Politics
Rhode Island Marijuana Officials Approve Timeline For Awarding New Dispensary Licenses
“We reserve the right to delay this process depending on several external factors outside our control. For example, if we receive thousands of applications, it will be hard for us to do that.”
By Christopher Shea, Rhode Island Currant
Rhode Island’s cannabis regulators could begin awarding new retail licenses to prospective business owners eager to join the state’s budding market as early as May 2026.
That’s according to a timeline the Cannabis Control Commission voted 2-1 to adopt on Monday. The timeline sets the pace for officials to review applications for the state’s 24 available retail licenses after the application deadline on December 29, 2025.
“It’s clear to me that we need to do a better job forecasting what the next months look like after the application portal closes at the end of this calendar year,” Commission Chairperson Kimberly Ahern said. “We have never shared what 2026 held.”
Starting January 1, 2026, the state’s Cannabis Office will have 90 days to review applications and verify that each meets eligibility qualifications before being placed in a lottery. The timeline builds in at least 60 days to allow applicants to secure approvals at the local level in order to qualify for random selection, Ahern said.
Ahern said the intention is to begin the lottery selection process in the second quarter of 2026, likely in May.
“I want to add that we reserve the right to delay this process depending on several external factors outside our control,” Ahern said. “For example, if we receive thousands of applications, it will be hard for us to do that.”
As of Monday, no retail applications have been submitted to the state’s cannabis office, spokesperson Charon Rose told Rhode Island Current after the meeting.
Objections on getting ducks in a row
Commissioner Robert Jacquard, the lone vote against regulators’ review timeline, argued that allowing businesses to secure local zoning approvals after the application deadline is unfair to those who met the requirements on time.
“If an applicant is better prepared, better financed, got an earlier start, I think that’s important,” he said. “We have had our regulations out for a good amount of time, people were well-warned that there would not be any extensions beyond the deadlines that were set.”
Those same feelings were shared by many of the members of Rhode Island’s cannabis industry who attended the meeting within the Public Utilities Commission’s office building in Warwick.
“Many of us have invested significant time and money securing compliant locations, paying for rent, purchasing properties, and obtaining special use and zoning permits,” Karen Ballou, owner of CultivatingRI, told commissioners. “I recognize some municipalities have made it difficult for applications to meet certain requirements, but that should not penalize those who have successfully navigated the process.”
Business owners awarded medical cannabis licenses have faced setbacks opening in Woonsocket and Foster amid disputes with local officials and property owners, causing them to miss the state’s initial nine-month deadline to begin operations.
And not every town is willing to have a cannabis retailer. In 2022, voters in six communities—Barrington, East Greenwich, Jamestown, Little Compton, Scituate and Smithfield—rejected allowing retail pot shops within their borders.
Ballou said if regulators really need to give some applicants more time to get all their needed material together, those businesses should be subject to a second lottery.
Sasha Gorski, co-owner of the cultivation company Talaria, agreed, saying the 60-day window to secure local zoning permits after the application deadline shouldn’t apply to general retail applicants.
“It hurts to be punished for being ahead,” she said.
But others in the room argued the commission’s review timeline helps to create a sense of fairness as the retail industry starts to grow in Rhode Island.
“Applicants need breathing room to go through the proper channels,” Emma Karnes, an organizer for United Food and Commercial Workers Local 238, told the commission. “I think we all want a healthy pool of applicants. We all want a reasonably accessible application process.”
Karnes said many applicants seeking social equity and worker cooperative licenses may not have the same resources and capital as other prospective business owners. Such is the case for Alexa Goodrich-Houska, who is seeking to open the Living Room Cannabis Cooperative somewhere in Zone 1, which includes the communities of Burrillville, Cumberland, Glocester, North Smithfield, Smithfield and Woonsocket.
“We don’t have trust funds, we don’t have big corporate backers,” Goodrich-Houska said. “Documentation alone can take four to 12 months and around $50,000 to know if we can even get a license.”
That’s on top of the $7,500 application fee, a yearly $30,000 licensing fee that all cannabis retailers face—though that application fee will be waived for the first year for approved social equity applicants.
Ahern acknowledged industry members’ concerns and continued frustration over new licenses not yet being issued, but reminded them it was never going to be a rubber stamp process.
“We expect a very robust, thorough process,” she said. “That was never going to be done overnight, that was never going to be done in a few weeks.”
Under the 2022 act that legalized recreational cannabis, the commission can offer 24 new licenses to retailers, with six reserved for social equity applicants and another six reserved for worker-owned cooperatives. All recreational licenses will be spread throughout six geographic zones, with a maximum of four stores per zone.
Applicants have up to 60 days to demonstrate they have final zoning approval from the municipality where they intend to operate their business—a provision Ahern said was included partly because of the commission’s slow rollout in getting potential social equity applicants certified.
The commission in late August opened the initial screening process for social equity applicants, defined as prospective retailers owned or mostly staffed by those adversely affected by the war on drugs. After the certification deadline closed on September 29, the commission reported 94 potential applicants for the state’s six social equity licenses.
Beginning Monday, screened applicants were expected to receive letters informing them if they meet the state’s social equity criteria. Prospective applicants who don’t initially meet the commission’s requirements will have 10 additional days to prove they qualify as social equity applicants.
Regulations approved by the commission earlier in the year require that social equity applicants have at least 51 percent ownership and control by individuals directly impacted by past cannabis laws or economic disparities, or a minimum of 10 full-time employees that meet the same criteria.
Qualifying factors include convictions for nonviolent cannabis offenses or residency in disproportionately impacted areas—which can be determined by federal poverty level, unemployment rate, the number of students in a free school lunch program and historic arrest rates by census tract.
Final certification is expected to be approved by the commission some time in November.
This story was first published by Rhode Island Currant.
