Maine Cannabis Business Owners No Longer Required To Be State Residents

There is one less hurdle to opening up a marijuana business in Maine: chiefly, you don’t have to be a resident of the state. 

A lawsuit between the state and a licensed cannabis business there called Wellness Connection reached a resolution earlier this week, with the two sides reportedly agreeing to a stipulation that the state’s Office of Marijuana Policy “will no longer enforce a residency requirement on those seeking an adult-use cannabis business license.” 

The lawsuit, filed in March by Wellness Connection in federal court, challenged the state law saying that only residents of the state or companies that are majority-owned by Maine residents, could receive licenses for recreational pot dispensaries. Wells, which owns half of the state’s medical dispensaries, stated in its lawsuit that it is 51-percent-owned by Maine residents, according to the Portland Press Herald, the company “argued that a residency requirement violates its constitutional right to interstate commerce by explicitly favoring Mainers over non-residents.”

“Wellness, Maine’s largest medical cannabis company, is controlled by an out-of-state investor owned by multinational Acreage Holdings…If it sought to raise money from out-of-state investors, that could tip the ownership balance and would’ve made Wellness ineligible under current Maine law to receive a state adult-use permit,” the Press Herald reported.
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