Regulators Weigh Retail Options For Cannabis Stores

Lottery Inquiry Sparks Conversation At Cannabis Control Commission

MARCH 4, 2024…..A request from one marijuana store to be allowed to also sell Massachusetts Lottery tickets has sparked a broad conversation at the Cannabis Control Commission about where to draw the line on the sale of non-cannabis products as the legal marijuana industry matures to include establishments beyond standard retailers.

State law and the CCC’s regulations neither explicitly allow nor prohibit licensed marijuana stores from selling Lottery tickets. But the CCC has, by policy, limited the non-marijuana items its retailers can sell to marijuana accessories like pipes and things like T-shirts or hats that carry the retailer’s brand.

So when one of its licensees (the commission did not identify the company) asked the CCC whether it could go live as a Lottery agent, agency staff marked the inquiry up for a full commission discussion last week. Commissioners did not shoot down the thought of CCC retailers selling scratch tickets along with pre-rolls Thursday but made clear they’re not exactly close to green-lighting the idea either.

“It sounds like maybe there’s a licensee who’s anxious to start doing this or wants to do this, and I can appreciate their interest in seeing some action by the commission. So, again, I don’t want to say no,” Commissioner Bruce Stebbins said last week. “But I think it involves 1) more of a discussion with our counterparts at Mass. Lottery, as well as, I think, a broader discussion for this commission about where we actually want to play a role as the industry is maturing, what do retail establishments begin to look like.”

Acting Chair Ava Callender Concepcion said during Thursday’s meeting that she would not have supported the request had the commission been asked that day to vote, “but it’s because of the broader implications.” She agreed with Stebbins that the question was really a more broad one about what non-marijuana products should be sold at marijuana establishments.

She said she “wanted to make sure we at least begin that conversation and started to kind of consider the next steps.”

Those next steps are likely to include the exploration of a potential memorandum of understanding between the CCC and Lottery Commission, reviewing standard operating procedures submitted to the CCC by the licensee that wants to sell Lottery products, and more conversations between agency staff and commissioners. Commissioner Kimberly Roy was particularly interested Thursday in the licensee’s plans for cash-handling and ensuring that cash from Lottery sales is not co-mingled with cash from cannabis sales, as well as with plans to prevent loitering at retailers.

Debbie Hilton-Creek, the CCC’s acting executive director, suggested that commissioners keep in mind that the nature of marijuana stores is expected to soon change.

The CCC is working to implement “social consumption” sites, or places where adults will be able to both buy and consume marijuana on-site. That shift will mean that not all places that sell marijuana will be stores where people go in, buy their product and leave. Instead, people will enter an establishment, buy a product, stay on-site to use that product, and possibly look for something else, like a drink or a snack, while they’re there.

“If you look at the conversation that’s starting around social consumption, I think this is going to really broaden the perspective as to what licensees are going to be asking to be sold,” Hilton-Creek said. “As we start these conversations, I don’t think they are mutually exclusive. And I think we really need to consider, on a broader scale, if we are going to approve for them to sell Lottery tickets, that it’s going to go well beyond that.”

And the CCC has already gotten requests from other licensees to sell snacks, Acting Director of Investigations and Enforcement Nomxolisi Khumalo said last week.

Khumalo said that there was one Colorado dispensary that also sold lottery tickets briefly, but that outlet went back to selling only marijuana after about a month due to low sales. The digital media outlet Westword said in October that the Pig ’N’ Whistle dispensary in Denver was the only pot shop in the state registered with the Colorado Lottery.

“Looking into Colorado, they began their sales in a particular month and those sales actually stopped within the same month. And they told us that they did not find it profitable for them to continue doing so,” Khumalo said. “But again, we don’t know if the same would apply here in Massachusetts. We do not have an idea because it’s not something that we’ve done so far.”