BURLINGTON – Vermont’s largest city has more cannabis retailers than any other town or city in the state. Out of the 109 retailers listed on the Cannabis Control Board website, 12 are located here.
There’s something else unique about the cannabis business in Burlington. When recreational marijauna was legalized, city voters passed a set of rules that leveled the playing field for small businesses. Because of this, they prevented large corporate chains from dominating the field.
Today, most of those retailers are locally-owned and operated, according to Geoffrey Pizzutillo, executive director of the Vermont Growers Association. At least 10 of Burlington’s 12 cannabis retailers say they are locally owned, according to their websites.
“We demonstrated that Burlington residents would rather support local, independent, small cannabis businesses than give handouts to large cannabis corporations,” Pizzutillo said.
Vermont first legalized cannabis for recreational use in 2018. It was the first state to do this through the legislature – all other states legalized it through voter initiatives.
In 2020, the Legislature passed a law to build a regulated commercial market. It required each town or city to individually opt in to allow recreational cannabis dispensaries.
Pizzutillo saw an opportunity to help write the language that Burlington voters would consider on the 2021 Town Meeting Day ballot.
In other states, corporatized, big business cannabis had a leg up on small, locally-owned businesses. Those highly-capitalized corporations often had their hand in the world of medical cannabis beforehand, so they were offered priority on opening up recreational cannabis businesses before local small businesses could do so.
VGA and the Vermont Cannabis Equity Coalition wrote language on the Burlington ballot to counteract this. It proposed to the residents of Burlington an opportunity to vote to give a head start to local owners instead.
Pizzutillo summarized the ballot language: “Check this mark if you agree that Burlington should have retail sales, corporate actors are allowed to operate for 36 months after Mom and Pop.”
This town meeting day proposal makes Burlington’s cannabis scene unique, compared to other states, as well as areas in Vermont outside of Burlington.
The problem is regulatory capture, Pizzutillo said, when the government serves the interests of the highly-capitalized corporations over local independent small farms and businesses
“Another component of regulatory capture in cannabis law is what’s called a first mover advantage,” Pizzutillo said. “Vermont has this and every other state has this.”
He said big corporations have a head start, because Vermonters weren’t even allowed to apply because they had to wait to be vetted first.
“So in Vermont, in Bernie Sanders progressive Vermont, we have cannabis regulatory capture that was enacted in 2020 that says corporate cannabis has a 5 to 6 month head start.” Pizzutillo said.
This head-start strips leverage away from those who cultivated the cannabis culture in Vermont, long before the U.S. government got involved, he said.
“We want to make sure the legacy community, everyday Vermonters, the people who put in the hard work to really turn Vermont into an emerald triangle, if you will, are the ones being centered in this regulated space,” Pizzutillo said. “Corporate cannabis cannot compete on a fair level playing field. They need to use policy to get the upper hand.”
On town meeting day in 2021, Burlington voters overwhelmingly approved retail cannabis within city limits, with 81 percent in support. In doing so, they also approved the language prioritizing local owners over corporate chains.
“So, we reversed that. We flipped it on its head” Pizzutillo said.
Bern Gallery is one of those legacy Burlington businesses that added a retail dispensary to their glass blowing shop in 2023.
Cannabis specialist and brand ambassador Paddy Donnelly has worked at Bern Gallery for over ten years. He says the Burlington market is oversaturated, in part because only some municipalities legalized recreational marijuana.
“I wish it was an opt out situation from the get go, if people specifically didn’t want cannabis businesses in their town,” Donnelly said. “The equitability of dispensaries around the state is a bit of an issue. Oversaturation in certain areas, and underrepresentation in others.”
Municipalities are prohibited from capping the number of licenses, so only competition limits the number of retail stores.
It’s a “race to the bottom,” Donnelly said, where businesses continuously lower the prices of their product to stay competitive with other dispensaries.
Donnelly doesn’t think government regulation is the answer. Rather, he sees a solution budding out of conversation within the community.
“In order for that to continue to work for small scale growers, there has to be just some sustained value to cannabis. It’s up to shop owners, in my opinion,” Donnelly said.
“We’ve lowered some of our prices to remain competitive. But we try to keep a certain standard. People gotta eat,” he added.
Both Pizzutillo and Donnelly hope Burlington’s cannabis industry can remain sustainable, while maintaining its ideals.
“The best way to make money, we think, in long term viability, is to make business decisions that don’t cut off the nose of your neighbor,” Pizzutillo said.
Donnelly adds, “I want to make a market that is diverse, unique, honest, authentic, and that can live for decades. I don’t want it to devolve into what we’ve seen in a lot of other states: warehouse, cardboard weed.”