Springfield is among the communities across the state where adults age 21 and older can order marijuana online to be delivered to their homes.
The Cannabis Control Commission took a lot of time crafting the regulations that would aid applicants from communities most impacted by drug prohibition and criminalization. This social equity delivery framework was designed to benefit disadvantaged areas of the state starting in 2020.
More than three years later, following more consideration, the commission voted to change regulation about deliveries. But there’s been a delay.
Bhaamati Borkhetaria from the Commonwealth Beacon explains what a cannabis delivery looks like now, and how regulators want to change it.
Bhaamati Borkhetaria, Commonwealth Beacon: Regulators, like you said, put a lot of thought into making cannabis delivery safe. So, there are cameras on the vehicle. There are cameras on the delivery drivers. There’s GPS tracking.
And then Massachusetts has a specific rule that’s unique to all the nine states that allow cannabis delivery, which is that it requires all cannabis delivery operators to send two drivers on every single delivery, so one person can go and deliver it to the customer, and one person can sort of guard the vehicle. And the idea is that two people are safer than one.
Carrie Healy, NEPM: I mean, that’s how Brinks and other high-value courier services work. So why did having two people for this kind of delivery become burdensome?
Cannabis operators are saying that it is especially cumbersome to have two people doing a job that one person can do. And they’re saying that it doubles their cost and that it’s making it really difficult for companies that work with dispensaries to have a profit margin that can be shared between dispensaries and the operators.
So really, cannabis operators are saying that their businesses are just not profitable. Chris Fevry, who is the co-owner of Dris Deliveryand Your Green Package, said that he had to sort of get out of western Mass. He said that his company had partnerships with other retailers in western Mass., but all of those partnerships sort of went away and the people were laid off. And he attributes that to the two-driver rule continuing to be part of the regulatory structure.
He said you can’t split the pie equitably enough for both the courier and the dispensary to make a profit.
Yes, precisely.
And what are the cannabis delivery companies looking for?
They have a lot of different changes that they’ve proposed. But key amongst them is changing the two-driver rule. This is something that they’ve been advocating for many years now. Some said that they’ve been advocating for it since the delivery license type became available. They’re saying that they’re running out of time.
And so delaying this change would only further impact these groups that were chosen for social equity reasons, right?
Yeah. So, the Cannabis Control Commission has taken several steps to implement social equity into the cannabis industry. And one thing they’ve done is that they’ve made it so that only social equity operators have delivery license types currently. So that means that every single delivery company is a social equity company. So, if delivery companies are struggling, it’s social equity companies that are struggling.
And the Cannabis Control Commission (CCC) itself is experiencing some turmoil. Chair Shannon O’Brien was suspended last fall and the agency’s executive director, Shawn Collins, quit, and no replacement has been selected. How does that confusion on this regulatory board impact the cannabis dispensaries and the cannabis delivery companies?
Cannabis operators have expressed some frustration around what’s going on at the CCC. One operator implied that maybe the challenges that the CCC is facing with its own internal troubles is keeping the focus away from social equity operators.
It’s been several months since they voted to eliminate this so-called two driver rule. So, when do CCC regulators expect that they’ll be able to make this change?
They haven’t given an exact timeline yet. They have laid out the different steps that they’re going to take. They’re going to rewrite the regulations and take public feedback and then vote on it again. So, it’s sort of unclear how long it will take.
Continued delay in eliminating 'especially cumbersome' rule for cannabis deliveries in Massachusetts – New England Public Media
