CCB and Legislative Update

The State House adjourned on Friday, May 10, closing out a contentious legislative session consumed by challenges from a select few to remove essential agriculture-related protections for hundreds of outdoor cultivators, policies we fought hard to enact, with Governor Scott allowing a broad-ranging miscellaneous bill H.270 into law as Act 166 (2024). The Cannabis Control Board recently launched a Propagation License, issued new pre-roll guidance, will be voting to open up a rules amendment process, and will be working on equity, medical program, and outdoor siting legislative reports later this year in preparation for the 2025 legislative session.

The Vermont State House in Montpelier in the summer.

“The months-long fight during the session involved VGA and our Coalition working with licensees, the community, and lawmakers to safeguard the protections afforded to hundreds of outdoor cultivators. This effort consumed the session’s time and focus away from pressing industry priorities and made difficult advances to improve the market.”

The 2024 Legislative Session

This year, the legislative session was bookmarked by members of the Essex Junction Select Board challenging agriculture-related protections for hundreds of outdoor cultivators in response to a single situation in their town where some argued outdoor cultivation shouldn't occur. The months-long fight during the session involved VGA and our Coalition working with licensees, the community, and lawmakers to safeguard the protections afforded to hundreds of outdoor cultivators. This effort consumed the session's time and focus away from pressing industry priorities and made difficult advances to improve the market.

Cannabis is agriculture, and Vermont is one of the very few states with an adult-use market that includes some recognition that cannabis is farming. Vermont recognizes cannabis as farming by providing outdoor cultivators with four ag-related protections, including the allowance to cultivate on land in current use, exemptions from local bylaws, some sales tax exemptions, and rebuttable presumption for nuisance (or smell). These four protections are significant to hundreds of Vermont licensees that benefit and operate under these policies, and they are widely recognized as a moment of progress in Vermont and nationally, where other states aspire to enact similar protections for their licensees. Each year, VGA and our Coalition return to the State House to add more ag-related benefits to these four protections, which we first enacted in 2022, and any effort to remove them runs counter to Vermont's deeply-rooted farming and cottage industry culture.

Despite efforts by members of the Essex Junction Select Board to derail the 2024 legislative session over removing protections for hundreds of outdoor cultivators, some new policies were forged in bill H.612, which was enacted as Act 166 (2024) on June 10 by Governor Scott who allowed it to become law without his signature. Act 166 has over 18 sections and includes some good and some regressive policies, which we cover in detail in the Guide to Act 166 (2024), to be published soon under the Resources section of the VGA website.

It is important to note that we entered the 2024 legislative session with a clear set of reasonable priorities that reflect the immediate issues and long-term needs of the industry, such as equity and community reinvestment, consumption, direct sales, THC cap reform, product registration reform, employment reform, and more, and earned some moments of progress this past session though it was nearly entirely consumed by efforts to safeguard important policies we had enacted in previous years. To prevent this issue from happening again during the 2025 legislative session, we worked to include a legislative report on outdoor siting in Act 166 to properly scope the alleged issue raised by members of the Essex Junction Select Board and to determine if any solutions are needed, before next year’s session convenes.

Propagation License and new pre-roll guidance

In 2023, lawmakers in the State House passed Bill H.270, which the Governor enacted as Act 65 (2023), that included a propagation license and directed the CCB to begin issuing the new license by July 1, 2024. During the deliberation of the propagation license during the 2023 legislative session, we fought for the new license type to include direct-sale allowances for seeds and living plants and to direct the CCB to form new rules around testing for seeds and living plants. However, the CCB didn't support those positions, and the license was enacted with the ability to sell seeds to the general public and living plants only to other licensed cultivators.

The new propagation license will require the CCB to promulgate rules to complete the details of the license to make it operational. The CCB plans to vote to open up its rules for amending later this year but has not done so in time to meet its statutory deadline to roll out the license. As a result, the agency launched the propagation license on July 1, 2024, for prequalification, with much of the details behind the new license to be determined later this year during the rules amendment process.

In early August, the CCB published a new pre-roll guidance document to attempt to clarify long-standing gray areas in law and regulation surrounding pre-rolls with flower, kief, and concentrates. The new guidance document brings uniformity to testing criteria and packaging requirements. It explicitly states that cultivators can produce and possess pre-rolls with flower, and flower and kief derived from their flower. That's right, growers can handle and produce pre-rolls with kief derived from their flower – a statutory interpretation we long fought for the CCB to adopt. Pre-rolls made with concentrates must be made by manufacturers, even though cultivators can now possess cannabis products. Find the new guidance document on the CCB website.

Rules Amendment Process and Legislative Reports

The CCB developed its initial rules, or regulations, for the industry in 2021. Then, in November 2023, it voted to open up the rules for changes, and now it plans to open them up again later this year, likely during its August or September Board meeting. When the agency opens up its regulations, it is called a rules amendment process, and these are significant windows or opportunities to influence the agency to improve the rules of the market. As we did in 2021, during initial rulemaking, and later in 2023, during the first rules amendment process, we are drafting recommendations for changes to the rules and plan to organize industry-wide meetings to discuss changes and bring awareness to the important process.

Legislative reports are a tactic often used by lawmakers and advocates to include an issue in a bill if time or other factors don't permit it to be acted on in that session – it can be a means to return to an issue in the next legislative session, and, sometimes, legislative reports can also provide an opportunity to gather more evidence to advocate with. In Act 166 (2024), we worked on an equity and community reinvestment and an outdoor siting report. Act 166 also includes a medical cannabis program report, which we managed to include Coalition member the Green Mountain Patients Alliance in the report to help represent the interests of local patients and caregivers. The CCB is planning to hold public meetings with named stakeholders to develop these legislative reports, stay tuned to the CCB website for announcements of those events, and we will be sure to notify the industry as well.