CityState: Reporter
that the regulatory process would be fair,
open and transparent to everyone.”
Indeed, nothing says transparency like
quietly slipping in major changes to important
legislation at the eleventh hour. And nothing
says equal footing like demanding half-a-
million-dollar licenses — currently the
highest in the nation — to join a tiny state-
controlled monopoly.
Rachel Gillette, a Colorado lawyer who
practices cannabis law, says Rhode Island’s
expensive, hyper-restrictive “regulation
by fear” is bad for the state economy and
keeps the illegal market alive.
“Colorado is a pretty good model that
a lot of states could benefit from,” she says.
“We have reasonable licensing fees and
thousands of licensed businesses. It means
we have a lot of competition in the mar-
ketplace, and that is very American and it
serves the consumer well. We also have a
local option in which each jurisdiction
can determine, based on local needs and
desires, where, how many licenses, and
what type of license is appropriate for that
community.”
In the last six years, the number of
card-holding medical marijuana patients
in Rhode Island has more than tripled
from 4,849 in 2013 to 17,891 in 2019. That
does not take into account out-of-state
cardholders, who, in June 2018, were
permitted under a new interstate reci-
procity law to buy cannabis at Rhode
Island dispensaries. And, for the last three
years, the dispensaries shattered sales
records. In fiscal 2019, they sold $56 mil-
lion worth of marijuana, a 46.6 percent
increase over fiscal 2018, when they did
$38.2 million in business — up more than
a third from fiscal 2017’s $28.2 million.
With numbers like these, rather than
moving away from the old way of doing
business, many critics see the state galloping
toward a regulatory structure that concen-
trates its nascent cannabis industry into a
few well-connected hands, destroys small
businesses, stifles economic development
and consumer choice and encourages
corruption.
In August, the FBI issued a warning in
its weekly broadcast about the “emerging
threat of public corruption in the expand-
ing cannabis industry,” mentioning “some
states” charging as much as $500,000 for
a license. As if to prove the point, one
month later, the agency charged Fall River
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RHODE ISLAND MONTHLY
l JANUARY 2020 31