InFocus featuring Cannabis Control Commission Chair Shannon O'Brien

From the 22 News Plus Studio, this is 22 News In Focus with Patrick Berry. Hello everyone and welcome to this edition of In Focus. I'm your host Patrick Berry. Today in the 22 News Plus Studios we're talking about a social consumption of cannabis that I guess it took effect in early 2026 and I'm very excited today and very honored today to be joined across the desk by the chair of the Massachusetts Cannabis Commission. She's got deep roots here in Western Mass. Shannon O'Brien, Ms. O'Brien, thank you so very much for joining me. I want to ask you, first and foremost, how did you get to be on the Cannabis Commission? Well, my background, again, I grew up in East Hampton. I have relatives who are currently living in East Hampton and South Hampton and I was a state rep elected in 1987, 86 when I was 27 years old. I was the state senator for Holyoke, Chicopee, Westfield and a number of the Hilltowns. Former state treasurer, ran unsuccessfully for governor. I've been an entrepreneur, tech entrepreneur. I've been a background, also actually have a background myself working in the cannabis industry very, very briefly out in Greenfield. So a lot of your audience, I've been in and around Western Mass most of my life. I was asked by the state treasurer initially to help her with a policy recommendation that she was making about baby bonds. And that's when you invest a thousand dollars when babies are born and their families are poor. And after they turn 18 or 21, depending. So anyway, I've been doing some work for the treasurer and the treasurer, I guess, thought I was doing a good job there. So she actually, I never sought the job out, frankly, didn't really want the job when it first was when she first approached me. But I ended up agreeing and I was appointed to be the chair of the Cannabis Control Commission. And I started in September 1st of 2022. Very good. Is it everything you thought it would be in more? Well, you know, it's been, you know, it's been a couple of different years. I mean, obviously it's been a very high profile. You know, I was removed by the treasurer. I filed a lawsuit. I was put back by Judge Gordon with a very, very important ruling. And so what I have tried to do since I've been back is kind of not look backwards, but really focus on impact. And in the last five months, since I've been back at the commission, I literally was told by a couple of different stakeholders last week, boy, Shannon, we've gotten more done in the last five months since you've gotten back than we've done in the last several years. And we've been focused on a number of different things. Red tape removal, trying to help those cannabis businesses that are struggling. We have like 30 businesses that are in receivership, many more in the queue working to make sure that we promote public health and safety. So we're holding our testing labs accountable. And then I think that the topic that we're going to talk to, we got that done within about a month or so after I came back, social consumption and social consumption, just to explain to your, to your viewers, your listeners is because of the war on drugs federal regulations, make cannabis illegal. We made recreational and medical cannabis have been legal in Massachusetts for over a decade. But the problem is there's some people who can't, maybe if you live in federal housing, maybe your landlord won't know it, but finding ways that people can in a legal sense, come together and enjoy smoking or ingesting, drinking cannabis based products. So let me ask you, where did the idea of social consumption come from? Was it, was it a grassroots effort that the public said, Hey, okay, we passed the law that we can now legally consume cannabis, but we want to be able to do it in a more social setting. Or was this something that was thought of from the very onset of the legalization that, okay, down the road, we will need to be able to make this, you know, socially consumable. Well, initially Massachusetts decriminalized cannabis and they made medical cannabis legal. And that was initially housed under the department of public health. We were talking off camera about some of the multiple referendum questions that are coming and a number of people who supported recreational cannabis got together. And in 2016, the voters of Massachusetts, and I'm not, I'm not sure if I have the number, right, but I think it was close to 55, 60% of the voters, uh, passed recreational cannabis in Massachusetts. And the original version of that cannabis law that was passed by referendum by the voters actually put in place social consumption. And again, there's a couple of different things. Some people want to just like they enjoy a glass of wine at a bar. They want to do that socially others. And as I mentioned, uh, sort of the equity issue, if persons aren't able to consume it, maybe, you know, on site in their own personal home, where are places that people can access the product in a safe legal way? So after the referendum was passed in 2016, the legislature made some tweaks to it and then reconfigured it. Initially, the cannabis commission was supposed to be directly under the treasure, just like the alcohol and beverage control commission. That's what the voters voted for. The legislature decided to take a different tact. And so the way the commission works now is there are five commissioners. One is appointed by the treasurer. One is appointed by the governor. One is appointed by the attorney general. And then the other two are appointed as a consensus of three. And the treasurer is the person who says, I will, I get to say who the chair is. And so I got to both fill the seat that she wanted, and then I got to be chair. So social consumption has been something that has been on the plate of the commission for some time. And then we had to put