I want to start a little ongoing series of thoughts about integrating cannabis products and cannabis sales into venues that host events like sports and concerts. I want to keep this more abstract for several concrete reasons:
- We are just starting to see licensed cannabis groups working their way with cannabis consumption in public venues. In Illinois this weekend, the “Miracle at Mundelein” is a prime example of an inaugural attempt– no cannabis sales in the consumption space, but you can purchase products at the dispensary across the street– but it’s a very hodgepodge affair. The state regulators aren’t deeply involved, and the on-site regulations and requirements are an ad-hoc mixture of local rules and state laws. Trying to speak concretely about “public cannabis sales” writ large is useless at this point, we’re only getting started, and each state is its own challenge.
- Almost every state’s laws and licensing schemes for cannabis are designed against sales of cannabis at public venues. The laws are designed to control the sales of cannabis– to limit the sales to licensed facilities and dispensaries, and prohibit all other cannabis sales to customers that take place outside of a licensed dispensary. This was done by legislators at the behest of many in the licensed cannabis industry, at least initially. License holders pay large amounts for their privilege, and are generally against the idea of creating more places to buy licensed products, which undercuts their own sales.
- Every state’s cannabis laws are different. Their own peculiar licenses, their own requirements for acquiring licenses, and their own landscape of regulatory requirements for licensed operators. There are of course similarities between states, but there is absolutely no uniformity or consistency across jurisdictions.
Given these facts, there’s no single strategy or set of changes that a person could recommend, it’s just too thorny and contingent on other circumstances.
I want to invert the framing of this challenge: rather than talk about all the things that need to be modified or changed from our current position in any state’s system, I want to focus on the destination, where we’re trying to get to. If we can start developing a consensus on what safe Public Cannabis Sales might look like, my hope is that we can more easily agree on what needs to change in each jurisdiction.
So for today, I want to highlight some principles or values that an effective Public Cannabis Sales system should enforce and support, and that all stakeholders (communities, regulatory agencies, licensed operators) should be able to rally behind:
- Safe – Everyone should be interested in people using cannabis in a safe environment, and cannabis should only be permitted to be sold in a safe manner. There’s no need to grant the privilege of cannabis sales to a facility or operator that doesn’t take safety seriously– if someone’s so uncaring as to be unsafe, there’s always going to be another willing operator who can meet the requirements of public safety.
- No Minor Use – Everyone should be interested in preventing underage cannabis use and sales, especially the cannabis industry. There’s already significant evidence that developing brains shouldn’t consume THC, and little room for the idea that it’s good or even non-harmful for young people to consume cannabis. Even if there are many people in the modern cannabis industry who don’t realize it, they have a long-term interest in preventing young people too: people who start smoking later in life tend to consume more than the people who started too early! Keeping young people from smoking or vaping weed is an effective way to preserve your future customer base.
- Risk-Based – Rather than fear based regulations, or stigma-based laws, our system for Public Cannabis Sales should be both based on measurable evidence and on a forward-looking mindset of anticipating problems where they actually are occurring. The first decade of cannabis regulation has shown quite clearly that legislators are unable to fully anticipate the risks and challenges of a regulated industry, and have both over-legislated and under-legislated in particular areas. Public cannabis sales, if anything, are even more important to get right than licensed site sales. We need a system that is consistently compared against on-the-ground reality, and willing to be audited and updated to better address risks where we discover them. We also need a system that is willing to let go of old fears that have been proven to be low-risk.
- Responsive and Agile – Public Cannabis Sales’ issues are not strictly limited to the site of an event and the holders of the license– there are surrounding communities and households that are just as much impacted by sales and customer behavior, as well as on-site employees and public transit workers servicing the event. A successful system for regulated public sales will need to have built into it a standard of responsiveness and adaptability, as well as public standards of being answerable to community-based input. Annual assessments by a third party would possibly be the pipe-dream for creating a responsive regulatory stance.
- Positive – We are not trying to banish cannabis to the shadows anymore, and we should be aiming for cannabis’s inclusion to be as positive as we can make it, rather than deny its very existence or potential inclusion. This doesn’t mean pushing cannabis into places without consent, but it means allowing the market for public cannabis to grow towards a demand-based amount in public. Sales of cannabis shouldn’t be unlimited,of course, but instead only limited when informed by evidence of public risk. (See: Risk-Based, above). Having legislators set standards for public use based on their personal levels of taste/distaste for cannabis is an inconsistent plan, and a recipe for more head-aches. Not Positive!
I’m definitely going to have more thoughts on this later, but hopefully we can at least start getting more policy-minded folks involved with the question. This isn’t an issue that should be solved by a closed room of agency regulators, industry lobbyists, and public health partisans, and I think crafting an effective solution to public cannabis sales will have huge impacts to everyone, both inside and outside of the industry.
As a final thought: over the weekend I went to an outdoor concert featuring Run The Jewels, Wu-Tang Clan, and Deltron 3030 (rap nerd flex!). It was a great show, even if it’s always kinda funny to watch these poor sea-level rappers struggle to breathe. As you can imagine, there was a massive amount of weed smoked in this amphitheater, for hours straight. Also, given that these acts have fans from 30 years ago, the age range in the crowd was from teenagers to 60somethings. In terms of a strict reading of current regulations, this concert was an enforcement mess, and thousands of people congregated to break a clear legal requirement. And yet….outside of the usual concert injuries (people falling down the steps while drunk, a fight or two in the back between drunk people)… no one who attended that concert or was in the surrounding areas was harmed by the illegality. After the show, and after my mind cleared, I kept coming back to the idea of consent– how the context of consent mattered to determining the amount of social harm to be mitigated.
Does attending a Wu-Tang concert mean an implicit consent to be exposed to secondhand cannabis smoke? Obviously by the strict letter of the law, no, it doesn’t. But in the realer world of experience, I think it’s safe to say that there was an implicit consent. I know that for myself, there was a full-minded awareness that the show would include that environmental condition. Did the working staff and vendors of the amphitheater have the same level of consent? Obviously not. But rather than presume to speak for the employees, I will instead say: I would love some surveys and data about live event staff’s views and perspectives on working events that are all-but-assured to include secondhand cannabis smoke.
—
Once I figure out how to get comments working on this here dang blog, I’ll open them up below for your thoughts or feedback. In the meantime, don’t hesitate to ping me on Twitter (@wisetendersnob) or BlueSky (@snowdenst), I’d love to hear other perspectives, especially from folks with experience working as vendors and staff for cannabis-heavy events as they currently occur.