By Theresa Knapp 

At its meeting on Oct. 7, the Hopedale Select Board updated its Host Community Agreements with cannabis companies Caroline’s Cannabis and Green River Cannabis. 

The move comes after the Commonwealth’s Cannabis Control Commission issued new guidance on HCAs in February. 

Town Administrator Mitch Ruscitti said, “These are to replace the HCAs that were deemed non-compliant by the new Cannabis Control Commission rules…These, we believe, make everything compliant.” 

He said the guidelines relating to marijuana dispensaries are now like those related to alcohol licenses. “This is a little bit of a different process but some of the controls are very similar.” 

Ruscitti said the new guidance was not a surprise. “When all of these rules and regulations were rolled out by the CCC, probably five or six years ago at this point, they were pretty much allowing municipalities to run these things like [a criminal organization] and everybody knew at the time this was eventually going to end up coming back and that’s kind of what happened.” 

For more information regarding the new HCAs, visit bit.ly/CCC_HCAs_2024.