Category Archives: Cannabis

Hmm, Who’s to Blame for the Cannabis Control Board’s Rough Debut?

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VTDigger is up with a story about the Vermont Cannabis Control Board issuing 13 more licenses for growers, manufacturers and retailers. Deeper in the story is a tale of bureaucratic woe that makes one wonder who exactly created the budget for the new organization. Based on track record, I’m guessing the Scott administration.

See, the legal cannabis market is supposed to open this weekend but only four retailers have been licensed — and they’ll have little or nothing to sell because a lot of growers are waiting for their licenses.

James Pepper, chair of the Cannabis Control Board, said at Wednesday’s meeting that the process of setting up regulations and getting an entire market going by October has been like “building a parachute while in the middle of a freefall.”

Pepper acknowledged that there is frustration with the pace of issuing licenses.

Cannabis growers, manufacturers and retailers have been champing at the bit to serve the market as soon as possible. They’ve made up-front investments and need to start making money. They’re now stuck on a slow track, thanks to the understaffed CCB.

But wait, there’s more!

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Stupid Pot Tricks

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Never fear… the Essex County Sheriff’s Department is on the case!

A few years ago, when legalizing cannabis was still in the middle stages of legislative debate, Gov. Phil Scott acknowledged that he has plenty of friends who regularly partake of the demon weed. And yet he opposed further moves toward legalization or state regulation.

The underlying assumption was that of course, his friends would never get busted for pot. Nod and a wink, don’t ya know. It might be illegal on the books, but, ha ha, nobody ever enforces the law, so why not let sleeping laws lie?

Bruce Prosper, Jr. is why.

Prosper is the Northeast Kingdom resident who’s paralyzed from the waist down, and grows his own cannabis for medicinal use. Which caught the attention of an Essex County Sheriff’s deputy, who I believe is seen above riding the bumper in the lower left.

He went and got himself a search warrant, deputies descended on the Prosper home, and heroically arrested him and the rest of his family on felony charges that could bring up to 15 years in prison for each.

And the county prosecutor, the widely esteemed political fixer Vince Illuzzi, is insisting on going ahead with the case. Illuzzi told VTDigger that he’s “kind of caught,” adding that “We are obligated to enforce the law.”

Well, horsefeathers.

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