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Nantucket Recreational Marijuana Shop To Open – With Special Rules To Get Around Feds

August 7, 2019

A recreational marijuana store is scheduled to open on Nantucket on Thursday, August 8, now that the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission has given approval.

The Green Lady Dispensary – a play on the island’s nickname “Grey Lady” – needed special regulations because there is no testing laboratory on the island, which is 28 miles south of Cape Cod and can only be reached by sea or by air. The ocean and airways are under the jurisdiction of federal law, which prohibits marijuana.

The state commission decided instead, according to State House News Service, that recreational marijuana stores on Martha’s Vineyard (3 miles off the coast of Cape Cod) and Nantucket “are not required to utilize Independent Testing Laboratories until such time as a laboratory is located on the island … or the establishment can transport marijuana product to the mainland” and that the stores can “test marijuana products in a manner that is not unreasonable impracticable but also adequately protects the public health in the opinion of the Commission.”

The commission issued the decision Wednesday, August 7.

The new Nantucket pot shop offers products with a Massachusetts nautical theme, including Moby Dick, Perfect Storm, and Black Dog Kush. The store says it “hand-picks the best genetics available while developing new Nantucket original strains that can’t be found elsewhere,” according to State House News Service.

It’s the 23rd recreational marijuana store approved by the state Cannabis Control Commission, according to State House News Service.

Nantucket has a well-documented history of heavy drug use, as described in a July 2016 issue of Nantucket Magazine.


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