Carty Quitting Cannabis Office

Hannah Carty plans to step down as director of the Virgin Islands Office of Cannabis Regulation in early March, she said Wednesday, citing personal reasons and unspecified family needs.

Carty informed the Cannabis Advisory Board in late autumn of her desire to leave the office, she said, but wanted to stay on until several key projects were completed, including the regulator’s registry system and the auto-expungement report that gives people convicted of cannabis possession a path to a clean record.

“Because they require a substantial amount of prior knowledge to complete, it wouldn’t have been fair to the next person to leave that workload for them,” she said. “I just know that I need to take a step off right now so I can concentrate on what’s best for my family.”

The office’s first and only director, Carty started in September 2021. She’d been, essentially, an office of one since then, building the regulator’s website from scratch and helping draft early versions of rules and regulations around legal cannabis use in the territory.