Maine’s Mom And Pop Weed Scene Sweats

Becoming a caregiver became a more viable business instead of a daily fight for survival. Medical marijuana sales totaled nearly $222 million in 2020, compared to $184 million for potatoes and $26 million for blueberries - the two food crops the state is best known for.

State Rep. Patty Hymanson, a neurologist and chair of the House Health and Human Services Committee, remembers the day in 2018 when lawmakers put various “stakeholders” of the cannabis program into a room to come up with a deal on a revision of the medical marijuana program. Everyone from representatives of larger dispensaries to smaller caregivers worked for two days on a deal.

In the end, “the Legislature agreed to expand the business of the caregivers so that they were able to develop a business that was larger than before,” she said in an interview. “In exchange for that, it was very clear that they would be regulated more.”

Tracking and testing controversy

With the start of recreational sales in October 2020, the market is poised for another big shakeup. Adult-use sales topped $5.3 million in May, a nearly fourfold increase from the first month of sales. State regulators are trying to thread the needle between preserving the caregiver market while bolstering public safety as the recreational market grows rapidly.

OMP made many changes from the draft rule that initially stirred outrage, but it paused its rulemaking when the Legislature returned for a seven-week special session and competing bills were introduced to address the controversy. One measure, which has the support of many small business owners, would pause the rules and require the OMP to consult with caregivers, patients and medical providers earlier in the process. A competing bill would delay the implementation for "home-based caregivers."

In the past week, the caregiver-backed bill succeeded in both chambers with a 117-25 vote in the House and a 32-2 vote in the Senate. "This is the most consensus they've had on anything this year," said Mark Barnett, who owns a caregiver storefront called Higher Grounds in Portland, Maine.

But passing the bill is just the start of a longer collaborative process. "This is not about not having rules," he said. "We're all in the same state, we all have the same interests [and] we have to find places where those can overlap."

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One of the biggest concerns caregivers have is implementing a mandatory seed-to-sale tracking system. The program would be run by Metrc, a Florida-based software company that operates similar programs in 15 other states and Washington, D.C. Tracking marijuana plants with radio-frequency tags as they move through the supply chain is designed to help governments ensure compliance in the legal marijuana market.

But skeptical caregivers point to cannabis businesses in other states who have found implementation costly. Oklahoma medical cannabis businesses are trying to stop the implementation of Metrc in a legal challenge against the state. And a Missouri court recently ruled against the company when it determined that medical marijuana businesses would not have to pay for plant tags. Caregivers worry that the system will be plagued by spotty internet. Electricity access in more rural parts of the state. But most of all, they fear the potential labor expenses rather than the cost of the software or plant tags. Some in the industry have proposed exempting small caregivers from seed-to-sale tracking entirely.