News

Cannabis wins wide approval at Town Meeting Day

By Keith Whitcomb Jr.
RUTLAND HERALD
Of the scores of towns that voted on cannabis retail sales at Town Meeting Day, the majority opted to allow it.

In Windsor County, Chester, Hartford, Springfield, and Woodstock approved the cannabis measure.

In Rutland County, Rutland City, Rutland Town, Fair Haven, Pittsford, Proctor, Wallingford and Poultney all approved measures allowing some level of cannabis sales. Voters in Castleton and Mount Holly rejected them.

In Leicester, an Addison County town, the vote was 56-53 against allowing cannabis sales.

In Washington County, only two towns — Barre and Middlesex — had the question on their ballots. The cannabis articles passed in both.

Some towns had two cannabis articles on their ballots. One asking whether voters would allow retail sales, the other asking if they’d allow integrated cannabis license holders to operate.

The state Cannabis Control Board defines “Cannabis retailer” as a person licensed to sell cannabis and cannabis products to those 21 and older for off-site consumption. Someone with an integrated license can be a cultivator, wholesaler, product manufacturer, retailer and testing laboratory.

In Barre, the vote was just for retail sales; in Middlesex it was both retail and integrated licenses.

Fair Haven, Pittsford, Wallingford, Poultney, Rutland City, and Wallingford all approved cannabis retail. Rutland Town and Proctor said “yes” to both retail and integrated licenses.

“The only municipalities that the integrated license category really applies to are those who currently operate a medical dispensary because the medical dispensaries are the only current folks who can seek an integrated license,” said Kyle Harris, one of the Cannabis Control Board commissioners, on Wednesday. “The Legislature made that determination. So for municipalities that currently have one of those medical dispensaries, that second question was important right now.”

The Legislature may at some point change things and allow others to package different license types under one umbrella, but for now only medical dispensaries are allowed to. Others will have to apply for different types of licenses individually.

Under Vermont law, towns have to “opt-in” for cannabis retail, but not holding a vote, or voting down a retail cannabis article, doesn’t mean no cannabis businesses can open in said town, according to Harris.

“The opt-in vote only applies to retail, so despite, let’s use Castleton as an example, they declined to allow a retail establishment; cultivation sites, manufacturers, wholesalers, testing labs, those can all still be present in Castleton, they just don’t have the opportunity to host a retail establishment to sell cannabis products to a consumer,” said Harris.

Board of Alderman President Matt Whitcomb said he was waiting to see how the referendum came out before thinking about what the city’s next move would be.

“We’re going to have to act quickly as a board to have whatever we need in place,” he said. “We need to know what we want to do as a municipality to regulate this the way we want.”

The votes were welcome news to those in the industry.

“It’s obviously a huge victory for advocates and people hoping to start up businesses in the cannabis space,” said Monica Donovan, founder and chief executive officer of Heady Vermont, a cannabis-centered media outlet. “What it means for towns, this is really just the beginning of the process of working with businesses to make sure this rolls out really smoothly for everybody.”

She said cannabis businesses will lead to more foot traffic and more revenue for towns hosting them.

Lyle Jepson, executive director of Chamber & Economic Development of the Rutland Region (CEDRR), said Wednesday he’s not sure how much demand there will be in Vermont for retail cannabis.

“But I know there are two active people that we have been talking with about locating in the Rutland County region,” he said. “They’re interested in high-traffic routes, specifically Route 4 going up towards Killington, and that seemed to be the logical location that both were looking at.”

One company is from Massachusetts, the other from the Midwest; both have been in the industry for a long time, according to Jepson.

“They seem to think there will be a market,” said Jepson. “Now that New York is also getting into it, I don’t know if Vermont will have significant enough sales to attract multiple vendors but I guess demand will prove that out.”

According to Heady, Vermont towns across the state that approved cannabis articles included: Essex, Barre, Hartford, Milton, Manchester, Bolton, Bristol, Chester, Derby, Fayston, Grand Isle, Ferrisburgh, Moretown, New Haven, Pittsford, Proctor, Putney, Rutland City, Rutland Town, Springfield, Stratton, Wallingford, Waitsfield, Wilmington and Woodstock. Towns voting “no” included: Castleton, Eden, Leicester, Norton, Mount Holly and Swanton Village.

keith.whitcomb @rutlandherald.com

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