In the fall of 2016, voting Littletonians answered YES (3,233 to 2,713) on Ballot Question 4, the measure to legalize cannabis for recreational use and to create a statutory framework to regulate—and heavily tax—its sale. A YES vote also meant that Littleton would be a town where cannabis would be sold.

The commonwealth’s statutory framework sets forth that for every four liquor stores (or part thereof) there would be one cannabis store. Because there are seven liquor stores in our town, Littleton is obligated to offer its residents, the majority of whom voted to legalize cannabis’s recreational use, two shops.

We have one.

It is owned and operated by David Giannetta, a Littleton resident and a realtor who has “sold over 100 homes in the Greater Boston and Central Massachusetts areas” and represents that he has “local knowledge” and a “desire to help others.”

Naturally, you can see why I’d be looking to talk to him. David Giannetta not only owns and operates a retail recreational cannabis shop right here in Littleton (and another recreational cannabis shop in Billerica) but also David Giannetta is in real estate.

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To understand the king-making in the cannabis industry, we need to go back to 2012 when Massachusetts voters went to the ballot and voted to legalize cannabis for medical use by a margin of 2 to 1. That vote birthed a new industry that, by design, was guaranteed to make a lot of already rich people a whole lot richer—the word filthy comes to mind.

Those interested in entering this budding market were required, by the regulations governing the medical-use of cannabis, to be “fully integrated.” You couldn’t just have a grow facility or merely manufacture cannabis-infused products or only operate a shop. If you wanted to be part of the cannabis industry in Massachusetts, back in the 20-teens, medical-use was the only show in town, and you had to do it all: seed to sale.

If you’re thinking, Wow, to do it all, you would’ve needed a boatload of money, you’d be right.

By and large, the people who were able to “fully integrate” and launch the compassionate and necessary medical-use cannabis market in the early 20-teens were middle-aged, white guys who, by reasonable measures, did, in fact, have those money-filled boats and wisely saw that selling cannabis to sick people would be a way to grow their armadas. Capitalism at its best.

There were no “little guys” in the medical-use market because there were no small-business loans available from FDIC-insured banks (Aren’t they all FDIC insured?) because those banks wouldn’t take the “existential risk” of loaning money to a cannabis-related business that—while operating legally within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts—would be in violation of federal law. Of course, if you had substantial capital, the door was wide open.

Continue reading at:

https://jennabrownson.substack.com/p/dispatch-1-the-kings-of-cannabis

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