D.C. Medical Cannabis Stakeholders Urge Tougher Enforcement at Council Meeting
D.C. council’s Committee of the Whole held a roundtable on Feb. 11, 2025 to hear from stakeholders in D.C.’s medical cannabis market to address the state of the industry and enforcement against unlicensed cannabis shops.
The hearing comes at a pivotal time in the D.C. cannabis market as the revenue continues to drop yet new stores are opening almost weekly due to the implementation of the 2022 medical cannabis market expansion.
The expansion set up a way to fold I-71 or gifting cannabis shops into the legal medical market. D.C. is still unable to set up an adult-use cannabis market due to the Harris Rider in the yearly federal spending bill.
Medical dispensaries that transitioned from the unlicensed market to the legal market, new shops and legacy dispensaries have all expressed their dismay at the slow closure of unlicensed cannabis shops in the District.
Rabbi Jeffrey Kahn, owner of Takoma Wellness Center founded in 2013, testified that despite multiple bills and enforcement laws passed by the city council to end the unlicensed cannabis market in D.C., the city has failed to shut down more unlicensed shops. This “has placed us in the same very difficult situation we were in before the Council passed the comprehensive cannabis enforcement legislation, … barely surviving.”
Caroline Crandall, CEO of Green Theory which was the first unlicensed shop to transition to the legal medical market in April 2024, testified that a year after rushing to open, “it’s clear that enforcement has not materialized in the way we were led to believe.”
“While we struggle under heavy regulations and financial burdens, illegal operators continue to thrive—undermining the very system ABCA assured us was being built,” she added. She also pointed to a patient pool being too small to sustain legal medical dispensaries in the District. She testified that if a concrete plan to effectively close unlicensed stores is not enacted, her store will not survive.
“As it stands, running a legal, compliant dispensary in DC is a financial impossibility,” she said.
Fred Moosally, the Director of the Alcoholic Beverage and Cannabis Administration (ABCA), testified that legislation passed in November 2024 has allowed the agency to ramp up closures of unlicensed dispensaries.
However, just under 30 stores have been closed and/or padlocked according to ABCA. Moosally noted the marked increase in closures since Jan. 15 compared to the last four months of 2024.
This leaves over 150 potential unlicensed stores according to ABCA’s own enforcement tracker. The deadline for submitting testimony is Feb. 18 at 5 P.M.
We have highlighted the most interesting recommendations of the council meeting below:
- Establish a cannabis advisory board to advise ABCA and city council.
- Reduce the size requirement for testing batches of cannabis products to submit to D.C.’s only testing lab because it is too large and cost prohibitive.
- Multiple asked for the removal of expiration dates on all conditional and social equity licensees which are currently set to expire at two years for conditional retail licenses.
- Multiple business owners asked to remove the $10 fee for non-residient medical patients to register claiming that it pushes out of District clients to the unlicensed market.
- Subsized “low-income” medical patients 20% discount which is currently a burden shouldered by the dispensaries.
- No extensions on the Mar. 31, 2025 deadline for unlicensed operators who applied to be legally licensed. (There is currently no extension, but the doubt comes from multiple missed deadlines that did not result in major closures of unlicensed stores.)
