Vermont

What is expected to be America's largest cannabis market is still stuck in limbo as New York legislators hammer out the details.

When will consumers be able to walk into a store and buy cannabis?

"We don't know, we don't know," Patrik Jonsson, northeast regional president at Curaleaf, told Insider. "And not just on the timeline, but also what we're going to be allowed to do," he said.

Vermont Gov. Phil Scott signed a bill into law to establish a fund to help people of color and others impacted by the war on drugs to open licensed cannabis companies.

According to Montpelier-based VTDigger, Senate Bill 25 sets aside $500,000 from the state coffers to establish a marijuana business-development fund that is slated to provide financial assistance, loans, grants and outreach to social equity business applicants.

As of September 2020, 17 states and Washington, D.C. had passed some form of home growing laws, be they for medical or adult use.

Comparatively, most states have so far failed to pass social equity laws, with just a handful being considered adequate parameters.

Groups like the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) say laws with "reasonable safeguards" have not been challenged by any states so far. The MPP suggests secure grow sites away from the public and cultivation caps as adequate parameters.

Vermont’s new recreational cannabis program is projected to generate roughly $250 million in annual sales by the middle of the decade, but homegrown companies might find themselves pitted against larger out-of-state businesses.

Three medical cannabis businesses – including multistate operators Curaleaf and iAnthus Capital Holdings – are poised to take advantage of a five-month head start in sales in the spring of 2022 backed by potentially large cultivation and processing facilities.

Small producers and retailers will follow.

Sen. Bernie Sanders is happy that legal marijuana sales are coming to his home state.

“Let me congratulate the state legislature for making Vermont the 11th state in the country to legalize marijuana and also for expunging past marijuana convictions,” the former Democratic presidential candidate posted on Twitter on Friday.

Vermont Gov. Phil Scott (R) announced this week that he would allow a bill to legalize cannabis sales to become law without his signature, while he signed separate legislation to facilitate the expungement of past marijuana convictions.

Vermont could become the second state in the nation to legalize adult-use marijuana sales through its legislature if a compromise measure hammered out by lawmakers passes both chambers and is signed into law in coming weeks.

While the legislation has yet to be formally approved by the Vermont Senate and House of Representatives, the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) noted in a news release early Wednesday it expects the bill, S. 54, to pass both chambers.

House and Senate negotiators crafted the legislation, which can be viewed in summary form on the MPP website.

The nationwide coronavirus outbreak could set back cannabis legalization efforts along the East Coast and elsewhere, raising further questions about the launch of lucrative new adult-use and medical markets in New York and other states.

Those potential markets, if launched, could generate billions of dollars in business opportunities for a range of marijuana companies.

But the outlook for legalization in those places now seems up in the air.

Another Vermont House committee approved a bill to legalize the sale of marijuana on Monday, with a vote by the full chamber expected in the coming days.

The Appropriations Committee advanced the legislation with a tally of 6-5, clearing its path for floor action—likely on Wednesday and Thursday.

When it comes to state legalization – whether it’s medical or adult-use – there is either effort on the legislative front or at the ballot box (or in cases like New Jersey, the battle moves from one arena to the other).

The bill that would legalize a retail cannabis market in Vermont is on the move.

After a few days of review, the 11 members of the House Government Operations Committee voted unanimously on Friday to move the measure back to the Ways and Means Committee. The tally was significant in one respect: Rep. Jim Harrison (R-Chittenden), the lone Gov Ops Committee member to vote against the bill last session, approved it this time around.