The agency regulating the marijuana industry is not “rudderless,” according to its acting chairwoman, and continues to work despite assertions that it needs a receiver in order to function.
“If you paid attention, we’re working. It’s always all hands on deck. We’re continuing to push policies,” Cannabis Control Commission Acting Chair Ava Callender Concepcion told the Herald in a one-on-one interview.
The legal marijuana industry in Massachusetts made $7 billion in sales last year, and $1 billion of that came back to the Bay State in the form of taxes and fees.
The industry, not even a full decade old, employs more than 15,000 licensed sales agents scattered across the state and is responsible for the creation of thousands of more jobs at the hundreds of adult recreational use and medical program dispensaries that the commission has vetted and approved through a lengthy and public process.
The CCC meets publicly and regularly, with their full-agenda meetings mostly conducted in the open. Only seldom, and at the advice of counsel, will commissioners retreat into executive session to conduct their business behind closed doors.
Those meetings produced the rules and regulations required by state law that govern a booming industry which, according to commissioners, is the envy of and model for other states looking to establish a similarly successful system.
