recreational sales will be made legal, but it’s pretty safe to assume this is the year. And when that day comes we can all take a deep, THC filled, breath of relief!