Issue XVII
My thoughts on the on-going investigation into Trulieve.
Welcome to the 17th edition 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.
In this week’s Cannabis Confidential, I checked out the HighLifeStyle event thrown by NECANN in Boxborough last weekend, which featured Cheech Marin, The Wailers, and *check notes*……Timmy from Lassie?
On Trulieve and the CCC investigation:
This is the highest stakes investigation that the CCC has had to conduct.
It’s key that they there’s swift, conclusive investigation and action taken by the Commission that (a) holds any responsible parties accountable and (b) ensures that an incident like this never happens again. With no signs of criminal charges being filed, and OSHA meekly choosing to only punish Trulieve for communication-related violations, this could be one of the few avenues to actually get some level of justice.
While obviously there’s no direct comparison to alleged violations that lead to the death of an employee, the CCC did recently complete an enforcement case against a licensee that may shine a little light on the process.
4Bros — a cannabis company based out of Holyoke, the same city where Trulieve’s cultivation is located — recently came to an agreement with the Commission, ending a two year period where they were under investigation. The report found multiple serious violations, including the fact that one of 4Bro’s employees had complete access to the building despite not being a registered agent, and multiple serious violations regarding plant tracking (among a litany of other things). You can read the full report here.
The resulting penalty? a two year probation period for the company, where any further violations during this period could result in suspension of their license and fines of up to $15,000 per incident, and some other terms and conditions they must meet before their probation period ends.
So despite showing blatant disregard for a number of laws and regulations before they even opened their doors to the public, 4Bros got to keep their license and faced no monetary fines.
While it’s important to remember that the CCC enforcement is governed by regulations that outline the process and potential penalties, it’s still fair to say that this result suggests that perhaps we shouldn’t get our hopes up too much that the CCC will come down hard on Trulieve — a billion dollar company who will have an army of lawyers and litigators at their disposal.
Even if the CCC does come down hard on Trulieve, the 4Bros situation suggests we’re going to have to wait a while for it to happen. The CCC started their investigation of 4Bros on November 19th, 2020, and only reached a final agreement with the company in August 2022, almost two years later. If the same timeline is followed here, we won’t have any results of this investigation until at least the second half of 2024.
Here are some other thoughts that have popped into my head in the last week relating to the Trulieve incident and worker safety:
We don’t know what else the CCC discovered during their investigation. As the 4Bros case demonstrates, it’s fairly common to see reports where inspectors showed up to investigate one complaint, only to find other violations as well.
The details of the CCC investigation are going to be key. Did the Commission receive complaints from Trulieve workers before the incident? When did Trulieve notify the CCC? How quickly was the facility inspected after the incident took place?
It’s also appropriate to ask if the fatal incident at Trulieve will lead to any regulatory, legislative or budgetary changes. To me, it’s becoming more and more clear that the Commission does not have the resources to properly inspect the hundreds of cannabis businesses that are operating across the state.
It’s also becoming clear that there needs to be more transparency in regards to complaints submitted by workers, as there seems to be a growing feeling among them that complaints are falling into a black hole and never actually acted upon. Workers (and consumers) who submit a complaint should be able to track whether it’s been processed, and whether or not it caused the CCC to perform an inspection or open an official investigation.
I’m going to need some more time to digest everything that happened in today’s Cannabis Control Commission meeting, a 6.5 hour marathon session that included some pretty potent disagreements, a hot mic incident, and the Chair wishfully dreaming of an alcoholic beverage. But the long and short of it is this: The Commission voted to hold off awarding O’Brien’s former company a final license, over concerns involving the change in ownership.
I’ll have more updates on the O’Brien situation in future editions. In the meantime, the discussion continues on twitter — check out Dan Adams and Grant Smith Ellis for continuing coverage.
Some quick hits:
New England
Biden's marijuana pardon 'hugely significant,' experts say, but [MA] state action still needed (Alexi Cohan/WGBH)
Retail cannabis sales begin in Vermont, new dispensary opens in Middlebury (Ben Wagner/The Middlebury Campus)
Grass Island Floated As Potential Designated Area For Cannabis Use [CT](Richard Kaufman/Greenwich Patch)
National / Rest of U.S.
Cannabis users from Texas fuel growth in sales for New Mexico's border cities (Mike Smith/Carlsbad Current-Argus)
Marijuana financial restatements show industry still maturing, insiders say (Kate Robertson/MJBizDaily)
Cannabis Company And Major League Baseball Sign Deal For Charlotte’s Web To Be ‘Official CBD of MLB’ (Kyle Jaeger/Marijuana Moment)
International
Road To Legalization: When Will Germany Actually Legalize Cannabis? (Seb Jaramillo/HERB)
Ontario cannabis retail regulator warns stores against selling to illicit operators (MJBizDaily)
No 10 rejects reports that Braverman could make cannabis class A (Rajeev Syal/The Guardian)
New England / Virtual Cannabis Events this upcoming week:
I got nothing this upcoming week! If you have a future event you want to see included here, email me.
WELCOME DISTRACTION OF THE WEEK: Andor.
Andor proves that every scene in Star Wars doesn’t have to devolve into a laser gunfight or lightsaber duel or space chase. Like the hated prequels, it isn’t afraid of the slow burn. Unlike the prequels, the slow burn is actually interesting (and contains about 100% less dialogue about sand).
Andor is probably the closest thing we’ll ever get to “Star Wars for Adults,” and you might even like this show even if you’ve never seen a second of any of the other movies or shows. Check it out.
Andor is available on Disney+.
CAT OF THE WEEK: Pangur, a cat owned by a 9th century monk. Pangur’s owner penned a poem about the cat, comparing the cat’s behavior to his own.
