In an effort to open the newly legal marijuana market to those most harmed during the years it was criminalized, Connecticut lawmakers set strict standards for who may own the emerging businesses.
But they didn’t legislate anything about profits.
Last month the state’s Social Equity Council approved the applications of 16 marijuana growers and disqualified 25. Several were disqualified for failing to satisfy a provision that says a business may have financial backers only if 65 percent of it is owned by a so-called social equity partner – someone who lives in a community with a historically disproportionate number of convictions for drug crimes.
But owning and profiting are two different things, and the law does not stipulate how a small entrepreneur and a big backer must split what they earn.
A spokesman for Gov. Ned Lamont confirmed that the law is silent on profit-sharing agreements.
Kristina Diamond, communications and legislative program manager for the Social Equity Council, said the same.
The council “does not have any rules in place that address profit sharing,” Diamond said in an email.
That makes sense, said DeVaughn Ward, senior legislative counsel for the Marijuana Policy Project, a national nonprofit group based in Washington, D.C., that was founded in 1995 to lobby for reduced penalties on marijuana cultivation, sales and use.
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