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Rhode Island Marijuana Business License Lottery Blocked By Federal Judge Amid Challenge To Residency Rules

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1 month ago

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“Knowing that the Act faced legal challenges … the CCC went ahead with its plan to implement the Act and its licensing scheme. The resulting fallout will therefore be self-executing.”

By Christopher Shea, Rhode Island Currant

Almost 100 applicants competing 20 new cannabis retail licenses were to be issued by lottery May has been in limbo since a federal judge’s order this week halted the plan.

U.S. District Court Judge Melissa DuBose on Wednesday issued a preliminary injunction against the Rhode Island Cannabis Control Board. The commission is a defendant in three federal lawsuits filed by out-of-state employers over the state’s residency requirement for retail licenses.

DuBose’s order blocks regulators from holding a license lottery or even continuing to review and review retail license applications submitted to the commission until Dec. 29, 2025.

“It’s very frustrating right now,” Jason Calderon, a grower who applied for a retail license in North Kingstown, said in an interview. “This certainly could have been avoided. All we’ve done now is give existing monopolies more time to become monopolies.”

Commission spokeswoman Charon Rose said Friday that regulators were aware of the ruling and were reviewing the implications for the adult retail use licensing program.

“At this time, the commission is not in a position to provide a definitive timeline,” he said in an email to the Rhode Island Current. “Additional guidance will be provided as it becomes available.”

Legal challenges began in May 2024, California cannabis entrepreneur Justyna Jensen sue The Cannabis Control Commission in U.S. District Court in Providence argued that Rhode Island’s residency requirement violated the state’s commercial protections under the state’s Cannabis Act of 2022.

Jensen filed similar lawsuits in other states, including California and New York.

Jensen stated in his initial lawsuit that he intended to become a majority owner of a social equity business, a specialty license reserved for those affected by the war on drugs.

John Kenney, a Florida resident, filed a second federal lawsuit against the Cannabis Control Commission in May 2024 also challenging the residency requirement. Justin Palmore of California filed a third lawsuit on similar grounds on November 24, 2025.

None of the defendants were among the 97 companies vying for a Rhode Island license following the state’s call for applications late last year.

Passed by state lawmakers in 2022, the Rhode Island Cannabis Act called for 24 new retail stores across the state, with six licenses reserved for social equity applicants and another six for employee-owned cooperative stores.

Not all license types received applications in each of the six geographic areas, which allowed regulators to limit the maximum number of licenses to 20 statewide.

Out-of-state investors and ownership are permitted under the law, but a majority—51 percent—of a cannabis company must be owned by a Rhode Island resident.

DuBose dismissed Jensen and Kenney’s suits in February 2025, finding the complaints premature because state regulators had not finalized the rules governing Rhode Island’s retail licenses. The regulations were issued in May last year.

But the cases were revived last November by the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, which ordered DuBose to issue rulings on the merits at least 45 days before the date the Cannabis Control Commission plans to issue retail licenses.

The deadline set by the Commission for the licenses planned in October would be granted in the second quarter of 2026, in May.

Did the state waste time?

The state argued in its legal filings that the residency requirement gives regulators power, jurisdiction and oversight over all retail licensees.

But DuBose eventually found that Rhode Island’s residency requirement was not well suited to advance the state’s interests. It also found that the plaintiffs would suffer irreparable harm because the commission agreed it would not authorize the 24 additional licenses allowed under state law.

The state also tried to get the plaintiffs’ licenses to be considered at the 11th hour. DuBose said the state had plenty of time to make changes to its rules.

“Knowing that the Act faced legal challenges in this Court, the CCC proceeded with its plan to implement the Act and its licensing scheme,” DuBose. he wrote. “The resulting fall will be purely self-inflicted.”

It’s the same line that has attorney Allan Fung, a former Republican Cranston mayor and congressional and gubernatorial candidate representing several retail applicants, questioning why the state didn’t act sooner to avoid the license freeze.

