Issue 32: Social Consumption Round-up
Plus, I ask: What the hell is going on in Georgia?
Welcome to Issue #32 of Burn After Reading! This is my newsletter on cannabis (and other things). You can check out last week’s issue here, and if you haven’t subscribed yet, please do.
This week, I’m taking a virtual tour around North America to see where we stand with legal cannabis lounges.
I also ask a simple question “What the hell is going on with Georgia’s medical program?”
SOCIAL CONSUMPTION ROUNDUP
2022 was supposed to be the year of the cannabis lounge. While a number of markets saw their first state-licensed consumption sites open, it remains to be seen if these businesses will truly take off.
Here’s a roundup of recent developments in the cannabis consumption situation in North America:
Arizona
Arizona doesn’t have social consumption sites, but that hasn’t stopped a bunch of companies from throwing cannabis-themed consumption parties for this weekend’s Big Game. Such shindigs are usually held outside and on private property, allowing them to avoid being flagged for violating smoking bans or public consumption laws.
Alaska
The good news? Alaska has cannabis lounges. The bad news? There’s only one active consumption license, according to the Alaska Alcohol and Marijuana Control Office’s website. Alaska has a population density of 1.3 people per square mile though, so you can still probably find a discreet place to light up.
Canada
MJBiz recently provided an update on the cannabis lounge situation with our neighbors to the north. There’s some clever entrepreneurs there who are finding ways to open consumption-based businesses, but provinces still haven’t set up any real regulatory framework to govern them.
California
California remains a leader in the cannabis lounge space, but most of the lounges still remain limited to the LA, Oakland, and San Francisco areas. More lounges are starting to pop-up elsewhere though, and legislation has been recently introduced to allow consumption sites to serve food and beverages.
The Caribbean
As I documented in a previous issue of Burn After Reading, Jamaica has legal consumption lounges for medical patients. In 2022, St. Vincent and the Grenadines joined the party.
Colorado
Colorado hasn’t regulated consumption lounges at the state level, but municipalities like Denver have gone ahead and issued licenses to a handful of BYOC businesses. Here’s a presentation on Denver’s rules.
Illinois
Illinois law allows for consumption lounges where consumers can bring their own products. The first lounge in the Chicago-area opened in 2022 on 4/20, and a handful of other businesses operate elsewhere in the state.
Massachusetts
It’s now been 6 years and 3 months since voters passed a ballot initiative to legalize cannabis (and consumption sites), and over 3 1/2 years since the Cannabis Control Commission voted to implement the pilot program. We still don’t have a single state-licensed consumption spot.
For comparison, it took only five years to build the Hoover Dam.
This delay is particularly problematic when you consider these licenses have been set aside for folks who have been impacted by the War on Drugs. The fact that laws and regulations needed to be fixed for social consumption sites to move forward explains some of the delays, but it shouldn’t be taking more than half a decade.
Of course, the Summit Lounge continues to operate as a private cannabis consumption club right here in Worcester. Thanks to its unique operating model, it does not fall under state regulation.
Michigan
The state’s first consumption lounge opened in March 2022. As of July of last year, 19 municipalities had opted in to allowing consumption sites. Lounges in Michigan are required to be BYOC.
New Jersey
The Garden State’s new cannabis laws allows for social consumption sites at retailers who receive municipal and state approval. It seems like they might be somewhat close to getting them open, but of course we’ve heard that line before. While the state hashes out the rules, Jersey City and Hoboken seem to be leading the pack in terms of municipalities who are on-board with lounges.
New Mexico
The first cannabis lounge in The Land of Enchantment opened in April of 2022. They quickly got into a scuffle with local regulators over whether outdoor consumption was permitted at the site, which is a bit ironic considering regulators in other states have often pushed businesses to only allow smoking when it’s outdoors.
I haven’t found anything to suggest any more lounges have opened up in New Mexico since the first one.
The annual licensing fee for a consumption site is $2500, and state law allows for on-site sales.
New York
New York’s cannabis law also allow for consumption lounges, but none have been licensed yet.
Of course, cannabis speakeasies exist in NYC (as long as you know what random freight elevator to line up in front of), and you’re allowed to smoke cannabis anywhere you can legally smoke tobacco — decreasing the urgency to open up consumption lounges a bit.
Nevada
Like a lot of other markets, Nevada’s slow march to consumption lounges drags on. Municipalities have passed regulations and the state has awarded licenses, but consumption sites have yet to open for business.
