“Governor,” a news reporter asked Gov. Ned Lamont Thursday during his last regular coronavirus news briefing, “do you look forward to taking advantage of recreational pot?”
Lamont’s answer created a sense, though without clarity. And we can say pretty much the same about the General Assembly finishing its multi-year lurch toward adult-use, legalized retail sales of marijuana in the next 13 days, before the clock runs out.
The votes, all of them among Democrats, are in place in both the House and Senate. Negotiators, all of them Democrats, are close to a deal on a framework for how the recreational pot business will work. But only time will tell whether they can push through a bill by the end of the 2021 session.
The holdup is a sprawling bucket of concerns called “equity,” meaning the law must be shaped to help disadvantaged people, especially communities of color who were targeted in the failed war on drugs. That’s harder than it seems, and it seems hard.
Connecticut could, and should, punt like New York, which adopted recreational pot earlier this year with the goal of awarding 50 percent of all licenses — growers, dispensaries, couriers, labs and more — to “social and economic equity applicants.” The Empire State will sort out how to do that later, maybe over a few newly legalized joints.
But that’s not our way in Connecticut. The progressives of the party, led by lawmakers from the cities, want specifics — especially on licenses for the growers. That’s the biggest sticking point right now, several people familiar with the daily negotiations said.
The latest plan calls for the four existing growers, who serve Connecticut’s 50,000-patient medical marijuana market, to serve as mentors for equity businesses, defined as people who live or have lived for a number of years in certain targeted ZIP codes — and whose incomes are below a level in the $250,000 a year range.
Those mentored, would-be businesses would control a small part of the floor space in cultivation operations and would eventually strike out on their own, as licensed growers.
Fifty percent of all licenses, from dispensaries to labs to growers and couriers, would go to equity applicants. And 100 percent of the regular growing licenses would go to equity applicants under the latest plan, which, of course, could change.
It has, in fact, changed dramatically this week alone. As of Tuesday, the plan would have required the existing growers to invest in joint ventures in which equity owners of these new growing operations held 65 percent ownership. That was deemed unworkable by the industry, and the percentage dropped to as low as 5 percent to 10 percent ownership. Now the whole joint venture idea might end altogether.
The debate centers on the growers in part because that’s where the biggest investments happen — tens of millions of dollars, if there’s just a few in a state. But there can be many of them. If Connecticut ends up with the same number of cultivators as Oregon per 100,000 population, we’ll have 940 of them. Massachusetts has 71 growers.
I’m unfurling all this detail not for its own sake but to illustrate how one small part of these negotiations has swung back and forth — all while the people in charge tell us we’re close to an agreement. Earlier versions had people who had been charged with marijuana crimes, or otherwise affected directly by the criminal justice system, qualifying as equity applicants; now that’s out.
As for how the state would spend the money it takes in from the roughly 20 percent tax — an estimated $75 million a year or so — a hefty percent would go into a carved out equity fund that Democrats not named Lamont envision as a cornerstone of state policy.
The big question is whether all of these efforts will help the intended people — low-income, Black and brown city residents who have shouldered the brunt of an obviously unfair judicial and economic system. I have my doubts and so does one of the people in the middle of the debate.
“Equity licensure is likely not to help people who live in the communities,” this person said, in part because as it stands now, a relatively wealthy, white suburban resident could qualify under the equity definitions.
Sen. Doug McCrory, a key negotiator pushing hard for equity provisions, is more optimistic. But he’s frustrated that the multi-state growing companies “want to come to Connecticut and dictate their terms as to how they want to operate in Connecticut, and that’s not going to happen.”
McCrory added, “They have to understand what equity looks like, what social justice looks like, and they don’t understand it. Once they understand it, maybe we can get something done.”
Sounds bad, but it isn’t, the negotiators say. “We’re very close. We are extremely close,” McCrory told me Thursday.
That’s good news because retail sales not only makes sense, it’s inevitable. The lesson is this: In baseball, as the saying goes, you can’t hit a 5-run home run. In basketball, you can’t shoot a 4-point basket.
Likewise, everyone needs to understand that equity provisions are fine and good in legalizing marijuana, to a point. Most blue states have a lot of these measures, especially those, like New York and New Jersey, that have done it in recent months.
But we can’t use cannabis legalization to right all the wrongs out there. It’s too small an industry, too competitive with nearby states and the black market. The rub is in finding a balance for the equity measures. McCrory’s view: “They don’t go far enough as far as I’m concerned.”
dhaar@hearstmediact.com
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