WGBH | Cannabis commission chair wants to relax regulations to help businesses ‘thrive’

When Massachusetts residents voted to legalize recreational marijuana in 2016, communities braced for what new cannabis stores would mean for their neighborhoods.

“It was like an opium den is coming to the neighborhood,” Shannon O’Brien, the chair of the Cannabis Control Commission, said on Boston Public Radio on Wednesday.

O’Brien said commissioners at the time tended to overregulate the new cannabis business landscape, knowing they could pull back regulations later on. Now, cannabis use and dispensaries are more normalized. She said it’s time to reevaluate some of the most restrictive regulations that “may or may not protect health and safety.”

Listen to the full interview: https://www.wgbh.org/news/local-news/2023/07/26/cannabis-commission-chair-wants-to-relax-regulations-to-help-businesses-thrive