“It’s disappointing that the state didn’t fix the statute and fix these issues sooner, or find a compromise with these three plaintiffs, before people put their life savings at risk,” Fung said in a text message to the Rhode Island Current. “The industry cannot wait any longer.”

Licensing has certainly been slow for cannabis retailers.

It was more than a year after the state legalized recreational cannabis before a three-member commission charged with regulating the industry was unveiled in June 2023. The commission had to hire staff to write proposals and review rules adopted in other states. Rhode Island’s rules governing retail cannabis were finally approved in May 2025. Chairman Kim Ahern stepped down last October to become attorney general, and Gov. Dan McKee (D) has yet to name a successor.

In recent months, the remaining two commissioners considered slowing down the process further Staggering the draw of 20 licenses, instead of giving them all at once. No final decision was made at the last meeting held on March 13.

“It’s always been something the whole time,” Calderon said. “Now it’s this new hurdle.”

That hurdle means many applicants have been paying rent in their storefronts for months waiting to see if they’ll be selected for the license lottery.

“My very frustrated clients have invested tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars to follow a complicated set of rules at the state and local level only to be swept under the rug at the eleventh hour,” Fung said.

Calderon is a little better off financially, as he said the deal in place for the proposed store in North Kingstown doesn’t require rent to be paid until June.

“Obviously that’s going to come and go without a store,” he said. “I’ll probably lose the location because I won’t be able to cover and hold while the state figures out what the next plan is going to be.”

The regulations require that each application secure a location, including zoning approval from the city or town where the store is to be located. Andre Dev, founder of the Community Cannabis Network of Rhode Island, rules that acts as an incubator for many future working cooperatives.

“A lot of other states only require a fee and you don’t have to have your business ready,” he said in an interview. “Most of these applicants could not open the doors because there was no ready test.”

Dev applauded the fact that applicants were able to get those approvals on time after a three-month application window, which left the court dismayed that they never even filed in Rhode Island.

“Somehow their rights are more important than those of us who have put in the time and effort to do all this,” Dev said. “It’s up to the board to sort this out in a way that causes the least harm to people.”

DuBose suggested in his ruling that the state could refund applicants who decide it’s not worth the wait or transfer current applications to a hypothetical new process.

Both houses of the Rhode Island General Assembly have pending bills to remove the residency requirement. Legislation Sponsored by Representative Scott Slater, a Providence Democrat, the House Committee on Corporations heard it on March 12, where it was held for further scrutiny, standard practice for the bill’s first review.

“Obviously we’re going to have to go through something to fix that,” Slater said in an interview. “We need to make sure this doesn’t happen again. We definitely need to open more stores.”

Dev asked the commission to issue emergency rules within 30 days, removing the mandated language and establishing temporary application procedures consistent with the court’s ruling, noting that the state’s cannabis law declares all provisions severable.

“They have the power to deal with it,” he said.

The Cannabis Control Board is scheduled to meet on Friday, April 17 at 2:00 p.m.

This story was first published by the Rhode Island Currant.

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TSA clarifies that cannabis policy has not changed

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23 hours ago

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May 24, 2026

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Over the past week, many news organizations have been running exaggerated headlines about a supposed change by the federal government to allow marijuana to be brought into airports and airplanes. But it’s not true, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) tells Marijuana Moment.

“TSA’s policy on medical marijuana has not changed,” a TSA spokeswoman said in an email Wednesday.

“According to the TSA website: If any illegal substance or evidence of criminal activity is found during the security screening, TSA will refer the matter to law enforcement,” they said. While it’s true that the agency’s list of medical marijuana “What can I bring?” section of its website was updated on April 27, there were no major changes in policy.

Currently, the website says “Yes,” passengers can carry medical marijuana in carry-on and checked bags with special instructions. But the TSA cannabis policy has said “Yes” to medical marijuana, with the same caveats, since 2019.

