With less than a month to go until the Cannabis Control Commission is set to publish the final version of the state’s marijuana regulations, area municipalities and businesses are looking toward a future that includes legal adult-use marijuana.
Whether it be through updating zoning laws to allow for a certain number of businesses or preparing a townwide referendum on introducing a ban, cities and towns across Hampshire County are getting prepared for what lies ahead. Final regulations are due March 15, and the commission will accept applications for setting up related businesses starting April 1.
In Massachusetts, draft regulations from the Cannabis Control Commission include licenses for on-site social consumption businesses, including those that are “mixed use.” In conversations leading up to the passage of those rules, the commission mentioned businesses like restaurants, spas, movie theaters and yoga studios as potentially benefiting from such licensing.
“Our objective is to make this a diverse industry. We’d like to see small players. We’d like to see big players and pretty much at all levels of the value chain from cultivation all the way through to retail,” commission Chairman Steven Hoffman said. “We’re trying hard to incentivize that but we’re going to have to see how things play out.”
In addition to social consumption licenses, the draft regulations include a license class for “delivery-only” retailers. Those businesses wouldn’t have a brick-and-mortar retail location, but would deliver from cultivator facilities, craft marijuana cultivator cooperatives or other businesses.
The commission also is developing regulations to prevent too much pot flooding the market, including requirements for cultivators to sell everything they have grown before moving up a tier. There are four levels of licenses available for “cultivation and craft marijuana cultivator cooperative,” each limited by the canopy area of the grow operation.
It has also drafted categories for micro-licenses, which limit the size of a business but also allow smaller entities to get a reduction or complete elimination of application fees.
Population centers in Hampshire County are gearing up for the new age in their own ways.
In Northampton, zoning regulations for recreational marijuana are set to be considered in the City Council’s legislative matters committee. They were introduced by Mayor David Narkewicz, and update the city’s existing medical marijuana zoning to accommodate recreational marijuana.
Narkewicz also introduced a financial order that would adopt the full 3 percent local tax on marijuana, which was referred to the council’s finance committee. The committee will take up the measure March 1.
The City Council has not yet considered legislation that would cap the number of recreational marijuana establishments in town, something that Easthampton is considering and Amherst has already implemented. The council will hold a public forum on recreational marijuana before the community resources committee Feb. 27 at 5 p.m.
Northampton currently has one medical marijuana dispensary, New England Treatment Access, which opened in 2015. Medical marijuana dispensaries will receive priority in the recreational marijuana license application process in Massachusetts, and NETA has already expressed an interest in selling recreational marijuana in Northampton.
In Easthampton, city officials are reviewing draft regulations and a joint public hearing with the Planning Board and City Council Ordinance Subcommittee to decide on final regulations is set for Tuesday, Feb. 20. City Councilor Salem Derby said there may need to be a second hearing before the ordinance is finalized.
The City Council will have a public hearing on the finalized ordinance on March 21.
The draft regulations include social consumption and a minimum separation of 200 feet between cannabis establishment.
The medical marijuana dispensary INSA Inc. opened this month at the Keystone Mill building on Pleasant Street and will have priority for a recreational license. Green Life Dispensary, a combination of a cultivation site and recreational retail business, is planned to open this fall on Wemelco Way near the Southampton line. Green Life plans to host events offering cannabis-infused drinks and edibles, Kot Kasom told the Gazette last month.
Karima Rizk plans to open a cannabis coffeehouse called Cafe Vert, in the Keystone Mill building next to Abandoned Building Brewery. Seth Frappier plans to open a holistic health center with a lounge for on-site consumption.
At the first session of Amherst’s fall Town Meeting in November, residents passed a package of marijuana-related articles that included a cap of eight retail locations and a 3 percent local option tax.
“The Amherst residents supported the ballot measure (legalizing recreational marijuana) almost 3 to 1, so we are taking a cautiously permissive approach,” Economic Development Director Geoffrey Kravitz said. “We want to make sure that it is safe and that the community isn’t overwhelmed with marijuana establishments, but at the same time recognize this is something the voters said they wanted to allow in town,”
Kravitz was tasked with being the staff liaison on recreational and medical marijuana.
“We want to allow it and sort of see how the industry goes without necessarily throwing the doors wide open,” he said.
The town has not yet dealt with social consumption.
In South Hadley, a town-wide referendum will go before voters on April 10 on whether to adopt an outright ban on recreational marijuana sales, cultivation, testing, research and development, packaging or anything else to do with adult-use marijuana.
Town Meeting approved the ban in January. Town Meeting members also voted to adopt zoning articles that limited where retail sales and manufacturing could occur. The zoning was done as a measure to have regulations in place if the ban is rejected.
One person who has seen the cannabis industry in action is Michael Gordon, the CEO of Seattle’s Kush Tourism. The company does a number of things around legal cannabis, including tours, educational materials and resources for hotels across legalized states.
Since recreational marijuana became legal in Washington, Gordon has enjoyed watching traditional businesses like banks, insurance companies and commercial printers open their horizons to target the cannabis industry.
The recreational marijuana industry has also reached some secondary and ancillary markets for growing business opportunities, such as bed and breakfasts and yoga studios.
Gordon said the industry has had a tangible impact on employment in the state, but for those in the industry, the market will likely be volatile for the next few years.
Massachusetts regulators likewise are prepared for some ups and downs as recreational marijuana is integrated into the business fabric of municipalities across the state.
“Any business, any industry, has turnover but we are hoping it will be a stable industry and a benefit to all the communities that participate,” Hoffman said.
Staff writers Caitlin Ashworth, Dusty Christensen and Bera Dunau contributed to this report.
Emily Cutts can be reached at ecutts@gazettenet.com.