Legalized recreational marijuana poses opportunities and threats to various CT business interests

Gov. Ned Lamont has filed a bill to legalize recreational marijuana, creating a $1.25-per-gram tax on the drug, which would be available for purchase to customers 21 and older beginning at the earliest, July 1, 2022.

Connecticut is behind the eight ball on legalization as Massachusetts, Vermont and Maine already allow recreational use of the drug. Still, there will be plenty of business interests and opportunities at stake if and when the new industry sprouts in Connecticut.

From real estate to construction, Lamont’s proposal is drawing reactions from a variety of Connecticut industries. Here are a few of the issues surrounding legal marijuana and its potential impact on Greater Hartford’s business community.

Room for growth … and sales

When Greg Schaan, Curaleaf’s senior vice president of cultivation, was searching for a location with enough room to house his company’s growing medical marijuana operation he noticed something interesting: many of the vacant spaces he looked at used to be occupied by companies that left the state.

“They had left behind these large commercial operations, because businesses had relocated to somewhere else,” Schaan said.

Curaleaf ended up moving into a 60,000-square-foot space in Simsbury that had been a customer-service center for electric utility Eversource. [Read more at Hartford Business Journal]