The Cannabis Control Commission is firing again at lawmakers accusing their company of “an endless stream of scandals.”
In a letter despatched to the Joint Committee on Cannabis Policy and shared with the Herald, Chief Communications Officer Cedric Sinclair says he want to “respectfully reject” the notion the fee’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, informed the committee.
Sinclair’s letter is available in response to a different despatched to the identical committee final week by a bipartisan group of lawmakers asking committee members to carry a listening to on the hashish fee, which the lawmakers assert has been mired in a sequence 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 downside, in line with the CCC, is that lawmakers have it fully mistaken.
According to Sinclair, the work completed by the fee over the past 5 years has been held up and used as a mannequin for different jurisdictions working to determine their very own authorized 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 authorities, which nonetheless prohibits marijuana use and possession, has used the state’s program as an information level of their efforts to reclassify the drug, Sinclair wrote.
Lawmakers are nonetheless involved about what they’ve learn within the information within the final yr.
The current elimination of CCC Chair Shannon O’Brien from her $181,722 place by Treasure Deb Goldberg, completed with out rationalization to the general public, comes following O’Brien’s declaration the fee would quickly be with out its long-serving government director main the company to a state of “crisis.”
The fee’s investigators, in line with one marijuana testing lab proprietor, retaliated in opposition to his enterprise after he spoke in opposition to the company’s regulatory method at a significant hashish convention.
Lawmakers additionally expressed concern concerning the size of time candidates claimed it took to course of their functions.
O’Brien’s assertion has confirmed to be inaccurate: Collins stays at his put up and the fee, regardless of some small disagreement on who ought to lead in O’Brien’s absence, lately spent greater than every week of public conferences finalizing updates to their laws made in response to adjustments within the state’s hashish legal guidelines.
As a results of these new guidelines and the state’s Cannabis Social Equity Trust Fund, the fee expects Massachusetts will quickly “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 fee additionally denies allegations of retaliation in opposition to the marijuana testing lab, asserting their investigators have been doing their jobs after they inspected that facility.
Wait time for licenses responses, Sinclair writes, is at present right down to underneath 15 days from its excessive of over 100 days.
Sinclair tells the committee that all the adverse noise takes away from the accomplishments of the CCC’s employees.
“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 business, since marijuana legalization within the state, has generated $5 billion in income and returned an estimated $1 billion in tax income to the state and municipalities.
State Auditor Diana DiZoglio’s workplace introduced on Monday they’d accomplished an audit of the fee. Auditors found about $10 million value of product that “contained some amount of material” that was examined greater than a yr earlier than it was bought to shoppers and that the fee was not guaranteeing optimistic pesticide take a look at outcomes have been reported inside 72 hours, as required by state legislation.
“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,” stated Auditor DiZoglio.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”