Maine Plans to Allow Cannabis Social Clubs by 2023

Lawmakers in Maine recently made the decision to delay allowing cannabis social clubs until the year 2023. The legislature’s Joint Select Committee on Marijuana Legalization Implementation has been working on coming up with the state’s recreational cannabis rules, and decided to make a compromise to ban social clubs until a later date. This delay is an attempt to appease those who had initially voted against legal cannabis.

“Other states have wanted to do it, but they still haven’t,” Sen. Joyce Maker, R-Calais, told the Portland Press Herald. “We need to get [the bill] passed; then we need to find out what the problems with social clubs might be. [An extension] will give us time to know what we’re doing. I feel that it is imperative that we do the right thing, and we don’t know enough to do the right thing now. This way, we’d have the bill done, our rules made, and then if we want to go ahead with social clubs, we can.”

The bill regarding recreational cannabis will set up commercial licensing and manufacturing in 2018. However, a final vote on those rules is not scheduled to occur until sometime in February.

One major motivation behind cutting the social club aspect of the bill was to ease Gove. Paul LePage’s concerns about driving under the influence. The Portland Press Herald also noted that LePage was worried that the revenue from recreational sales wouldn’t generate enough money to pay for itself, and also had concerns about youth accessing cannabis as well.

Despite all this, Maine has a lot of exciting things in the works, including plans for a drive-thru cannabis store and a full-fledged recreational program. And they aren’t the first state to legalize but hold off on adding public spots to use cannabis. In time, they will surely come around to social clubs as well.