Curaleaf (CURLF:OTCMKTS), the Massachusetts-based cannabis giant, announced that it had sold its last remaining adult-use storefront in Maine in its year-end financial report.
“Despite the industry challenges, 2023 was a pivotal year in Curaleaf ‘s evolution. We took actions to optimize our asset base while aggressively scrutinizing every aspect of our cost structure,” said Curaleaf Chair Boris Johnson during the March 6 earnings call.
Curaleaf recently agreed to sell its adult-use dispensary in South Portland to Foliage Cannabis Co., according to Mainebiz. Foliage already had one shop in operation in South Portland when it took over Curaleaf’s adult-use storefront on the other side of town. Curaleaf still owns medical dispensaries in the towns of Auburn, Bangor, Ellsworth and Wells.
Johnson did not directly speak about Maine, but in the company’s annual earnings report released in conjunction with the call, Curaleaf noted that over the course of 2023, the company left markets in California, Colorado, Oregon, Michigan and Kentucky. At the same time, the company bought into Utah’s medical market and expanded to adult use in Connecticut, New York and Maryland. Curaleaf is also expanding internationally into Portugal’s and Poland’s cannabis markets.
Curaleaf is currently the only major multi-state operator in Maine, as the Vacation State continues to tweak the regulations that cover the medical cannabis industry, which has long been dominated by caregivers.
Maine’s medical market has a situation unique from other states in that caregivers have a lot of leeway to sell products to medical patients. Maine currently has 1,724 registered caregivers, according to state data. Caregivers are allowed to cultivate, process and sell cannabis products to medical patients, either from out of their own home or through retail storefronts. The state only has 68 licensed medical dispensaries, meaning that caregivers dominate the medical market.
Bill seeks to strengthen caregiver market
State legislators are currently hammering out an omnibus cannabis bill that caregivers hope will shore up their businesses and limit Maine’s Office of Cannabis Policy’s (OCP) efforts to implement new regulations for the medical market.
“There has always been concern that multi-state operators and big corporate cannabis would come into the State of Maine and take over our industry. Thanks to all the hard working, bootstrapping, owner operator businesses out there, this has never materialized. The blue-collar grit of our program’s workforce has out competed the MSOs,” said Joel Pepin, co-founder of JAR Cannabis, in submitted testimony in support of the bill, LD 40.
Currently, the legislation is in concept draft awaiting legislator agreement on the language of an amendment that would make up the body of the bill. The committee voted for divided reports on March 20, meaning it did not pass unanimously. It received written testimony from dozens of interested parties.
OCP has attempted, multiple times, to add tracking and testing requirements to the medical market, without success. The agency hosted a series of medical provider workshops in 2021 and 2022 to develop new rules for the medical market. Both efforts failed to produce any new regulation.
“I think a lot of that [push to regulate caregivers] is coming from the recreational market,” Pam Edwards of Your Green Thumb Caregivers, a caregiver storefront located in Kittery, Maine, told CRB Monitor.
Unlike their medical cannabis counterparts, adult-use operators are currently required to submit products for lab testing for potency and contaminants, as well as use Metrc for track and tracing. Adult-use purchases are also subjected to 10% sales tax. The added requirements make it difficult for adult-use to financially compete with caregivers, despite caregivers being limited to medical patients for a customer base.
“They can sell to anyone, we can’t,” noted Edwards.
The Maine Cannabis Union, which was formed by a group of medical cannabis providers to advocate to the state, is pushing back on OCP proposals.
“We too are tired of this annual push by OCP to corporatize Maine cannabis into an import state, to eliminate caregivers, to suppress outdoor growing of this plant, and to suppress the will of the people of the state of Maine,” said Susan Meehan, president of the Maine Cannabis Union, in submitted testimony in support of LD 40.
“We demand a regulating Office of Cannabis Policy that believes in the plant, that believes in Maine’s future as an export state of grown craft cannabis, and that believes in the often unsung heroes that built and annually defend Maine’s cannabis program, the unsung essential businesses of the worldwide pandemic,” Meehan said.
Rebecca Lambert, in written testimony submitted on behalf of the Maine Municipal Association, said the draft legislation is “problematic.”
“In short, this bill is not helpful for local regulation or enforcement in both the medical and adult use industries,” she said. “By cutting off state and local regulation authority for medical caregivers, it may reduce financial burdens for caregivers, but it also creates a statutory shield for unauthorized and illegal activity.”
