Almost a year after residents voted to legalize adult use recreational marijuana, a special legislative commission in Maine’s state house came to a preliminary agreement about a number of regulations for the impending industry, but also confirmed that the continuing process will almost certainly cause delays to the state’s planned retail rollout date of February 2018.
According to the Portland Press Herald, the special commission has purposely abstained from making recommendations about certain aspects of legalization, and will not even hold a full legislative vote on their limited regulatory mock-up until October. With cultivation, distribution and retail licenses not being considered until regulations are fully set, state officials are not making any promises of a speedy set-up.
“We want to get marijuana out of the black market and we want to do that as quickly as possible, but we need to do it right,” Sen. Roger Katz, co-chairman of the legislative cannabis commission, said. “It is such a big subject and there was so much to consider. As it is, we’re remaining silent on some subjects, leaving others to consider them on other days, because we couldn’t…