in place the regulations. You have a statute which says it's legal. And then the regulations are how that law is implemented on the local level. So how long did it take to iron out the social consumption rules and regulations before you implement it? So the legislature refined the social consumption in August of 2022. I was appointed to the cannabis commission on September 1st of 2022. We began drafting a number of different regulations that were pertinent to that particular law. I had been pushing to try to get social consumption done more quickly, but obviously there was a hiccup. I was gone for a couple of years. And in those two years, it had not gotten done. They finally had come to a final version of what those regulations would look like. And when I came back at the end of September of 2025, we were able to get that over the goal line and make some, I think, very important changes. And I was happy that I was able to come back in time to vote for the social consumption, because I think we made some important changes that make it a better bill, a better set of regulations. Very good. We are up on our first commercial break. When we come back, we will talk about how you can consume it socially. We'll be back in just a moment. This is 22 News In Focus with Patrick Berry. This is 22 News In Focus with Patrick Berry. Welcome back, everyone, to this edition of In Focus. I'm your host, Patrick Berry. I'm very excited to be sitting across the desk from the chair of the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission, if I've got the name correct. The CCC is easier. The CCC. Shannon O'Brien, thank you so very much for joining me. When we went to break, you were excellent in sort of leading us into, at some point in time this year, we hope this year, maybe next year, people will be able to enjoy cannabis in a social environment. But there are certain ways that it has to roll out. And one of them that I want to talk about is sort of harkening back to how cities and towns rolled out distribution. How will cities and towns roll out social consumption? Well, it's important. And again, this is almost like a civics lesson. And as I was talking in the previous segment, when a statute is passed, that's the law, that's the Bible that comes down from the legislature. So you have a statute. And in response to the statute, you have regulations. And that tells you how we're going to make what the legislature says in the public has said, we're going to have social consumption. So then what the commission does is we put together the parameters of how to make that happen. So it's not like next day, everybody just goes and go to your local bar or wherever. Well, this is completely, and this is part of, so the next step is guidance. And so that's what we're doing right now is we have created certain parameters, like every municipality working with a licensee. First of all, it has to be, you can't just go and open it. It has to be something that a local community endorses. And they say, we are willing to have this within our town or city limits. There are a number of local communities, North Hampton, East Hampton, my own hometown, Holyoke. There are a number of communities that are looking at how they do it. For instance, in a town, you'd have to have the town meeting, a city council. I think that's how they would endorse it. But the town has to be the first one to say, we are going to endorse it. And obviously, town meeting, a lot of people, we still have town meeting in Massachusetts. A lot of communities will be taking those votes to determine, do we want this? That's the first step is a community has to say, we want it. So this might not be a blanket 351 cities and towns in Massachusetts. Oh, it's absolutely not. There are still about 150 communities that are no communities that they did not want cannabis. Now that might be dealt with by the legislature, but there are 150 communities approximately that are no communities that don't allow cannabis. So I live in Westfield and we have several cannabis distribution stores for lack of a better description. Retail, yeah. Retail. So, but Westfield could still then say, we don't want social or they could say- They have to opt in. Okay. They have to opt in. All right. It's a positive. So, and again, these are the names of the communities that I talked about are those that have seen this as a possible, you think of North Hampton, you think of my hometown of East Hampton, very kind of cool, funky, great local downtown area. Their mayor, Salem Derby, I've talked to him a couple of times. He's been very supportive of this as either a possible revenue generator, but also continuing the kind of social downtown vibe that when I was growing up in East Hampton, let me tell you, it was factory buildings that were empty because all of the national felt rubber thread, those businesses all went belly up, the work went to Asia. So it's ways that municipal officials can, Somerville's looking at Provincetown, former mayor Alex Morse is in Provincetown and I think that they're looking at that as well. So the first step is the communities have to opt in and then while they are considering that, we will now be working to roll out this guidance. To talk more specifically about one of our regulations is if there's going to be smoking, you have to have really, really high level and frankly, very expensive filtration systems to keep people. I mean, we have anti-smoking laws, you wanna keep the people who work there. You don't want them to be inhaling something that either might make them high or might make them not well. Which different from a bar, if there's smoke in the air, the workers could be affected. Right. Whereas like a bar, it wouldn't happen. Well, I mean, again, we have rules against smoking indoors and that was also one of the sort of, this is why, I mean, they call it sausage making with the