Regulations for commercial pot industry in the pipeline

Commissioner Matt Deleon Guerrero explains consumptive taxation to colleagues as they discuss regulations for the commercial aspect of the marijuana industry at the Commonwealth Cannabis Commission meeting yesterday in Gualo Rai. (IVA MAURIN)

Regulations for the commercial marijuana industry in the CNMI is now in the pipeline to get it ready for review by the Office of the Attorney General, as what has been done with the homegrown registry program regulations.

“We have three different sections of the law that we are trying push out: homegrown, commercial, and medicinal,” said Commonwealth Cannabis Commission chair Nadine Deleon Guerrero.

She said the commission recently received the comments of the Office of the Attorney General on the final draft of the registry regulations for the homegrown aspect of the CNMI marijuana industry and the commission would soon be talking about it.

The homegrown rules would allow the public to be able to grow cannabis at home, within the confines of the law, but with the premise that once the commission rolls out the homegrown registry program, “home growers” would have to come in and register and have a card with them.

“The registry is like an application format of you coming in and applying to be able to grow at home, because you cannot just grow it. You have to be [registered],” Deleon Guerrero added. “If you’re caught growing and you don’t have a registry card after the commission rolls out the program, you stand to be fined and risk the possibility of not having a license to grow ever again.”

As the commission gets ready to polish the homegrown registry regulations, the discussion during yesterday’s commission meeting focused on the “commercial” regulations.

Deleon Guerrero said the commission has made a lot of progress, and is set to put together the rules and regulations related to the commercial aspect of the marijuana industry in the CNMI, for submission to the Office of the Attorney General for review.

Once reviewed and checked if the regulations are all in line with the law, the commission will start rolling it out to spark the ability for people to start investing in the industry.

“Anyone who wants to sell marijuana, anyone who wants to have a lounge, anyone who wants to have a dispensary [will be] allowed to come in and apply for that license,” Deleon Guerrero said.

“There’s a lot to it because there are different licenses—wholesale, producer license, processing, micro-producers, lounges, and then there’s different classes within the lounge. So all of those are things that we need to take into consideration when rolling it out because we want to make sure that we have a structure of a way to accept applications and review it.”

The commission also wants to make sure that the guidelines on how they would accept the licenses are in place, and whether or not there would be limitations on the issuances of the licenses.

As for regulations for medicinal marijuana, Deleon Guerrero said they will soon be consulting several stakeholders, including the Commonwealth Health Center, Department of Public Health, Bureau of Environmental Health, and Department of Environmental and Coastal Quality.