The Cannabis Control Commission is firing back at lawmakers accusing their agency of “an endless stream of scandals.”
In a letter sent to the Joint Committee on Cannabis Policy and shared with the Herald, Chief Communications Officer Cedric Sinclair says he would like to “respectfully reject” the notion the commission’s work has been clouded with controversy.
“Hopefully, your own experiences working with our agency, and the new authority with which you entrusted us through the passage of Chapter 180 of the Acts of 2022, suggests you do, too,” Sinclair, writing on behalf of Executive Director Shawn Collins, told the committee.
Sinclair’s letter comes in response to another sent to the same committee last week by a bipartisan group of lawmakers asking committee members to hold a hearing on the cannabis commission, which the lawmakers assert has been mired in a series of media-grabbing messes from its inception.
“As we all know, the Cannabis Control Commission (CCC) is not performing as it should. Our
constituents, media reports, and even the actions and words of the CCC itself have repeatedly made clear that action is desperately needed to bring oversight, transparency, and accountability to the CCC,” they wrote. “Since its creation in 2017, the Cannabis Control Commission has faced what sometimes feels like an endless stream of scandals.”
The problem, according to the CCC, is that lawmakers have it entirely wrong.
According to Sinclair, the work done by the commission over the last five years has been held up and used as a model for other jurisdictions working to establish their own legal marijuana markets. The state, he writes, is a “ national leader for research into marijuana policy, as demonstrated by the number of our publications and consultation from other states and federal agencies.”
Even the federal government, which still prohibits marijuana use and possession, has used the state’s program as a data point in their efforts to reclassify the drug, Sinclair wrote.
Lawmakers are nevertheless concerned about what they’ve read in the news in the last year.
The recent removal of CCC Chair Shannon O’Brien from her $181,722 position by Treasure Deb Goldberg, done without explanation to the public, comes following O’Brien’s declaration the commission would soon be without its long-serving executive director leading the agency to a state of “crisis.”
The commission’s investigators, according to one marijuana testing lab owner, retaliated against his business after he spoke against the agency’s regulatory approach at a major cannabis conference.
Lawmakers also expressed concern about the length of time applicants claimed it took to process their applications.
O’Brien’s assertion has proven to be inaccurate: Collins remains at his post and the commission, despite some small disagreement on who should lead in O’Brien’s absence, recently spent more than a week of public meetings finalizing updates to their regulations made in response to changes in the state’s cannabis laws.
As a result of those new rules and the state’s Cannabis Social Equity Trust Fund, the commission expects Massachusetts will soon “see the 48 Certified Economic Empowerment Priority Applicant licensees and 114 Social Equity Program licensees with at least provisional approval move forward in the state’s process and join their 62 peers across both designations that are already operating.”
The commission also denies allegations of retaliation against the marijuana testing lab, asserting their investigators were doing their jobs when they inspected that facility.
Wait time for licenses responses, Sinclair writes, is currently down to under 15 days from its high of over 100 days.
Sinclair tells the committee that all of the negative noise takes away from the accomplishments of the CCC’s staff.
“These policies are the result of years of advocacy by stakeholders, legislators, and Commissioners and come at a time when the adult-use marketplace has already surpassed $1 billion in gross sales for the calendar year and experienced back-to-back record sales months in June, July, and August,” Sinclair wrote.
The industry, since marijuana legalization in the state, has generated $5 billion in revenue and returned an estimated $1 billion in tax revenue to the state and municipalities.
State Auditor Diana DiZoglio’s office announced on Monday they’d completed an audit of the commission. Auditors discovered about $10 million worth of product that “contained some amount of material” that was tested more than a year before it was sold to consumers and that the commission was not ensuring positive pesticide test results were reported within 72 hours, as required by state law.
“According to the Commission’s responses, based on our audit findings, they are taking steps to implement changes and improve policies and procedures to reflect most of our recommendations. I appreciate the willingness to comply with our audit team and will be following up in the near future,” said Auditor DiZoglio.
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