WHEN MASSACHUSETTS VOTERS legalized adult-use cannabis in 2016, they were promised a highly regulated, safe, and transparent market. A decade later, that promise remains unfulfilled. Instead, a glaring disparity has emerged: The retail cannabis sector faces a fraction of the regulatory strictness, compliance checks, and public safety enforcement applied to other age-restricted products.

In contrast to cannabis, Massachusetts boasts one of the nation’s most rigorous enforcement regimes for alcohol and tobacco retail. Now that the Legislature has stepped in to reform and reorganize the troubled Cannabis Control Commission, it is time to establish true regulatory parity. Cannabis retail must be policed with the same frequent compliance checks and transparent enforcement that govern alcohol and tobacco.

To be clear, this is not an argument for the upcoming November ballot question to repeal retail cannabis sales. Cannabis retail sales are here to stay because prohibition is a proven failure. Rather, this piece addresses a glaring regulatory double standard.

Consider how the state manages alcohol retail. The Massachusetts Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission ensures strict oversight through routine, random, and unannounced compliance checks. To enforce age laws swiftly, state regulators deploy underage operatives to test retailers, issue immediate violation notices, and conduct surprise audits of operations, inventory, and point-of-sale systems.

Transparency is built into the system. The ABCC publishes monthly enforcement decisions along with annual reports detailing exact fines, suspensions, and license revocations. This aggressive state-level framework is mirrored locally, where municipal licensing authorities and local police run independent stings, and boards of health apply the same relentless scrutiny to tobacco sales.

No such comparable transparency exists for violations in cannabis retail. On the contrary, the Cannabis Control Commission has often functioned as an industry promoter rather than an impartial regulator. While peer authorities like the ABCC and local health boards prioritize public safety and strict compliance, the CCC’s history reveals an inverted focus on industry expansion, revenue generation, and shielding operators at the expense of consumers.

A glaring example of this regulatory paralysis is the CCC’s muted response to widespread THC potency inflation, where products labeled at 25 percent to 35 percent THC independently tested at 15 percent or lower. Despite a December 2022 investigative report by CommonWealth Beacon exposing industry “lab shopping” to artificially boost numbers, the commission failed to take immediate action. While it tightened select rules in March 2024, meaningful oversight remained stalled. Substantive pressure only mounted in December 2025, after a New England Narcotic Enforcement Officers Association report revealed systemic discrepancies, finally forcing the CCC to launch mandatory audits in May 2026.

These broken mechanics of cannabis oversight are further exposed by the commission’s recent multi-year saga with a Brockton dispensary. In this case, the CCC took over three years to adjudicate basic violations. The alleged violations at Legal Greens involved social media promotion of consumption, on-site employee consumption, and underage volunteering. An infraction initiated by social media posts in 2021 dragged through an unannounced 2023 investigation, a Notice of Deficiency, a Plan of Correction, and a 2025 Order to Show Cause before finally reaching a negotiated settlement in 2026.

This agonizingly slow, bureaucratic trudge is not effective oversight. Rather, it underscores a system so bogged down in red tape that cannabis retailers are effectively left to self-regulate for years before true accountability arrives. While a liquor store or restaurant in Boston, Worcester, or Springfield faces swift, public, and transparent consequences for serving minors, adulterating alcohol, or illegally transporting inventory, the cannabis sector continues to operate under a shroud of minimal oversight. This striking double standard leaves public safety in jeopardy while allowing a highly lucrative industry to police itself.

Weak enforcement of cannabis regulations allows products contaminated with hazardous levels of mold, yeast, heavy metals, pesticides, or Salmonella to reach dispensary shelves. Although current CCC rules require dispensaries to test for these hazards, this self-policing mechanism is fundamentally flawed.

Relying on businesses to manage their own compliance creates an inherent conflict of interest, fueling a practice known as “lab shopping,” where dispensaries seek out lenient testing facilities to guarantee passing scores. Because the state cannot rely on self-testing to protect consumers, true accountability must be driven by rigorous, independent state inspections. Without this uniform scrutiny, inaccurate labeling will continue to jeopardize public health, resulting in medical patients unable to trust the cannabinoid ratios they rely on for symptom management, and ultimately destroying public confidence in the legal marketplace.

To achieve regulatory parity, Massachusetts must implement three structural reforms:

First, the state must empower local authorities. Local licensing boards and health departments, working in tandem with local police, must have clear, expanded authority to conduct site inspections and enforce state regulations at dispensaries, just as they do with bars and package stores.

Second, the state must launch a statewide investigative task force. The CCC, or a designated enforcement arm, must be equipped to aggressively investigate illegal retail activities, illicit sourcing, and sales to minors, backed by the power to issue immediate, heavy financial penalties.

Third, independent compliance audits that include lab testing must be mandated. The era of cannabis self-regulation needs to end because no retailer should be relied upon to turn themselves in for an alleged violation. The state must fund and execute regular, unannounced, third-party compliance inspections of all licensed cannabis premises is has been done for alcohol and tobacco retail.

Ultimately, demanding regulatory parity is not about dismantling the legal cannabis economy or advocating for a repeal of legal retail sales at the ballot box this November. It is about forcing cannabis operations to function on the exact same level, tightly overseen playing field as other age-restricted products.

A truly safe, professional, and equitable marketplace relies on public trust, and trust is built entirely on accountability. If the Commonwealth can successfully protect its citizens from the risks of illegal alcohol and tobacco sales, it can—and absolutely must—do the same for cannabis.

Robert Mellion is executive director of the Massachusetts Package Stores Association.