Massachusetts: first wave of applications for cannabis dispensaries

In preparation for future legal cannabis sales starting next July, Massachusetts has welcomed a first wave of applications from existing medical dispensaries and socially-minded projects.

To qualify for the first cannabis distribution licenses, new entrepreneurs must justify their commitment to revitalizing people or geographical areas that have been significantly affected by cannabis prohibition and repression.

In addition to these priority principles, the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission will accept applications from «vertically integrated microbusinesses» (vertically integrated microbusinesses) from May 1. These companies bring the growing site and the sales site together on the same site, generating less transport, and therefore less energy consumption and safety problems.

For other dispensaries, stores or manufacturers of’edibles or transport companies, applications will be open from June 1. But all will not be able to start sales until July 1, 2018.

«I anticipate a large number of applications. There will be a lot of interest around the opening of these facilities in Massachusetts.» explains Jim Borghesani, spokesman for Marijuana Policy Project, one of America's leading pro-reform associations. «On the one hand, the New England states are small. There will be customers from other states because Massachusetts is never more than 30 or 50 kilometers from another state. Massachusetts will set the pace among the New England states on the road to a safer system of legal sales.»

For long-time activists, it's a moment they thought they'd never see.

«I knew it would happen, but I never expected to be alive to see it,» said 89-year-old Lester Grinspoon. «It's very gratifying.» Lester Grinspoon, also known for the variety Dr. Grinspoon, is a former Harvard professor of psychiatry who helped found the pro-reform movement in the 1970s.