Lawmakers strip secrecy and extraction rules out of marijuana bill in Maine

State lawmakers stripped the secrecy and extraction provisions from a marijuana bill Monday that would have allowed adult-use businesses to shield some license information from public scrutiny and driven up the price of infused foods, salves and tinctures.

The Office of Marijuana Policy got the committee vote it needed to advance the rest of its department bill, L.D. 2091, which would allow adult-use retail stores to stock their shelves with tracked and taxed medical cannabis they grew during their first year of operation, but no later than January 2022.

“We’re focusing on the big hurdles to getting this market going,” said Sen. Louis Luchini, D-Hancock, Senate chairman of the Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee. “We tackled testing last week, making sure what’s on the shelves is safe. This week, we are making sure stores have something to put on the shelves.”

The Office of Marijuana Policy has referred to these two issues as possible bottlenecks for the industry, or “pain points,” that have caused other states to stumble when trying to roll out their adult-use markets. The state wants to delay opening until there is enough tested product on the shelves that stores do not run out. [Read more at Portland Press Herald]