More than 80 cannabis industry stakeholders gathered Friday in Augusta to address the myriad challenges facing Maine’s adult-use and medical marijuana markets as the State Legislature prepares for its 132nd session. From testing issues to regulatory complaints, the discussion painted a sobering picture of an industry grappling with high operating costs, illegal competition, and intense dissatisfaction with state oversight.

State Rep. David Boyer (R-Poland), who organized the event and played emcee during the day-long discussions, said the purpose of the gathering was to unite those across the cannabis industry to focus their energy and activism on shared political challenges.

The summit brought together a diverse mix of cultivators, dispensary owners, product manufacturers, and some lawmakers, including State Sens. Craig Hickman (D-Kennebec) and Jeff Timberlake (R-Androscoggin).

Despite the shared focus on cannabis, participants expressed differing perspectives on the issues, reflecting the split between adult-use and medical marijuana markets and the varying scales of operation, as well as the different sets of rules imposed on each program.

“I think it’s time to be united and take the important steps to protect Maine’s cannabis industry,” said Boyer.

“We had a great turn out, with over 80 owner operators and multiple legislators,” he said.

As a sign of the unifying theme of the event, Boyer, who helped lead the citizens’ initiative to legalize cannabis in 2016, worked with a former adversary from the cannabis world, Paul T. McCarrier, now a member of the Maine Cannabis Union Association and a business owner himself.

“I haven’t seen this unity in over a decade,” said McCarrier.

“We are united as an industry,” he said. “Well, the locals are.”

Although McCarrier and Boyer have previously found themselves disagreeing, sometimes heatedly, over the finer details of Maine’s cannabis laws, they both agreed that bringing together the disparate and often quarrelsome factions of the state’s cannabis community would be mutually beneficial, especially in light of the mounting challenges.

Despite the sharp divisions of opinion in the room when it came to adult-use versus medicinal, testing, tracking, and regulatory enforcement, there was one unifying theme that drew uproarious applause from the crowd: Fire John Hudak.

If Hudak, the head of Maine’s Office of Cannabis Policy (OCP), had any supporters in the crowded room at the Senator Inn, they kept it to themselves.

Hudak, who was tapped by Gov. Janet Mills (D) to head up OCP in December 2022, was previously the Deputy Director of the Center for Effective Public Management and a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, where he led research on cannabis policy for over a decade.

But it’s Hudak’s previous business activities outside of Brookings that have fostered suspicion among cannabis users and cannabis business owners that something nefarious may be afoot when it comes to the contractors OCP has paid in the years since Maine voted to legalize cannabis.

Hudak, along with Andrew Freedman and Lewis Koski, co-founded the former cannabis consulting firm Freedman & Koski. The firm was essentially a collection of Colorado cannabis legalization alums who leveraged their experience from that state’s program to sell consulting services to other governments. Before Hudak became OCP Director in Maine, the state had paid the firm hundreds of thousands of dollars for consulting services.

Koski would later go on to join METRC, a major cannabis seed-to-sale tracking vendor that claims to have more than 24 government contracts — including with Maine.

Hudak’s former business relationship with Koski, METRC’s Chief Strategy Officer, has drawn criticism from marijuana business operators and allegations of crony capitalism. Especially considering Maine’s pre-existing relationship with METRC has become more lucrative for METRC since Hudak took the reins.

Often, allegations that Hudak is up to financial shenanigans are made anonymously, as cannabis business owners fear retaliation from OCP if they publicly criticize the government agency or its director.

The Maine Wire has learned that one business owner—who has strived to remain anonymous for fear of retribution at the hands of government employees—even went so far as to hire a private investigator to dig into Hudak’s history and possible conflicts of interest, circulating information that would later form the basis of a petition website calling for his ouster.

The anonymous website, FireJohnHudak.com, lays out Hudak’s and Maine’s relationships with Freedman & Koski and METRC. The author of the site accuses Hudak of “targeting and retaliating against businesses and caregivers that voice concerns in Augusta.”

When Boyer plugged the website by name at the event, the room roared in approval.

