For the past year, the state agency overseeing the cannabis industry has careened from one crisis to another. Here's everything you need to know about the past year of crises that's brought the agency to this point.
In late July, Shannon O’Brien, the chair of the Cannabis Control Commission, said during a meeting that Executive Director Shawn Collins had told her that he planned step down from the commission at the end of this year, and that he would take family leave the following Monday. She said Collins' expected departure “creates chaos for us," since the CCC was working toward a Nov. 9 deadline in its long-awaited review of regulations.
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But in recent weeks, a CCC spokesperson has told the Business Journal that Collins hasn't resigned and continues to serve in his current role. The agency has not made Collins available for an interview, however.
At the next public meeting in August, O'Brien amended her comments to say that she thought the cannabis industry was in crisis, and apologized for creating confusion.
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“I know it caught you off guard, and I know that there was some concern about that. At the time, I believed I was alerting you to an important eventuality that I only discovered the day before," O'Brien said. "The CCC is already understaffed and overworked with several key positions unfilled for many months. We have a lot of work to do just to finish the work on municipal equity regulations. I was privy to information that I believed would place greater pressure on how we manage the commission, and I believed I had a statutory duty to address that situation.”
The upheaval comes as the agency is being criticized for not taking action on a host of issues, such as a change to the two-driver rule for delivery companies, and a persistent lack of equity across the industry despite state efforts to the contrary.
