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Cannabis industry coalition urges H.321 changes: direct sales, agricultural parity, medical program oversight; flags enforcement and licensing provisions
Summary
A coalition of cannabis industry, farm and patient advocates told the House Government Operations Committee they back equity funding proposals but urged H.321 be amended to allow direct sales for small producers, create agricultural exemptions, standardize education for budtenders, and avoid enforcement and licensing changes that would burden small businesses.
Advocates and industry representatives testified to the House Government Operations Committee about H.321, offering a set of recommended statutory changes and commenting section-by-section on the bill.
Jeffrey Pizzitello, executive director and cofounder of Mac Growers Association, said coalition members support the Land Access and Opportunity Board's funding request and also set out additional priorities for H.321, including allowing direct sales for small cultivators and manufacturers and creating agricultural exemptions to align outdoor cannabis cultivation more closely with other agricultural producers.
Graham Eunach Stroufenacht, policy director at Rural Vermont and a member of the Vermont Cannabis Equity Coalition, outlined seven coalition priorities and presented proposed statutory language. "Part of the expansion of this tax revenue to this Cannabis Business Development Fund would be used to stand up a program similar to the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board's Farm Viability Program," Graham said, arguing small producers need parity with other farm sectors.
The coalition proposed allowing tier 1 and tier 2 cultivators and manufacturers to sell directly to the public without a retailer license, with rules to be determined by the Cannabis Control Board (CCB). The proposal intends to break what the witnesses called a retail bottleneck that limits producers' market access.
On agricultural issues, witnesses asked for wetlands and parcel-number exemptions and cited fallout from last year's Act 166 cultivation provisions that could harm at least 11 small businesses unless addressed. They requested the committee coordinate with the House and Senate agriculture committees to consider those land-use and setback matters.
Representatives of the Green Mountain Patients Alliance and a former Cannabis Control Board vendor educator, Jesse Lynn, pressed for integrating medical program policy with adult-use policy. "Education is harm reduction," Jesse Lynn said, urging standardized education and training for budtenders to protect consumers and registered medical patients. GMPA representatives also recommended creating an advisory panel to manage medical-program decisions (for example, symptoms and conditions that qualify for registration) rather than leaving those determinations solely to the legislature.
Industry groups including the Vermont Growers Association and business owners such as Joshua (Joshua Decatur), owner and cofounder of HeyBudd, reviewed specific sections in H.321. Positions recorded in testimony included opposition to language that would add law-enforcement enforcement into business-to-business matters (section 1), opposition to adding fingerprint-based background checks for employee ID cards (section 2), support for the technical hemp-definition change (section 3), and mixed views on a proposed new trim-and-harvest license and carrier services. Coalition witnesses suggested carrier services might be better addressed by reforming the employee ID card system to preserve flexibility for sole proprietors and skilled workers.
On retail licensing, coalition representatives opposed what they read as a two-year moratorium on retail license types in section 16, arguing it would worsen the market bottleneck and harm small producers and consumers. They urged the committee to allow the Cannabis Control Board to manage licensing pace through its rulemaking authority and to instead expand direct-market options for cultivators.
The witnesses also pressed for inclusion of the Cannabis Control Board's reports and recommendations in deliberations and said some items (for example, expungement language and certain judiciary matters) may fall under other committees' jurisdictions.
Ending: The committee received the testimony and did not take votes on H.321 during the session excerpt; witnesses provided recommended statutory language and asked the committee to coordinate with other legislative committees on jurisdictional issues.