laws and putting this in place. It's how do we make sure that we implement the will of the voters, which said we want onsite consumption, social consumption, but also understanding the need to maintain public health standards to make sure we don't have a breathalyzer to determine how someone is impaired. So one of the things that we put into the regulation is that every licensee, everyone that is going to be selling products onsite, allowing for people to consume onsite, you have to have a transportation plan to make sure that people get home safely. And those are the things that we will be working with specifically with the municipalities to say, how do we work with you to make that happen? And there are certain types of licenses too, that an establishment needs, you need to apply for them, right? Right, right. There are several, there's supplemental, which would kind of be like, think about it. If you have a retailer in Westfield, maybe they could set up a little internal lounge where you could sample the products. That's one of the models. There's hospitality, which could be a little bit more like a bar where you think of as kind of a separate, there are a couple of different places where maybe there's one licensee in in particular, right next to Faneuil Hall, any, you know, Western Mass Tours is going, and it's right next to Faneuil Hall, already has a bar, already has cannabis retail on the first floor. They would actually like to add a cannabis lounge on one of the top floors. And so that, you know, that would be more hospitality. And then it's the event organizer. And we've made jokes, but you know, you've heard of goat yoga. Well, maybe it's goat and weed yoga, just making sure your goats, you know, stay away from the grass. We keep their grass, so the goats are okay. But those would be things like, you know, people might even know Boston for, well, exactly. Sip and paint, yoga, you know, maybe like the 420 rallies that they've had less than legally on the Boston Common. This would allow event planners to do something, maybe in an outside space and allow people to come in gated, you know, fences and gates. Kind of like a brew fest now, or wine tasting. Okay. So it's the rollout that the commission is making sure all the I's are dotted, T's are crossed, so that it rolls out and residents are safe. It boils it down, residents are safe. So again, the statute, the voters said, we're doing this. The legislatures, legislators refined it. And then we're talking about, these are the different kinds of licenses. This is what this will look like. We're the ones who said, you can't see consumption. We need to set up a fencing if something is outdoors so that minors aren't going to be watching the consumption of cannabis products. Those are the types of things that we put in regulation. And now it's the, how will we work with the police? What will the hours of operation going to be? We had certain limits within which you could open and close. We set parameters within the regulation that we have to stop selling product 30 minutes before the place closes. So those are things we've put in regulation, but it's the more granular details of how we will roll this out with the municipalities that we're working on now. Very good. We are up on our second commercial break. When we come back, we'll get into some more of the details. So stay with us. We're back in just a moment. This is 22 news in focus with Patrick Berry. This is 22 news in focus with Patrick Berry. Hello everyone. And welcome back to this edition of in focus. I'm your host, Patrick Berry. We're in the 22 news plus studios talking about social cannabis consumption. I'm excited today because joining me here in the studio is the chair of the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission, Shannon O'Brien. Thank you, Mr. O'Brien for joining me. I appreciate you giving me your time. Thank you for calling me miss. We've covered a lot of ground, but there's still a couple of additional things I want to get to before we run out of time. When a, okay, so fast forward, a town has said we will allow social consumption here. Then a business either, you know, either step open. So it could be new economic development or a retailer opens or expands what they offer. Yeah. What type of training has to take place? Like bartenders now, what's a safe serve safer tips. That's what I've heard. Safe is like, don't give you food poisoning tips is don't send you out drunk. There you go. So is there something similar for cannabis, social consumption outlets? So we currently at the cannabis commission, this is actually one of the things, again, I do want to plug some of the work that we've been doing on so-called red tape removal, uh, looking at, we have a 1.65 billion dollar industry. Uh, the sales keep going up, but the profit margins for licensees is going down. And so we're looking at a couple of different things that we can, um, you know, some, some cannabis businesses, the effective tax rate can be 40, 50, 70%. And so we have a number of businesses that are in receivership. Uh, they're selling more cannabis product, but they're not necessarily profiting more. So we're looking at some things, uh, that we can, there's been, I won't say over-regulation, but, uh, when the cannabis industry first talked and you were mentioning about how, you know, even zoning, you know, sometimes zoning is not been the best, uh, option for businesses that like might want to be down in, in, in more, uh, concentrated population areas. So we're responsible vendor training has been part of the, the commission's regulations from the start. And it was, how do we train every agent, everybody who works within a cannabis license, they need to get training. And so we're actually looking at making changes to responsible vendor training, because right now what we have, I don't think is really effective in