At its regular monthly meeting on November 19, 2020, the Oregon Liquor Control Commission approved eight recreational cannabis license stipulated settlements. Additionally, the City of Portland’s Cannabis Policy Oversight Team (CPOT) provided the Commission with an update on the Portland Cannabis Program.
CPOT reviewed its efforts to make equity the center of all decision-making efforts related to cannabis regulation, including ensuring that patients should have access to cannabis for medicinal purposes. CPOT is also reworking its cannabis grant program to focus on distributed funding to BIPOC recipients.
OLCC staff provided assessments of how two ballot measures approved by Oregon voters earlier this month could impact the agency.
Measure 109, which establishes a program for the therapeutic use of psilocybin mushrooms directs the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) to enter into an agreement with the OLCC to use the state’s Cannabis Tracking System (CTS) to prevent psilocybin diversion from therapy program. OLCC has initiated conversations with its CTS vendor the OLCC has deferred further action, until OHA currently busy with pandemic can begin implementing the program.
One provision of Measure 110 reclassifies some drug convictions which will impact the evaluation process of OLCC licensee and permitee applicants. Currently the OLCC rarely makes a license or permit decision based solely on drug convictions, but there are differences between the OLCC’s alcohol and recreational cannabis licensing and permitting criteria that will now be reconciled; this might require the OLCC to enter into rulemaking.
The Commission also ratified the following violation fines and suspensions based on stipulated settlements