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Alabama Officials Move To Delay Automatic Rescheduling Of Marijuana Under State Law Following Trump’s Federal Move

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23 hours ago

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May 24, 2026

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“We’re not saying Alabama won’t do this. We’re definitely going to do this, but if you get it without objection, it’s scheduled right away.”

By Anna Barrett, Alabama Reflector

The governing body of the Alabama Department of Public Health voted Thursday against the federal rescheduling of marijuana, saying state health officials needed more time to determine how to implement it.

Dr. Scott Harris, Alabama’s top health official, told members of the state’s Public Health Commission that the state has “full intent” to implement the change.

“We’re not saying Alabama won’t do this,” Harris told the committee. “We’ll certainly do this, but if you get it without objection, it’s scheduled immediately. If you do nothing, it’s scheduled within 30 days. I’m going to ask you to take the third option, which is to oppose it. Then we just have a little time to figure this out with all our other stakeholders.”

The committee’s vote was unanimous. Brian Hale, ADPH’s legal director, said the objection would be open to public comment during the meeting. This period would last 30 to 60 days.

“The objection is simply to allow more time for input on the implications of this rescheduling,” Hale said. “There will be a public hearing, we’ll see the comments that way, and then we’ll talk to other stakeholders, licensing boards and others who might be affected to see what their input might be.”

In April, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) moved marijuana from Schedule I — the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) list of drugs with the least amount of abuse and legal use — to Schedule III, which, according to the DEA, drugs have a moderate to low potential for physical and psychological dependence. The order followed an executive order President Donald Trump signed in December to keep the DOJ on track to reschedule.

Former President Joe Biden ordered the DOJ to reschedule the drug in 2024, but hearings on the move were canceled in early 2025.

The federal mandate applies to medical marijuana products in states that allow the use of the drug. The move means those businesses can deduct business expenses from federal taxes and investigators have access to legal products in the state. As a Schedule I drug, only cannabis grown in a federal facility could be researched, greatly limiting the supply available to researchers.

Alabama has a medical cannabis program approved by the Legislature in 2021. A Montgomery The dispensary said last week it hopes to make medical marijuana available to patients soon. A message seeking comment from Vince Schillec, the dispensary’s owner, was left Thursday afternoon.

Harris said the reconsideration would not violate state law, but after speaking with the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission (AMCC), he was unsure how the reconsideration would affect the program.

“We’ve worked very hard to try to figure out what the ramifications of this are. There are a number of things that don’t completely conflict with state laws or other regulations, but they require some thought as to how to implement them,” Harris said.

Justin Aday, AMCC’s general counsel, said in a telephone interview that the commission does not foresee any immediate impact from the federal reorganization or a delay in the reorganization at the state level.

“We certainly understand the commission and the desire to gather additional information about the implications of the federal reorganization and what the implications would be, depending on how medical cannabis is scheduled at the state level,” Aday said. “We will certainly participate in that process as necessary, and we will provide all the information we can.”

This story was first published by the Alabama Reflector.

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New California emergency marijuana rules aim to help state businesses

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2 days ago

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May 23, 2026

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California officials are making additional reforms to help the state’s marijuana businesses take advantage of federal tax and other benefits under the Trump administration’s redistricting move.

Specifically, the Department of Cannabis Control (DCC) proposed emergency regulations on Monday to allow companies with current licenses that use both medical and adult marijuana to secure a secondary license through a simplified process to separate the segments of their operations, as federal planning changes currently only cover medical cannabis.

Under the DCC’s proposal, marijuana companies could “create a second entity and hold two separate licenses (one for adult use and one for medicinal use) on the same premises” under the expedited regulations.

“DCC is working to make this pathway available due to the timing and uncertainty of the federal process,” the department said. “Additional operational components (such as tracking and tracing requirements, local permitting, tax collection, and other implementation issues) are still being evaluated and will be addressed through future guidance or rulemaking as needed.”

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