When lounges finally do open their doors, they’ll be another hurdle that they will have to overcome: Nevada’s Clean Air Act hasn’t been amended to allow for smoking at consumption sites. Even in a state where you can smoke tobacco in casinos and walk the strip with giant novelty alcoholic drinks, regulations continue to hinder the ability of consumption-based businesses to get off the ground.
While the state continues to figure things out, at least there is one social consumption site operating on Paiute Tribal land.
BIG CANNA GOES DOWN TO GEORGIA, LOOKING FOR A MEDICAL CANNABIS PROGRAM TO STEAL
Hell has broken loose in Georgia’s medical marijuana program, and the devil deals the cards (so to speak).
Georgia passed a law in 2019 that would allow for the sale of low-THC oil to qualifying patients. There are a limited number of qualifying conditions, with many of them specifically requiring that the patient’s diagnosis is “severe or end-stage.” The state did recently move to allow a few more types of THC-based products, but it’s still one of the more limited medical cannabis programs in the nation.
It’s a model that made little sense in 2019, and makes even less sense now. Considering conservative states like Mississippi and Oklahoma have moved forward with more comprehensive medical programs, you would think we would have moved past the point where states were implementing programs like this. Instead, Georgia is about to spend a large amount of money to produce an extremely small amount of cannabis for a very limited number of patients.
That is, if they ever get their program off the ground to begin with.
Here’s a brief timeline of how this process has played out.
2019: Governor Brian Kemp signs the act into law. The legislation creates the Georgia Access to Medical Cannabis Commission and two different license categories: Type I (100,000sf) and Type II (50,000sf). Six licenses will be awarded.
2021: 69 companies apply for licenses. Trulieve and Botanical Sciences LLC (a GA-based company with no medical cannabis experience) won the coveted Class I license, while FFD GA Holdings, TheraTrue Georgia LLC, Natures GA LLC and Treevana Remedy Inc. won the Class II licenses. At least 15 applicants file protests regarding the license process, which eventually require intevention by the Office of State Administrative Hearings.
2022: In response to the controversy surrounding the licensure process, the Georgia Legislature attempts to pass legislation to overhaul the program, but the legislation fails to make it to the Governor’s desk. The protests filed by losing applicants are eventually rejected by a state judge, but another applicant filed a lawsuit. This lawsuit has blocked the Commission from formally awarding the Type II licenses, but Trulieve and Botanical Sciences were allowed to move forward with construction and production.
2023: The legislature is attempting to implement a number of fixes to improve transparency in the medical program and award more licenses, but it’s unclear if Governor Kemp actually wants either of those things. Trulieve and Botanical Sciences are now set up to be the only legal cannabis companies in Georgia for the foreseeable future, giving these companies a leg up on any potential competition for years to come.
It’s fair to ask why there’s so much fighting over these licenses when all they allow these companies to do is provide a limited scope of cannabis products to a relatively small amount of patients, but I doubt the companies who own licenses are too concerned about the viability of Georgia’s medical program in its current state.
Now that they have the licenses, Trulieve and Botanical Sciences are in a prime spot to lobby Georgia to continue to expand the program’s scope while keeping the total number of license holders low, following a similar playbook that Trulieve has implemented in Florida.
After all, who needs a competitive marketplace when you have a conservative Governor who’s willing to hand you an oligopoly by implementing a licensing process with zero transparity?
ICYMI
Recently released data from the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission suggests that the number of registered agents in the state declined last month.
I’ll continue to keep an eye on these numbers. While they don’t perfectly reflect the amount of Massachusetts employees in the cannabis industry, they are a pretty good indicator of how many people are being hired vs how many are getting laid off (or quitting).
HEADLINES
New England
JUSTINCREDIBLE CULTIVATION IN CUMMINGTON WAS ROBBED OF ALL ITS PLANTS IN DECEMBER OF 2022. COMPANY OWNER REGINALD STANFIELD ALLEGEDLY OWES DEBTS TO STAFF, INVESTORS AND CONTRACTORS - NOW IN HIDING (Grant Smith Ellis): “According to sources familiar with the situation, a well-known Massachusetts cultivation facility was robbed of all of its plants in December of 2022 and the firms' owner is now on the run in Maryland due to debts owed to investors in the company, wage complaints filed by former employees and at least one default judgement awarded to a payroll contractor.”
UCONN TO HOST CANNABIS RESEARCH SYMPOSIUM (Phil Hall | W&FC Business Journal): “The University of Connecticut will hold a symposium on March 16-17 that will enable the business community, scientists, scholars and students to share information on the emerging field of cannabis research.”
