skip to Main Content
Maine House Votes to Uphold Governor’s Veto of Retail Recreational Marijuana Regulations

AUGUSTA — The Maine House voted Monday to sustain Gov. Paul LePage’s veto of a bill that would create the legal framework for retail sales of recreational marijuana.

The bill was the result of more than nine months of work by a special committee tasked with implementing the law that voters narrowly approved last November, putting Maine among the eight states and the District of Columbia that had legalized the adult use of marijuana. The 74-62 vote Monday fell 17 votes short of the two-thirds margin required to overturn LePage’s veto.

The path forward for the ballot-box law remains unclear, with the current moratorium on recreational sales expiring Feb. 1. The Legislature reconvenes in January and could pass legislation then, but it’s uncertain whether the political dynamic will change enough in the next two months for an implementation law to be passed or the moratorium to be extended. If neither occurs, the ballot box law would take effect, a prospect that some lawmakers find alarming.

“I feel like we legalized gasoline, but not gas stations,” said Rep. Martin Grohman, a Biddeford independent.

Sen. Roger Katz, R-Augusta, co-chairman of the special legislative committee that wrote the implementation bill, is unsure what the next steps will be.

“You know, 74-62 is a good victory in a basketball game, but it’s not enough to overcome a veto,” Katz said after the House vote. “We will regroup and we will sit around and try to figure out where the heck we go from here, and I hope somebody has some bright ideas because right now I don’t have any.” [Read more at Portland Press Herald]

This Post Has 0 Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Stories

Root & Bloom’s House of Startups

Salisbury, Massachusetts-based Root & Bloom is a locally and independently owned producer of quality cannabis products whose relatively recent entrance into a quickly maturing Massachusetts market has resulted in a…

New York Must Figure Out How to Fix Cannabis Mess, Hochul Orders

Gov. Kathy Hochul ordered a review of the way New York State licenses cannabis businesses after calling the sluggish rollout of legal cannabis a “disaster.” Gov. Kathy Hochul has told…

Oregon Cannabis License Moratorium: Almost There

By Vince Sliwoski, Managing Partner of Harris Sliwoski It looks like a permanent Oregon cannabis license moratorium will finally take effect. I say “looks like” because key contingencies are still in…

Morocco celebrates huge cannabis harvest – legally for the first time

Morocco’s first legal cannabis harvest was 294 metric tons in 2023, after the country approved its cultivation and export for medicine and industrial uses, the cannabis regulator has said said. The harvest was made…

More Categories

Back To Top
×Close search
Search