MONTPELIER — Next year's Vermont Cannabis and Hemp Convention will have displays of flower.
The Cannabis Control Board and its compliance team developed a plan to allow displays of flower products at the event and provide a pathway for to have them at other events.
"These waivers would allow licensees to display product samples within terms to be established by the compliance team," a CCB update states. "Those terms will be submitted in writing to convention organizers, who in turn will send the Board a full list of participants."
The thinking is that vendors would be limited to 1 ounce of cannabis flower or 5 grams of solid concentrate per licensee. Vendors then could display both cannabis flower and solid concentrates, but couldn't exceed 1 ounce or its equivalent in solid concentrates.
At the Dec. 17 board meeting, CCB Chairman James Pepper said the plan sounds "workable" and was developed with convention organizers. Board member Kyle Harris acknowledged event-specific issues will need to be addressed as they come up.
"It’s interesting because it’s evolved in real time: when we first had possession without sales, it was simple: everyone could possess an ounce," Eli Harrington, convention organizer, told GreenMountain Cannabis News. "In the absence of specific rules, there was a vacuum, and we felt like common sense filled that vacuum — as long as products weren’t being illegally sold, they could be possessed by licensees, but a regulated system requires rules and specificity."
Harrington said organizers are "glad that this process ended with a state approved way for cannabis companies to legally possess their own products outside of a dispensary, which seems like a no-brainer but is complicated by the advertising rules and other restrictions."
"For those of us who have been parts of this community during prohibition and legal possession, it feels like one step forward after two steps back and we’re getting closer to common sense," he said. "Compared to alcohol, Vermont still has a lot of work left to do to get cannabis regulations in line with common sense and consumer behavior. Anyone reading this should ask themselves where and when they see alcohol and wonder why a sealed jar of non-lethal cannabis gets treated so much more severely than the bottle of booze that is promoted and sold by the state of Vermont with your tax dollars."