Rhode Island’s cannabis legalization is affecting race for attorney general

The new three-member commission was formed in 2023 to license and regulate cannabis businesses. While Rhode Island already had medical marijuana dispensaries, the existing system was criticized as benefitting mostly those with deep pockets — it’s $500,000 a year just for the license — while concentrating revenue in just a handful of stores.

The 2022 law aimed to make the industry more equitable. It called for 24 new retailers, including licenses set aside for worker co-ops and “social equity” applicants with lower incomes or past marijuana charges.

The new commission’s primary job was to figure out how to fairly issue the retail licenses. When she was confirmed as chair in June 2023, Ahern said her aim was for stores to open in 2024. But by the time she resigned in October 2025 to run for attorney general, no new licenses had been issued.

The situation has been ripe for attack from Ahern’s opponents in the Sept. 9 primary.

Keith Hoffmann, who was leading Ahern in one poll this month but is behind her in two others, hired D.C.-based public relations firm Propulsion Strategies to shop negative memos about Ahern to reporters. One references “Rhode Island’s Marijuana Mafia” and suggests there is a “made-for-the-movies conspiracy between the smallest state’s smallest government agency — and the marijuana retailers it’s supposed to police — to extract huge profits off the backs of Rhode Island’s stoners.”

The campaign memos seek to closely tie Ahern to her former boss, Governor Dan McKee, claiming the two intentionally slowed the rollout of new stores to protect existing dispensaries, whose owners have donated thousands to McKee’s campaign and met with him privately several times over the years. One memo even references “Real Housewives of Rhode Island” cast member Liz McGraw, whose husband opened the state’s first medical dispensary and has donated to McKee.

“It’s utter falsehood and garbage,” Ahern said of the memos. “This is why people don’t like politics.” Unlike McKee, she said she has declined to take any donations from cannabis dispensary owners. (The Globe identified one $100 donation from a lawyer who invested in Green Wave Compassion Center, which her campaign said has now been returned.)

McKee’s campaign said the donations he received had no influence on licensing.

“The governor’s office has never been and will never be for sale,” said Sophie Mestas, a McKee campaign spokesperson.

Hoffmann defended his campaign material.

“You have a cannabis commissioner that did next to nothing for years,” Hoffmann said in an interview. “The voters deserve an answer as to what happened at the CCC under Ahern’s leadership, and whether it was simply a failure of government, or in fact if what occurred is exactly what Commissioner Ahern intended.”

The implementation of Rhode Island’s cannabis legalization has been rocky from the start. McKee had 40 days back in 2022 to name members to the Cannabis Control Commission, but took nearly a year to do so. The commission took a year and a half to create regulations for the licensing process. Ahern launched the applications for retailers in fall 2025 before she left to run for attorney general, but the lottery to select the winners was ultimately cancelled this past April by a federal judge. A new date has not yet been set.

In the meantime, existing medical marijuana dispensaries have benefitted from the slow rollout of new stores. The eight dispensaries, which can sell to adults over 21, brought in a combined $120 million worth of cannabis last year. Several have said they fear over-saturation of the market — as seen in Massachusetts, where there are hundreds of stores — if Rhode Island opens too many.

Ahern denied taking any actions at the behest of existing dispensary owners. Rather, she said the delay happened because it took time to set up a brand-new agency from scratch that was simultaneously being sued by prospective retailers. The first lawsuit was filed less than a month after she was confirmed.

Plus, she said the three-member commission could not reach a consensus for months about how to give out the licenses, which slowed down the regulations. Ultimately, the vote was 2 to 1 in favor of a randomized lottery of qualified applicants.

“I was the head of the agency, I was the full-time employee, but my vote was not more important than my two other commissioners,” Ahern said. (The other two commissioners, Robert Jacquard and Layi Oduyingbo, did not respond to requests for comment about Ahern’s tenure.)

But frustrated applicants who are trying to open retail stores say they see Ahern as an incompetent leader who prevented more competition from entering the market.

“The Powerball runs a lottery three times a week,” said David Rozen, who applied to open a cannabis store in an old Pizza Hut in Cranston. “She couldn’t run one lottery in three years.”

The lawsuits that ultimately halted the process came from two would-be retailers in California and Florida, who sued Ahern and the commission in 2024, claiming Rhode Island’s residency requirement for store owners violates the US Constitution.

Judge Melissa DuBose ruled in their favor in April. In her decision, she criticized the Cannabis Control Commission for moving forward with the lottery process last year despite knowing it had legal issues.

“The resulting fall-out will be, to be blunt, self-inflicted,” DuBose said.

Ahern said she was taking the legal advice of the attorney general’s office, which defended the state against the lawsuits.

Many of the 97 applicants who applied for the licenses blasted the commission. They had shelled out thousands of dollars on application fees and rent for their storefronts, plus legal fees to get zoning permits that were required.

“They rolled out the application period knowing there were two lawsuits that were pending,” said Karen Ballou, another applicant who has been seeking to open a store on Main Street in Richmond. “They set up false hope that the lottery would be held.”

The application process reopened earlier this month, without residency requirements.

Not everyone who has closely watched the implementation of legal cannabis is critical. Ron Crosson, chair of the Cannabis Advisory Board charged with advising the commission, said Ahern took a “methodical approach,” and was “meticulous” in making sure the regulations were adhering to the law.

“I know it wasn’t as fast as some of the retailers wanted it, but I think it was probably done as quickly as it could have been,” Crosson said. “I thought Kim did a masterful job of managing the upstart of the commission.”

Ahern’s two other rivals in the Democratic primary for attorney general, state Representatives Jason Knight and Joe Solomon, declined to comment for this story. But both have criticized her on the campaign trail.

“All we heard were crickets that there was an issue with the law,” Solomon said in a WPRI-TV debate earlier this month.

“Kim Ahern, through the cannabis commission, has not delivered for Rhode Island,” Knight said.

But the lead sponsors of the original law that legalized cannabis, state Representative Scott Slater and former Senator Joshua Miller, both said they don’t blame Ahern directly for the delays, even though they are frustrated.

“I wouldn’t really put it on Kim,” said Slater, who is supporting Solomon in the attorney general race. “They wanted to do their due diligence.”

“I wish we could blame somebody, but I don’t,” Miller said. He’s supporting Ahern in the race.

Ahern, who was a prosecutor before working for former Governor Gina Raimondo and then McKee, said she gets few questions from voters about her role at the cannabis commission. But some inquired when they saw the term “marijuana mafia” in the headline of a story about her tenure at the commission by independent journalist Steve Ahlquist back in June.

“I have actually prosecuted mob cases for the state of Rhode Island, so I know what a mob case looks like,” Ahern said. “Rhode Island voters deserve better than this garbage.”

Ahern said she hopes voters will also focus on the rest of her resume.

“The thing I’ve done the longest in my career is not be the chair of the cannabis commission, and it’s not been to work for the governor,” Ahern said. “It has been as a front-line prosecutor, prosecuting crime, corruption — actual real criminal acts — for nine years.”

Steph Machado can be reached at steph.machado@globe.com. Follow her @StephMachado.