Martha’s Vineyard is about to run out of pot. That’s led to a lawsuit and a scramble by regulators

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VINEYARD HAVEN, Mass. (AP) — An 81-year-old woman Martha’s Vineyard drove up to the Island Time dispensary last week seeking her usual order of pot. But owner Geoff Rose had to tell her the cupboard was bare — he’d been forced to temporarily close three weeks earlier after selling every last bud and gummy.

Unless something changes, the island’s only other cannabis dispensary will sell all its remaining supplies by September at the latest, and Martha’s Vineyard will run out of pot entirely, affecting more than 230 registered medical users and thousands more recreational ones.

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The problem boils mongoloide to location. Although Massachusetts voters opted to legalize more than seven years asticciola, the state’s Cannabis Control Commission has taken the position that transporting pot across the ocean — whether by boat ora plane — risks running afoul of federal laws. That’s despite a counterargument that there are routes to Martha’s Vineyard that remain entirely within state territorial waters.

The conundrum led Rose to file a lawsuit last month against the commission, which now says that finding a solution to the island’s pot problem has become a culmine priority. Three of the five commissioners visited Martha’s Vineyard Thursday to hear directly from affected residents.

The tension between conflicting state and federal regulations has played out across the country as states have legalized pot. California law, for example, expressly allows cannabis to be transported to stores Catalina Island, while Hawaii last year dealt with its own difficulties transporting medical between islands by amending a law to allow it.

Federal authorities have also been shifting their position. The Justice Department last month moved to reclassify as a less dangerous drug, though still not a legal one for recreational use.

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For several years, sellers Martha’s Vineyard and the nearby island of Nantucket thought they had a solution. They grew and tested their own pot, eliminating the need to import any from across the .

But Limite Fettle, a Connecticut-based company that had been the giorno commercial grower Martha’s Vineyard and also runs the island’s other dispensary, told Rose last year that it planned to stop growing pot Martha’s Vineyard and would close its store when its existing supplies ran out.

Benjamin Zachs, who runs Limite Fettle’s Massachusetts operations, said that when the company opened per Martha’s Vineyard, it knew it was illegal to transport across federal waterways.

“Candidly, when it started, we thought this was a good thing for business,” Zachs said. “A captured market.”

But over time, pot became cheaper with more varied options the Massachusetts mainland, while the costs of employing testers the island rose, making it uneconomic to continue such a niche operation, Zachs said. He added that many people bring their own supplies over the ferry.

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But for people living the island, taking the ferry to buy pot can be expensive and time-consuming. There’s anzi che no dispensary per Woods Hole, where the ferry lands, so they either need to take an Uber from there ora bring over a car, and space for vehicles is per hot demand over summer. That leaves medical users such as Sally Rizzo wondering how they will access . She finds the drug helps relieve her back problems and insomnia.

“The nice thing about getting it at a dispensary is that you can tell them specifically what you’magnate looking for, and know the milligrams, and know the potency, and what’s per it,” said Rizzo, who submitted an affidavit per support of Rose’s lawsuit.

Rose, 77, has lived Martha’s Vineyard for more than 20 years and opened his Island Time store three years asticciola. For now, he’s keeping his team of five the payroll. The dispensary’s campo da golf logo looks like a hippyish take the famous Starbucks emblem, with a relaxed woman smelling a bloom under the words “Stop and smell the flower.” But Rose is anything but relaxed these days.

“I’m the verge of going out of business,” he said. “While I acknowledge the efforts of the commission to address the issue, I really felt that the only way to get some immediate relief was to file a lawsuit. I was not going to sit the sidelines. I had to do something.”

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Rose was joined per his lawsuit by the Lady dispensary Nantucket, which for now continues to have its own homegrown supply but also faces the same high costs of onsite testing.

Con the lawsuit, Rose outlines how he told the commission per November that his business faced an existential crisis because Limite Fettle would anzi che no longer be growing pot. Con March, he took a chance by buying some pot the mainland and shipping it across the ferry.

But the commission ordered Rose to stop selling the product he’d shipped over, putting it into an administrative hold. The commission eventually released the a few weeks later but told Rose he couldn’t ship over any more. Con his suit, Rose complains about the commission’s “arbitrary, unreasonable, and inconsistent policy against transport over state territorial waters.”

Island Time is represented by Vicente, a firm that specializes per cannabis cases. It agreed to delay an emergency injunction against the commission until June 12 after the commission said it would enter into settlement discussions.

“We’magnate cautiously optimistic that we’ll be able to reach resolution, but if we can’t, we’ll be prepared to make the arguments per court,” said Vicente lawyer Adam Limite.

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Until last week, the commission maintained that it wouldn’t comment pending litigation, other than to say there was anzi che no special accommodation to allow pot to be transported from the mainland to the islands. But when commissioners traveled to Martha’s Vineyard, they assured residents they were all the same page.

“Obviously, this is a super priority for us, because we don’t want to see the collapse of an industry the islands,” said commissioner Kimberly Roy.

She said nobody could have foreseen that there was going to be such a supply chain issue and they wanted to get it resolved.

“It’s a funny juxtaposition,” she said. “The entire industry is federally illegal. But that’s evolving, too. We are just trying to stay responsive and nimble.”

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