| Last week, we acquired a comment from Shannon O’Brien, the recently appointed chair of the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission (CCC), regarding her possible conflict of interest as a head regulator in the commonwealth.
“I am not currently the owner of any marijuana licensee and have not been an owner since December 2021,” O’Brien told Cannabis Business Times Digital Editor Eric Sandy in an extended statement Sept. 29. O’Brien’s remarks to CBT were to the dismay of a Massachusetts journalist who questioned why the CCC chair is “sending statements to national publications while the CCC ignores messages from the local press corps who cover each meeting.”
I remember that feeling of being snubbed during my previous job as a weekly reporter, when I covered local stories and expected preferential treatment when larger news broke. The truth is that national media organizations often depend on local watchdogs, much like CBT did when we credited the Boston Herald, which first reported on O’Brien’s possible conflict of interest as a previous “owner/partner” of Greenfield Greenery and as an adviser to Charlemont FarmWorks. Both cannabis companies hold provisional permits with the CCC holding the power to grant more permanent licenses.
But CBT was the first to receive a comment from O’Brien regarding her connections to the industry—the one she now oversees. “In December 2021, I signed an attestation giving up all equity, ownership and control of Greenfield Greenery LLC,” O’Brien told CBT. “The company indicated they would submit my attestation with its request for change of control. It is my understanding that this request is being reviewed by the commission staff.”
In other words, that request has not received CCC approval.
O’Brien said her involvement with Greenfield and Charlemont provides her insights that are invaluable to her role as CCC chair. “Out of an abundance of caution,” she told CBT she will recuse herself from any deliberations or votes regarding those two businesses. That statement came on the heels of a Boston Herald columnist calling for her resignation.
While CCC officials were aware of O’Brien’s connections to the industry before her appointment, keeping that knowledge quiet opened the door to public criticism and a deeper look into the reasoning behind her December 2021 attestation.
-Tony Lange, Associate Editor | 