Regulators had targeted July 1 as the beginning of legal retail sales, but so far the CCC has only approved one provisional license: for a cultivation facility in Milford. The CCC will not consider additional licenses until July 2, chairman Steven Hoffman said Tuesday.
So far, the CCC has not received any completed license applications from independent testing labs, though one lab has begun its application with the CCC.

“We do have one lab application that’s in the queue. We’ve talked to the labs, the four operators of the medical marijuana labs, and our expectation, I don’t have timing, but our expectation is that they’ll all apply,” Hoffman told reporters Tuesday.

He said that giving independent testing labs priority application review “seemed like an essential thing to do to make sure that we had all pieces of the value chain in place so we can launch this industry.”

The CCC voted unanimously to allow its staff to review out of order any completed independent testing lab application submitted by Aug. 1, “purely for the purposes of being able to get the independent testing labs to the front of the queue so that we can start to establish a supply chain that is consistent with the statute,” Commissioner Britte McBride said.
The acknowledgement Tuesday that there will be no legal retail sales until the CCC licenses a testing lab made clear that the CCC would not meet its goal of launching the industry approved by voters in 2016 by July 1, a target date that was first used by the Legislature and adopted by Hoffman and the CCC in September.

“I have resisted making a forecast and I will continue to resist making a forecast. We are going to issue licenses on an ongoing basis, they have to become final licenses, we have to get city and town approval; there are too many moving parts so I’m not making a forecast,” Hoffman said Tuesday. He said the lack of testing labs is “another reason why I’m just not making a forecast about timing, it’s another one of the moving parts that has to come together.”