Arriving at the 2019 Maine Cannabis Convention at first might feel like stepping into a Seth Rogen movie. Parked outside the Portland Sports Complex on Saturday was a white limo bus labeled “Pineapple Express,” from which emanated coughs and the smell of burnt hemp.
Yet inside, a panoply of booths selling high-tech cultivation equipment, genetically engineered seeds and even cannabis-growers insurance reflected the complexities of a newly legalized industry that is attracting ever more capital and mainstream consumers.
Maine voters legalized cannabis for recreational use in 2016, but a lengthy legal and legislative battle delayed finalization of state regulations until this summer. Now, Maine growers are opening for business in what will soon be a widening market when recreational sales are launched in March. Medical marijuana use has been legal in Maine for years.
The owners of Augusta Farms, located just outside the state capital, manned their booth on Saturday with wares ranging from CBD extract cream to hemp-infused bath mix. They sell the plant, too, but as the industry attracts new customers, growers are finding that oils, creams and milder derivatives can win over a wider, non-smoking audience.
“We love what we do, and we just want to help people with their pain,” said Julie Gaspar, who started the business two years ago with her fiance, Matt DeFruscio.
The convention’s programming also nodded to the drawbacks and systemic inequalities of the legalized cannabis boom.
Saturday’s keynote speaker was Shay Stewart Bouley, a local writer and activist who serves as executive director of Community Change Inc., a civil-rights organization in Boston.
Before legalization, disproportionate enforcement of drug laws put people of color in prison, she said; after legalization, systemic racism has made it harder for them to get loans and permits to launch businesses.
“The cannabis industry has a white supremacy problem,” she said during her remarks. “As cannabis becomes legal, it’s white people who are raking in the money.”
Organizers estimated that about 3,000 people visited the Warren Avenue complex for the first day of the conference, which continues Sunday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
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