The Joint Committee on Cannabis Policy is polling its members on legislation that appears to address the persistent issues with host community agreements and social equity in the new cannabis industry, and that would pave the way for social consumption sites in Massachusetts.
Members of the committee have until 5 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 28, to weigh in on redrafted legislation that would put tighter restrictions on the legally required contracts between marijuana businesses and their host communities, establish a Cannabis Social Equity Trust Fund, and lay the groundwork for cities and towns to allow on-site cannabis consumption establishments within their borders. The poll opened late in the afternoon on Wednesday, Jan. 26.
The legislation, which a spokesperson said is a priority for House Speaker Ron Mariano, appears to address some of the issues that the Cannabis Control Commission has most vocally been asking lawmakers to act on.
Committee co-chairs Rep. Daniel Donahue and Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz recommended favorable reports for two bills redrafted in committee to incorporate parts of about a dozen other related proposals. The new bill, titled “An Act relative to social equity and host community agreements in the cannabis industry,” will be referred to the House as H 174 and to the Senate as S 72. Some of its provisions mirror those of a bill that the House passed in early 2020 but never surfaced in the Senate.
The bill would create a $10 million Cannabis Social Equity Trust Fund “for the purpose of making grants and loans, including no-interest loans and forgivable loans, to social equity program participants and economic empowerment priority applicants to encourage the full participation of entrepreneurs from communities that have been disproportionately harmed by marijuana prohibition and enforcement.” In addition to the initial $10 million in funding, the bill creates other ways for the fund to grow.
During the week of Jan. 17, CCC Chairman Steven Hoffman pointed to what he said were “predatory financing deals” being offered to participants in the CCC’s social equity program and other economic empowerment applicants and renewed his call for the Legislature to make an alternate funding source available.
Massachusetts was the first state in the country to mandate that equity and inclusion be part of its legal cannabis framework and was the first to launch programs specifically designed to assist entrepreneurs and businesses from communities disproportionately harmed by the decades of marijuana prohibition.
Access to the capital necessary to start a business has repeatedly been singled out as a serious impediment facing social equity program participants or economic empowerment priority applicants as they try to break into the industry. Of more than 1,000 applications submitted to the CCC as of November, just 232 came from social equity program participants or economic empowerment priority applicants.
On the issue of host community agreements, the bill being polled would do more to define what can and cannot be included in the contracts, codify a municipality’s right to waive the requirement to have an HCA as a handful have already done, and direct that the CCC “shall review each agreement required by this subsection prior to a licensee’s submission of a complete marijuana establishment license application;…
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