The Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission is looking for a solution to the federal restriction of transporting cannabis over ocean water as Martha’s Vineyard faces a severe product drought.
The CCC recently held a public meeting on the island to hear from medical cannabis patients who are on the verge of being cut off from their legal supply due to the eminent shuttering of Fine Fettle, Martha’s Vineyard’s sole supplier of legal cannabis.
“Without the ability to transport products, the island’s only licensed businesses, including mine will be closed for good,” said Island Time owner Geoff Rose during the June 7 CCC meeting. “Island residents and visitors will soon be entirely cut off from access to legal cannabis products for both medical and adult use.”
The roughly 87-square-mile island is a popular summertime tourist spot off the southeast coast of Massachusetts. During the off season, the island is home to a small community of year-long residents, which includes about 230 registered medical cannabis patients.
Within the Massachusetts legal cannabis market, the two island communities of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket exist in a vacuum apart from the larger state market. Federal law prohibits the transport of cannabis across sea or ocean water, which means all growing, processing and selling must take place on the island. As a result, dispensaries struggle to maintain consistent product supplies while also competing with the prices on the mainland.
Companies on the islands must also conduct their own lab testing in house, because they cannot legally transport samples to the mainland to submit to an independent testing lab.
Nantucket currently has two vertically integrated companies that serve both adult-use and medical cannabis, The Green Lady and ACK Natural, both of which have been in operation for years.
On Martha’s Vineyard, Connecticut-based Fine Fettle currently owns and operates the sole cultivation and processing site, as well as one of the two adult-use dispensaries. All of the island’s legal cannabis is produced in a small, two-story facility at the end of a dirt road in the middle of the residential part of the island.
Fine Fettle recently announced that it is winding down its island operations. The company reported that it still has enough supply for the summer rush, but it anticipates shuttering by the end of fall.
The closure also put the island’s other dispensary, Island Time, into jeopardy because it leaves the dispensary without a single wholesale source. Recently, Island Time announced that it had to close because it ran out of product.
Other states make it work, while an Alaska pilot loses his license
Over the last decade, the federal Department of Justice has taken a hands-off approach to state-legal cannabis businesses, but enforcement concerns from the U.S. Coast Guard remain when it comes to crossing water.
Aside from federal law concerns, Massachusetts would have to update its regulations to allow transport over large bodies of water.
California regulations allow cannabis transportation to Santa Catalina Island, which is off the coast of Los Angeles, while New York allows transportation using ferries. Maine and Hawaii regulations also allow transport to or between islands.
In contrast, a pilot in Alaska failed to overturn his license revocation in a federal court of appeals earlier this year for transporting product between dispensaries within that state via plane.
Alaska voters legalized adult-use cannabis in 2014. Shortly thereafter, James Fejes started a cannabis transportation service. The Alaska Marijuana Control Board investigated Fejes over irregularities in his record-keeping under the state’s seed-to-sale tracking regulations.
Fejes claimed that he was using his personal vehicle to transport product on the ground, but the AMCB discovered that he was actually using a private jet to hop around the state. AMCB reported Fejes to the Federal Aviation Administration, which subsequently revoked Fejes’ pilot license.
Fejes appealed that decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that he was had not violated federal law because he never left the State of Alaska. The court was unconvinced and upheld the license revocation in an April 22, 2024, opinion.
“Navigable airspace is an interstate route through which goods move,” wrote Circuit Court Judge Ryan Nelson. “Therefore, Congress can regulate Fejes’s conduct, which involved use of a navigable airspace, as a channel of interstate commerce.”
