The outside of the shop looks like a typical New England home, with white siding, a pitched roof and dark, faded shutters.
Now, the state is in the process of introducing more stringent regulations that would treat all medical marijuana businesses — from small mom and pops to billion-dollar behemoths — nearly the same.
Maine’s network of mom-and-pop marijuana shops has grown rapidly over the three years since state law was changed to allow them to expand their operations to become more competitive with larger dispensaries, which were not limited in the number of plants or patients they could serve.
But the slate of proposed regulations include stricter security requirements, stiffer fines and mandatory seed-to-sale tracking of all marijuana products.
Caregiver advocates scored a win last week in the waning days of a special legislative session when the House and Senate overwhelmingly voted to pause the proposed rules, which were supported by one of the country’s biggest cannabis companies.
One of the few people who testified in their favor was a lobbyist representing Curaleaf, a behemoth company with cannabis operations in 23 states and sales projected to top $1 billion this year.
For Dugay, becoming a medical cannabis caregiver was the obvious next step in a career that took him from the Navy to the halls of Maine’s Capitol as a state representative.
Over the years, both voters and lawmakers have tweaked the program, allowing caregivers for patients, nonprofit dispensaries and patient ID cards.
But with only eight dispensaries scattered across a state with more than 1.3 million people, advocates say caregivers were essential in providing medical cannabis access to patients.
Becoming a caregiver became a more viable business instead of a daily fight for survival.
Patty Hymanson, a neurologist and chair of the House Health and Human Services Committee, remembers the day in 2018 when lawmakers put various “stakeholders” of the cannabis program into a room to come up with a deal on a revision of the medical marijuana program.
State regulators are trying to thread the needle between preserving the caregiver market while bolstering public safety as the recreational market grows rapidly.
OMP made many changes from the draft rule that initially stirred outrage, but it paused its rulemaking when the Legislature returned for a seven-week special session and competing bills were introduced to address the controversy.
In the past week, the caregiver-backed bill succeeded in both chambers with a 117-25 vote in the House and a 32-2 vote in the Senate.
“We’re all in the same state, we all have the same interests we have to find places where those can overlap.” One of the biggest concerns caregivers have is implementing a mandatory seed-to-sale tracking system.
Caregivers worry that the system will be plagued by spotty internet and electricity access in more rural parts of the state.
As a small business they seek to work with the Sanford municipal government to make changes that will allow them to flourish as a dispensary.
Caregivers like Calvin Akers and Jim Dube, co-founders of Wisely Cannabis in Sanford, already hired a dedicated staffer to specialize in data and compliance.
The affable co-founders endured local government meetings where angry residents accused them of trying to peddle drugs to children.
Akers and Dube have combined their two caregiver entities under one roof, allowing them to have 1000 square feet of cultivation between the two of them, instead of the individual limit of 500 square feet each.
Although it was voted down in the Veterans and Legal Affairs committee last month, there almost certainly will be continued efforts to impose testing requirements for caregivers.
Susan Meehan is a caregiver who works exclusively with pediatric patients, in honor of her daughter who suffered from a rare form of severe epilepsy and found relief from using cannabis oil.
While proponents of the legislation say that Maine has plenty of lab capacity, Meehan points to other states like Colorado where the growth of the marijuana market eventually led state regulators to prohibit labs from testing private samples.
Randall Look is a small caregiver in Georgetown, Maine, who specializes in organic cannabis cultivation.
Look operates a medical cannabis cultivation business called Alight for Health, located in the island town of Georgetown.
Look believes if the rules were to go into effect, many smaller caregivers would opt to go back to the illicit market.
But in central Maine, where she lives, she could only find one caregiver storefront that tests its products.