Thor Benson / Cannabis News Box Contributor

The citizens of Maine voted to legalize cannabis back in November, and since then, most of the state’s lawmakers have been working hard to set up regulations for the coming legal market. Maine Governor Paul LePage is staunchly against legalization, and he recently proposed his own bill that would change the start of social use cannabis sales from February of 2018 to 2019. LePage’s final term as governor will end in January of 2019.

Lawmakers had a bill that would get legal sales started on time, instead of pushing them to 2019, and LePage vetoed that bill on Nov. 4. It’s clear he has no intention of letting legislators that have worked hard to set up regulations without his help get anything accomplished before he leaves office.

“Until I clearly understand how the federal government intends to treat states that seek to legalize marijuana, I cannot in good conscience support any scheme in state law to implement expansion of legal marijuana in Maine,” LePage wrote in a letter to Maine lawmakers.

Obviously LePage sees that Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ Justice Department is trying to crack down on cannabis sales, and he appears to be standing with them instead of the citizens of his state. It seems unlikely there will ever be a time where he feels he understands how the federal government is going to handle cannabis and decides to allow regulations to be implemented.

Dianne Russel, a Democrat who’s running to replace LePage, told Cannabis News Box that LePage and his fellow Republicans have repeatedly stood in the way of progress. She believes the people will remove them from office if they continue to work against what the citizens voted for.

“At some point the people will oust those politicians, and we will have common sense policy,” Russel said. “In this case, they are letting the black market explode with ‘free gift with purchase’ schemes because it’s legal to possess, consume and gift—but not purchase.”

Since the people voted for legalization, it’s legal to possess cannabis in Maine and give it away, but the regulations haven’t been set up for legal sales. Many are letting people buy legal items at a certain cost and giving them cannabis with those items as an allegedly free gift.

Russel said she believes LePage will delay regulation of cannabis until he is out of office and it’s “not his problem” anymore. Luckily for cannabis advocates in Maine, LePage is termed out, so they’ll just have to rally behind a candidate who supports legalization (like Russel does) when it’s time to replace him next year.