CONTAMINATED CANNABIS PROMPTS VERMONT CONTROL BOARD CHAIR TO CALL FOR STATE TESTING LAB (Fred Thys | VTDIGGER): “Currently, the board has a contract with Bia Diagnostics in Colchester, but Pepper said the turnaround time for testing the contaminated batch of flower from Holland Cannabis was three business days. He said if the state had its own testing lab, it could cut that turnaround time in half.”
EQUITY IS PILLAR OF BOSTON'S FIRST BLACK WOMAN-OWNED CANNABIS DISPENSARY (Matt Reid | WCVB): “When Massachusetts voters legalized recreational marijuana in 2016, part of the pitch was correcting some of the wrongs from the war on drugs. The commonwealth was the first to have a statewide social equity program, but despite that mandate, the cannabis industry remains overwhelmingly white.”
National / Rest of U.S.
FLORIDA TO OPEN MEDICAL MARIJUANA LICENSE APPLICATIONS, WILL DOUBLE NUMBER OF LICENSES (Tampa Bay Times): “The application window will be the first major opportunity for newcomers to the state’s cannabis market to vie for licenses since the 2017 legislation passed. An earlier round of licenses was based on a 2014 law that legalized non-euphoric cannabis for a limited number of patients.”
OUT-OF-TOWN DOPE: SOME CANNABIS DISPENSARIES NOT PLAYING BY THE RULES (TJ Wilham and John Cardinale | KOAT): “A Target 7 producer bought what is called 'Jetter Juice' from the cannabis dispensary. Its a liquid form THC you inhale with a vape-like device. It was sold with a California THC label.”
International
🇪🇺 WHY NORTH AMERICAN MEDICAL CANNABIS CAN’T COMPETE GLOBALLY (Michael Sassano | KevinMD.com):“The United States and Canada started a movement that began as medical cannabis and quickly exploded into adult-use cannabis markets. However, the North American operators failed to properly regulate the processes from growing to manufacturing to compete in a global pharmaceutical-level market.”
🇳🇱 AMSTERDAM BANS CANNABIS-SMOKING IN RED-LIGHT DISTRICT STREETS TO STOP 'NUISANCE' (Zaini Majeed | Republic World) “Smoking cannabis is now banned in public in the inner city, and officials are warning that they will take strict actions if the takeaway cannabis sales were felicitated between 4 pm and 1 am from Thursday to Sunday nights.”
🇨🇦 CANNABIS PRODUCER CANOPY CUTTING 800 JOBS, CLOSING FLAGSHIP CANADIAN FACILITY (Matt Lamers | MJBiz): “Canopy said it is cutting its workforce by approximately 35%, including 800 positions impacted by Thursday’s announcement. Forty percent of those, or roughly 300 positions, were terminated effective immediately, a spokesperson told MJBizDaily via email. The layoffs come as cannabis companies across North America have been shedding hundreds of jobs and closing facilities because of failing business plans, falling wholesale prices and recession worries.”
WELCOME DISTRACTION
It’s a well documented fact that baseball players often have odd-yet-fun-to-pronounce names. Whether it’s Darryl Strawberry, Coco Crisp, Goose Gossage, Plácido Polanco, Chone Figgins, Jarrod Saltalamacchia, or Boof Bonser, having an unusual name simply makes you better at the sport.
Case in point? The recently announced roster for Team Netherlands in the upcoming World Baseball Classic.
Who’s your favorite? I can’t decide between DENNIS BURGERSDIJK, SICNARF LOOPSTOK and JAIR JURRJENS. If you’re excited for the return of the WBC as I am, you can see the rest of the team’s roster details here.
[Note: In last week’s Welcome Distraction, I highlighted the endless AI-generated Seinfeld episode on Twitch. Unfortunately, this week the stream was taken down after an ill-advised settings adjustment by the show’s creators led to a segment where a character started making transphobic and homophobic remarks. Obviously, I stand against any sort of hate directed towards the LGBT community — even when that hate is coming from a poorly animated, semi-sentient spoof of Jerry Seinfeld.]
CAT OF THE WEEK
Jonesy, who is currently up for adoption at Baypath Humane in Hopkinton, MA.
Special Bulletin
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That’s a wrap on this issue. Thanks for reading! If you have any suggestions or feedback, email me here. Be sure to subscribe if you haven’t already, and if you would like to support my work, please consider a paid subscription.