AUGUSTA, Maine — Maine lawmakers are coalescing around a rough plan for the state’s new recreational marijuana industry after months of wonky hearings and with weeks more to go before a final proposal that could come by summer’s end.
Voters backed legalization by a slim margin in the 2016 election, approving a law allowing Mainers over age 21 to possess 2.5 ounces of marijuana. It said marijuana would be taxed at 10 percent and built on a statewide cultivation cap of 800,000 square feet.
The Legislature in January delayed commercial sale of marijuana until 2018 to write rules for the system. For casual users, it leaves the federally illegal drug in a no man’s land — legal to grow, possess and consume but illegal to buy or sell.
Now it’s in the hands of a special legislative panel overseeing implementation, which has already agreed in a series of straw votes to several elements of the program, including raising the tax, scrapping the cultivation cap and giving municipalities significant control over the market.
The County is pleased to feature content from our sister company, Bangor Daily News. To read the rest of “What Maine’s recreational marijuana market will look like,” an article by contributing Bangor Daily News staff writerMichael Shepherd, please follow this link to the BDN online.
