Massachusetts’s Social Equity Cannabis Program Is Back On Track After A Year On Pause
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“It’s definitely frustrating to those who were really eager to get into the industry and looking at this as their pathway into it.”
Last year, the commission accepted 229 individuals into the cannabis industry training program for individuals most impacted by the war on drugs, but said that the agency didn’t have funding from the Legislature to operate the program as promised. The course is aimed at providing industry training, technical assistance around regulatory requirements, networking opportunities and fee waivers for those impacted groups to make it easier for them to enter the industry as cannabis business owners or employees.
Now, with pressure from advocates to get the program restarted, CCC leadership says it is now kicking off on September 8 with the current round of applicants and will accept more applicants starting August 1.
The Legislature capped the agency’s budget at $19.88 million—about $10 million less than the commission’s $30 million budget ask for fiscal year 2026. This kicked off a back-and-forth between the commission’s leadership and lawmakers over whether the CCC is adequately funded to complete crucial IT infrastructure updates, hire for important positions and conduct public awareness campaigns.
Bruce Stebbins, the commission’s acting chair, said to CommonWealth Beacon after the commission’s public meeting on Thursday that he is excited for the social equity programming to begin again and that he is appreciative of the agency’s staff for working within the current budget to keep the process moving along.
“They’ve understood the constraints of the level [of] funding that we’ve gotten over the last couple of years, and I think they’ve pivoted effectively,” said Stebbins. “They’re trying to make changes so that the program remains open to everybody and everybody has access to the program material.”
The cohort that was accepted last summer was given access to virtual training on an online platform called TalentLMS, but didn’t receive the in-person instruction and networking opportunities that previous cohorts did. Starting in September, there will be updated courses on the platform and trainings offered through Zoom. The classes will be virtual in order to limit costs.
Many accepted individuals have been waiting for the programming to begin in earnest for over a year, expressing open disappointment with the delays.
“I understand the tensions around the budget and the fact that the Legislature has kept the commission on a pretty tight string, and that the commission has had to make tough choices, but it’s definitely frustrating to those who were really eager to get into the industry and looking at this as their pathway into it,” said Kevin Gilnack, deputy director of the cannabis advocacy group Equitable Opportunities Now, who was one of the applicants accepted in last year’s cohort.
Gilnack—who was once arrested for cannabis possession—said he is eager to take the business- and cannabis industry-specific classes offered by the program, so he can figure out if there is a viable path for him to enter the competitive industry.
Part of the pitch in the successful 2016 ballot measure for cannabis legalization in Massachusetts included assisting those harmed by the war on drugs to participate in the legal industry. The subsequent law legalizing cannabis and creating the CCC, passed by the Legislature in 2017, directs the commission to ensure full participation—still a somewhat ambiguous metric—in the industry by those disproportionately harmed by marijuana prohibition.
The commission often touts its work as a nationwide model, in part because of its social equity training program.
But the funding issues are not likely to resolve soon. Lawmakers have kept a critical eye on the turmoil and regulatory delays at the commission in the past two years. Issues include allegations of bullying at the agency, failure by the commission to collect over $500,000 in licensing fees and long delays in major regulatory changes. The House passed a cannabis reform bill on June 4 that would restructure the commission to a three-member body appointed solely by the governor as a way of addressing some of the agency’s leadership issues.
Gilnack’s group is advocating for a bill put forward by state Sen. Liz Miranda (D) of Boston, who co-chairs the Joint Committee on Racial Equity, Civil Rights and Inclusion. The bill would automatically set aside funding from cannabis tax revenue to go towards the social equity program, even if the Legislature chooses not to fully fund the commission through its ordinary process and without considering how the commission chooses to allocate its budget.
“I think the important thing is that we figure out a way to make sure that future social equity program participants aren’t held back by these funding challenges,” said Gilnack. “It would be great to see the Legislature actually set up automatic funding so that regardless of what else is going on, social equity will remain a priority that actually gets fulfilled every year.”
This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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