Outlaw write
D.C. Council unanimously passed emergency legislation to significantly ramp up enforcement against unlicensed cannabis shops on Wednesday, June 25, 2024.
The legislation comes amid a struggling medical market with dozens of new retail locations set to open by this winter. Currently, there are only ten medical retail locations open in the city.
The new bill allows D.C.’s regulatory agency to immediately start closing and seizing illegal products from unlicensed stores.
The Regulated Cannabis Association of the District of Columbia (RCADC), a newly formed trade association for medically licensed and placarded operators, wrote in a statement to The Outlaw Report that it “commends the Council for passing today’s bill, which puts real teeth in [the Alcohol Beverage and Cannabis Administration’s] enforcement effort and commitment to support the city’s legal operators.”
RCADC wrote that it is “a critical time” for legal operators in the District and that a delay or failure of enforcement could be “catastrophic.”
“The legal market may collapse if legal operators can no longer absorb the financial losses of continuing to wait for enforcement,” RCADC wrote in its statement.
D.C. has had a thriving gray market for cannabis that followed a quasi-legal gifting model since Initiative 71 passed in 2014. The initiative allowed the gifting of small amounts of cannabis without monetary exchange.
Hundreds of businesses set up dispensaries selling out-of-state underground market weed throughout the city. They exploited the loophole and D.C.’s inability to set up an adult-use market due to Congress. The “gifting” shops thrived in the last few years as crime enforcement priorities shifted and a safe harbor law prevented enforcement for most of the last year.
Read more https://outlawreport.com/d-c-to-start-padlocking-unlicensed-cannabis-stores/