Hudak’s publicly available income disclosures do not list any income from Freedman & Koski or METRC, and a spokesperson for OCP told the Maine Wire that he “does not own any shares or interest in Metrc.”

Even apart from the appearance or perception of cronyism with OCP vendor contracts, the summit attendees voiced near-universal dissatisfaction with OCP’s enforcement of regulations, which they described as inconsistent, opaque, unnecessary, and overly burdensome. Complaints included significant costs for compliance with rules that don’t make practical sense, arbitrary or punitive inspections, punishing taxes, and a perceived lack of focus on combating illegal cannabis operations, such as the sprawling black-market operations that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security believes to be controlled by Asian Transnational Organized Crime.

One of the most contentious topics was cannabis testing. Maine allows only four certified labs to test cannabis, which means that any requirement to have cannabis testing forces business owners to funnel money into a quasi-monopoly where the phenomenon of “lab shopping” creates an ethical hazard.

Lab shopping, the practice of selecting labs more likely to issue passing grades for cannabis, is a practice OCP has alleged does not occur. But summit attendees begged to differ, and, as a result, they viewed any expansion of testing requirements with skepticism if not open hostility.

Derek Shirley, an influential pro-cannabis activist who has gained a following under the Instagram nom de guerre @GettingHighWithCats, proposed an alternative to some of the more minor testing changes up for debate at the summit: eliminating mandatory testing and letting market demand dictate testing standards.

“Let the market decide regardless of how you feel,” said Shirley, a libertarian view that drew support from many in the crowd.

Current testing requirements were criticized for flagging benign microbes, leading to unnecessary costs for retesting or product destruction. These expenses, operators said, are exacerbated by inflation, high electricity costs, and other economic pressures.

OCP’s regulatory framework and enforcement practices were a recurring target of criticism, as well.

Attendees alleged that inspectors are inconsistent and punitive, with some describing them as “pension double-dipping ex-cops.” While the attendees are, in fact, law-abiding business owners (under state law at least), most of them shared the sentiment that OCP inspectors treat them as if it’s still 1999 and they are all illegal drug dealers.

One caregiver recounted being penalized for not locking a refrigerator containing THC-infused drinks, claiming inspectors deliberately visited during busy hours to catch the door on the rare occasion when it had just been unlocked to service a customer.

“Inspector came in and said we had fridges with THC drinks in it that didn’t have the right locks,” said one caregiver, adding that he quickly added the recommended locks. “Then the inspectors wait until the store is busy, then come in to grab a drink to prove non-compliance.”

The story was one of many told at the summit that expressed concern that the enforcement priorities of OCP were focused microscopically on picayune matters while the cannabis industry as a whole suffered from industrial-scale law breakers and organized black-market traffickers.

A significant portion of the summit focused on illegal grows and their impact on Maine’s legal market.

One dispensary owner shared an encounter with a wholesaler selling cannabis for $600 per pound — a price so low that anyone offering it (or buying it) becomes the object of suspicion among knowledgable cannabis players.

Tests revealed the product contained banned pesticides. The seller, reportedly from New York and Oklahoma, exemplified the challenges posed by illicit operators who can sell product at basement-level prices, thereby driving down the price for legal operators, because they flout costly rules, skirt testing, and avoid taxes.

“These are international criminal organizations, let’s be blunt,” said Paul Arant, the owner of a medicinal cannabis business in Gardiner. Arant advocated for enhanced tracking and tracing to curb illegal activity.

Others suggested measures like using E-Verify to ensure cannabis operators are U.S. citizens, though that proposal was deemed as a non-starter given the current partisan composition of Maine’s legislature.

The summit underscored the complex dynamics of Maine’s cannabis market, from regulatory inefficiencies to the tension between legal operators on the medicinal side versus the adult-use side, as well as the threat posed by organized illicit growers.

While frustrations with OCP dominated the discussion, participants also explored potential solutions, including tax reforms, clearer regulations, and how to work cohesively heading into the 132nd Legislature.

For now, the sentiment remains one of cautious determination tempered by ongoing regulatory and economic hurdles — and broad agreement that John Hudak should be fired.