Watching the effort to create Maine’s recreational marijuana market has been a lot like observing a rocket take off from Cape Canaveral—lots of anticipation, waiting and more than a few scrubbed launches.
But in Augusta there’s a quieter movement afoot that could significantly affect hundreds of Mainers in the state’s medical marijuana industry. It comes at a time when the recreational law appears to be taking a bite out of medical cannabis sales.
Alysia Melnick helped lead the 2016 campaign to legalize adult-use marijuana, and she’s kept a close eye on the Legislature’s tortured efforts to get the market up and running.
But lately she’s been spending a lot of time in the Health and Human Services Committee, where lawmakers are working to overhaul the medical cannabis program.
“There’s a lot of medical marijuana cultivators who have their eye on the adult-use program,” Melnick says. “And as they’ve seen some things stall here, more focus has been put on the medical side.”
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