MONTPELIER — Vermont cannabis industry members are providing regulators with input on their priorities to bring to lawmakers.
Gabe Gilman, general counsel for the Cannabis Control Board, said feedback will help inform potential changes to state law "for the better, in order to have smoother running programs to benefit the public and to make sure that the market operates efficiently and in a way that the legislators imagined."
"We're hoping to really get everybody built around issues of common interests that seem to have legs early," he said at the Oct. 22 peer networking event.
The hope is to identify overlapping priorities for the industry and board before the start of the next legislative session in January.
Participants of the peer networking event voiced interest in lifting the retail moratorium and changing the opt-in system where communities vote on whether to let cannabis stores to operate in their municipalities. They also spoke about wanting direct to consumer sales, special event permitting and public consumption.
The Legislature asked the board "to come up with more nuanced siting rules," Gilman said, referring to retail locations. He expects they should be released in the summer, then the moratorium can be lifted.
Other concerns raised by event participants involved advertising restrictions, potency caps, product registration, lab test pricing and packaging rules.
Gilman said the recent settlement of a lawsuit will hopefully result in making "life easier for both the people in industry seeking to get efficient approvals, and not to have to say redundant things with warnings and what not, as well as more efficient for our folks who are administering the program."
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Ashley Bowen, cannabis cultivator and co-owner of Emerald Visions, suggested upping the possession limit from 1 ounce to 4 ounces would "increase all of our sales."
"Not only do we all need an agency that represents the interest of the licensees but we all need to take upon ourselves as well to reach out to our local district legislators," said Geoffrey Pizzutillo, executive director of the Vermont Growers Association. "Farmers, education, health care, doesn't matter what the sector is, businesses and constituents in those sectors have been engaging their legislators for decades. We just regulated this market, what three, four years ago? We need to now start that work individually, ourselves."
Pizzutillo encouraged industry members to reach out to their local legislators to break down barriers and help "demystify cannabis." His group hosts monthly community action workshops via Zoom aimed at teaching skills on such outreach.
"I know it can feel a little bit redundant to feel like you're hitting your head against the wall but we're hitting our heads three months earlier than we did in the past two sessions," Gilman said. "And so we might be able to get to the end of December with some consensus issues. That's my hope. And this is so helpful for you to take time out of your day to help us get there."