(These hearings will be held sometime next year, after the regulations take effect.) Then in September, bureau chief Lori Ajax announced they’d be launching a temporary licensing program to avoid any rollout delays in the New Year.
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In fact, the time crunch is so pressing that as of August, the Bureau of Cannabis Control invoked an “emergency rulemaking process” that allows them to forego public hearings in the interest of time. Under its new role, the state went to work building a dual-purpose set of regulations to govern all commercial cannabis practices in the 583 jurisdictions throughout the state.īut the state is now facing a rapidly ticking clock.
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After months of research and a draft release of medical guidelines, that effort was scrapped in June 2017 when the state passed Senate Bill 94, which merged the two cannabis industries into one regulatory framework. Previously known as the Bureau of Medical Cannabis Regulation, this state agency was tasked last year with developing separate regulations for both medical and recreational cannabis. That’s where the Bureau of Cannabis Control comes in. However, this process of regulation has been slow and sporadic, with no sweeping changes made across the board. For more than 20 years, municipalities up and down the state have slowly adopted their own policies on medical marijuana, from simply banning dispensaries to embracing them to offering responsible operators limited protections from legal prosecution. Throngs of cultivators, manufacturers, dispensary-owners and others in the cannabis industry are bracing for impact of the new state regulations and want nothing more than to get compliant – a difficult feat as final regulations are yet to be completed. The Fully Baked team are not the only ones to feel like they got the rug pulled out from under them. Zafrin and Nicholson had built their business on a recipe that would be banned. In the push to make standardized guidelines for marijuana products across the state, the Department of Public Health determined that perishable cannabis items – like ice cream, for example – would be illegal. In this instance, it seems his concern was founded. “Especially with something like this they tend to over-govern…a little bit.” “When government gets involved with an industry, there are challenges,” says Zafrin. RS Recommends: 5 Devices You Need to Set Up Your Smart Home Like many in the cannabis sphere, they welcomed regulation in order to ensure quality and establish a system of checks and balances, but were concerned about overreach.Įvery Super Bowl Halftime Show, Ranked From Worst to Best When Proposition 64 passed last November – which legalized adult-use recreational marijuana in the state as of January 1st, 2018 – Zafrin and Nicholson felt a mix of emotions. They found a company that could supply the THC oil, and landed themselves in 100 medical dispensaries across the state. They made their share of mistakes – including a peanut butter and crispy maple bacon flavor that contained chunks of chewy meat and turned out to be “really awful,” Zafrin says – but after just three months, they finally found a balance.
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While they’d eventually make flavors like Coffee Pot, Vanilla Kush and Go Fudge Yourself, the learning curve was steep. They bought a small, $30-something ice cream maker and began experimenting with processes and flavors at home. When Alex Zafrin and Rekka Nicholson decided to make marijuana-infused ice cream, they started off small.