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Massachusetts legislature approves marijuana law reforms

David McNew
/
Getty Images
Massachusetts voters legalized recreational marijuana use in 2016. The following year, the legislature rewrote the law. In 2022, the legislature approved several key changes to the statute.

Industry wins long-sought changes on local fees

The Massachusetts legislature has made some significant changes to the law governing the state’s burgeoning multi-billion dollar marijuana industry.

A bill approved Monday in the hours before the end of formal sessions targets local fees demanded of marijuana businesses, creates a fund to help people who were victims of the war on drugs break into the legitimate cannabis industry, and advances the licensing of so-called “cannabis cafes.”

WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief Paul Tuthill spoke with David O’Brien, President and CEO of the Massachusetts Cannabis Business Association.

Paul Tuthill is WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief. He’s been covering news, everything from politics and government corruption to natural disasters and the arts, in western Massachusetts since 2007. Before joining WAMC, Paul was a reporter and anchor at WRKO in Boston. He was news director for more than a decade at WTAG in Worcester. Paul has won more than two dozen Associated Press Broadcast Awards. He won an Edward R. Murrow award for reporting on veterans’ healthcare for WAMC in 2011. Born and raised in western New York, Paul did his first radio reporting while he was a student at the University of Rochester.