Board Issues Draft Cannabis Rules

The Office of Cannabis Regulations has issued long-awaited suggestions on how the U.S. Virgin Islands should regulate the legal cannabis trade, asking anyone with comments to respond before Oct. 10. The draft rules can be found on the office’s website. It’s not a short read.

The highly detailed draft rules and regulations released Friday evening stretch over 144 pages, outlining specifics of licensing, cultivation, manufacturing, sales, who can be a customer, and more. One section covers dos-and-don’ts for non-customer visitors to a licensed dispensary, like an electrician or plumber. Another section deep-dives on inventory requirements.

Some of the areas covered were expected, like a provision that bars violent felons from obtaining a license to sell cannabis. Other proposed rules were unexpected like the immediate family of elected officials and employees of the Department of Licensing and Consumer Affairs also being barred from cannabis-selling licenses.

The draft rules describe the licensing procedure and requirements for different types of cannabis growers, including how many plants they may legally cultivate: A sacramental cultivator — someone who is part of an organized religion registered as a non-profit — can grow up to six mature plants. Someone with a micro-cultivator permit could grow as many as 50 adult plants. A general license to cultivate cannabis allows cultivation of up to 100 flowing plants and as many as 4,500 seedlings.