When Matthew Warwick was younger, police arrested him for something that is no longer a crime: marijuana possession. That criminal background did lasting damage to his life, he said, preventing him from joining the military and complicating his path to higher education. 

But now, Warwick works in the legal cannabis industry — a job he has held since the doors opened to the state’s first recreational dispensaries in 2018. He also has ambitions to do much more in the industry. He wants to be among the first to open a lounge in western Massachusetts where patrons can smoke or ingest cannabis legally. And thanks to the state’s “social equity program,” and brand-new regulations opening the possibility for “social consumption” businesses in Massachusetts, his past criminal charges might help him get a head start.

If he can raise the money and navigate the red tape, that is. 

Almost a decade after Massachusetts residents voted to allow recreational cannabis sales, the state’s Cannabis Control Commission approved rules last month that will allow businesses to open cafes and other similar venues for the consumption of cannabis on-site. 

Three separate license types will be created under the new regulations: “supplemental,” which will allow existing retailers to offer on-site consumption of their products; “hospitality,” which will allow applicants to open new businesses or expand non-cannabis businesses to sell cannabis for on-site consumption; and “event organizers,” which will be permitted to host temporary events like festivals and concerts where consumption will be permitted. All three new license categories allow for indoor smoking, outdoor patios, or non-smoking consumption areas. 

When voters legalized the sale of recreational-use marijuana through a ballot measure in 2016, they also approved the implementation of on-site consumption, but regulatory hurdles significantly delayed this aspect of the industry. The Cannabis Control Commission originally created regulations in 2019, but changes to state law were necessary in order to enable municipalities to opt in to hosting on-site consumption, and those didn’t pass until 2022.

The original 2017 legislation gave regulatory relief to people the state identified as targeted by the War on Drugs — disproportionately Black and Hispanic communities, according to state sentencing data. The Cannabis Control Commission established a social equity program, for example, that helped people who either had past drug convictions or live in parts of the state disproportionately impacted by drug prohibition move more quickly through the permitting process. 

For the first years of the commission’s existence, applicants to their social equity program were provided resources such as training and waived administrative fees. 

However, the state didn’t provide any of those applicants with capital. Because federal law limited growers and retailers access to traditional banking, the initial wave of cannabis businesses in Massachusetts was dominated by multi-state operators with private equity backing. Those businesses consolidated market share while social equity applicants remained stuck in provisional licensure.

Updates to the law in 2022 sought to remedy this by establishing a Social Equity Trust Fund, which channels 15% of cannabis tax revenue to grants and loans for people harmed by  prohibition.

After bureaucratic delay, the fund began awarding money in late 2024. It distributed $26.5 million to 181 businesses, with grants ranging from $50,000 emergency payments to $500,000 for expansion. From that, $3.5 million went to 10 cannabis businesses across Springfield, Holyoke, and Northampton, MassLive reported. 

The timing of the trust fund coincides with a stipulation on who can open social consumption establishments. For three years after the first lounge opens in each license category, only social equity participants, economic empowerment priority applicants, microbusinesses, and craft marijuana cooperatives can obtain licenses. Established cannabis businesses controlled by non-equity owners must wait.

The exclusivity window is meant to give a head start to applicants like Warwick, who qualifies for the social equity program because of his prior marijuana possession charges. 

An alumnus of western Massachusetts’ well-established metalcore music scene, Warwick has also worked as a studio engineer on tracks for hip hop acts such as Freeway and Jae Millz. He said he wants to open an intimate 420-friendly music venue. He hopes to do so in Chicopee or possibly Springfield.

“I feel Chicopee would be easier to deal with than Springfield,” he said.

And some think there is an appetite for those kinds of establishments.

Chicopee City Councilor Jessica Avery told The Shoestring that she believed residents of the city would be receptive to such businesses. Avery, who was a staffer for former state Rep. Frank Smizik, D-Norfolk, worked on legislation related to medical marijuana.

Avery said residents are favorable toward existing cannabis industry businesses in the city, and that she believed the “same energy would apply to social consumption lounges.” She added that she hoped to see “an open and robust conversation” on the subject in City Council in the future.

Warwick said his next step is finding real estate and then talking to the municipality where the building is located.

“I’d honestly love for anything with real instruments that’s original,” he said of the type of acts he’d want to book.

But there are many challenges that lay in the way of applicants like Warwick. For example, he said that he’s currently “in a fight” with the state over the fact that “nothing” has happened with his paperwork since November. State House News Service reported that commissioners believe it will take around 18 months for on-site cannabis consumption businesses to open. That estimate, the outlet reported, is based on the recent rollout of cannabis delivery licenses, which commissioners said took 11 months to process from application to operation.

Expensive and complex regulatory hurdles have prevented other social-equity applicants from opening their businesses, too, despite help from the state. 

There are also other requirements that businesses must meet that may make it complicated, and costly, to open a venue like Warwick has in mind. 

For indoor smoking venues, for example, the ventilation requirements are demanding: negative air pressure relative to adjacent spaces, 20 complete air changes per hour, and a high air filtration standard. These requirements exceed the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers specifications for isolating hospital patients with airborne infectious diseases.

The regulations also prohibit alcohol on premises — a significant moneymaker for such establishments — require ID scanning at entrances and mandate that staff have procedures for helping impaired customers get home safely.

Outdoor smoking areas are less stringent, allowing for a ceiling and two walls, as long as the rest of the area has unimpeded air flow from outside. 

For both inside and outside smoking areas, employees are required to have either an unobstructed view through a window into the area, or closed-circuit television monitoring. Businesses are required to supply personal protective equipment for employees entering smoking areas.

If the ventilation system fails, the smoking area is forced to shut down for a 48-hour period to allow for the dissipation of smoke while the social consumption establishment works to repair the system. Additionally, if police or first responders need to enter a smoking area for any reason, the business must cease all smoking activities if requested by such officials. 

Those regulations, though perhaps cumbersome, are designed to keep workers and others safe from the serious health hazards of secondhand smoke.

“I don’t think it should be treated differently to other jobs in terms of health risks,” said 

Drew Weisse, the organizing director for United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1459 — a union that represents cannabis workers across western Massachusetts. 

Weisse said he worries that while personal protective equipment might be an adequate solution initially, he is wary of the potential long-term effects of even tiny amounts of exposure over time. But he noted that on the cultivation and manufacturing side of the industry, occupational risks already exist.   

“I apply the same considerations [to jobs in the cannabis industry] as to any job,” Weisse said. “If workers have what they need to do their jobs, the risks are appropriately mitigated, and the job is a good job, that allows you to live a full, stable, and consistent life.” 

Despite the challenges, though, Warwick is undeterred. 

“With the way that they’re dragging out the regulations, we want to be ready so right when we get the green light we’re good to go,” he said. “We’re going to try to be the first one in the area, have a live event space. But it’s all on the commission and then how fast I can get my end ironed out.”