terms of making sure our licensees really understand how to follow all the laws and regulations, but RVT that you're talking about is going to have to be developed, which will be a sort of alternate tips training. How do you recognize intoxication? And then what do you do? I mean, one of the changes that we made that I was really proud of that I got out of the draft regulation is so-called cooling down rooms, the original version before I came there. And when we made the changes, they wanted to have mandated spaces that if you were too high, you would voluntarily basically put yourself in the corner. That made no sense to me, but I think we need to do. And happily we got that language out. But what I want us to do is to make sure that we have really strong, responsible vendor training. If someone has been over-served, if someone is just, you know, too high and, and, and, and, and really, um, should not continue consuming. We need to have training. So we can say, don't sit in the corner over there and come back or, you know, it's how do we make sure you're okay. Every site has to have food, water that they can consume that helps them. We also are mandating, there's some sort of homeopathic remedies, not sure, you know, that there's some that they're not sort of FDA tested, but there's anecdotal evidence that it can help sort of bring people back down. And we will be mandating that they make that available. So this responsible vendor training will be, how do we take all these tools to make sure that that person who may have over consumed, they are taken care of, they go home. Um, and you know, maybe we give them water to let them, you know, sort of mellow out. So those are the kinds of things that respond, but that's something that we still have to draft. That's, what's going to be in the guidance. What does that responsible vendor training look like? Just like tips would be, but obviously a bit more difficult because you know, it's, it's, there's a lot more to consider with cannabis than with alcohol. You know, one of the things I notice, uh, I like to support my local breweries and, and, and I've noticed it now, even in restaurants, your, your regular run of the mill restaurant, when you order a beer or even could be a glass of wine, I don't really notice it much with hard alcohol, but it'll give you the ABV, uh, you know, for, for a pint of beer or whatever. What will it be like in a social cannabis consumption venue? Will there, will there be something similar to that? Yes. I mean, you know, a couple of different things that we added to the bill after, uh, to the reg, I keep saying, well, former legislator, um, but to the regulations and one, it's making sure that there's clear labeling and language, but everything you can consume. Uh, one of the things we did, I think it was Senator Keenan, um, you know, just like when you see a bottle of wine, you know, if you are pregnant, you know, this can cause. So also talking about, you know, THC products can cause a certain, a negative, you know, psychosis health problems, but we've been looking in general at the market certificates of analysis, making sure people understand how it's been tested, how much THC, obviously the more THC you consume, the more, you know, um, it can impact your, your, uh, responses. So making sure that people know what is in the product, putting in the warning about potential side effects, but also, um, making sure that people remember that it may take time before the impact of consumption, uh, uh, hits you. So making sure that people are aware of that. Those are the kinds of labels that we're putting in place. That's just seems common sense. We're doing it all everywhere nowadays, just so give the people as much information as possible so they can make informed decisions about what they're consuming. Well, I'm going to also make another plug and, and this is a little bit off, but one of the things that, that we are pitching to the legislature and there has been some recent stories in the Boston globe, but, uh, but public education, um, you know, we have, we, we need to do more public education. There are some studies and you know, there's common sense, but it's still different. You know, we've had alcohol legal since, you know, the 1930s post prohibition, right? And so I think you and I probably know how much, if I have one glass of wine, I probably have a pretty good guesstimate and also there are tests, but that that's, it's different with cannabis and different people react differently. Tolerance levels are different. So you'd be surprised. It's, it's just really making sure that, that we, um, you know, let people know that, but we've also had studies, MGH have done some studies that have said there have been some increases in emergency room visits for, you know, people who have over consumed might get some negative impact. So that's also one of the things not directly involved necessarily, although there will be an education campaign, but we need to do the commission needs to do an education campaign as we roll out social consumption. But we also have a statutorily mandated. The commission has a statutorily mandated responsibility to do public education about the impact of cannabis, whether it's social health, but that's another thing that we're working on right now, not only putting together those rigs, not only putting together those, the guidance, we will also have to roll out a public education about on-site consumption, but we also have to do it about the public health potential risks in general. So we have a lot of work. There certainly is a lot more work to go. Uh, we are out of time, but thank you so, so very much, uh, Shannon O'Brien chair of the Massachusetts cannabis control commission and shout out to my family. Absolutely. Absolutely. Wonderful seeing you. Thank you. Thank you very much. This is 22 news in focus with Patrick Berry.