The state has updated its regulations and conditions for Community Host Agreements, with Dartmouth’s second cannabis business needing new approval for the updated terms. Though the agreements were approved for Apotho Therapeutics at the Monday, June 17 meeting, Select Board members voiced opposition to the state’s changes — feeling deceived into allowing the businesses in the first place. 

A Community Host Agreement stipulates the regulations and conditions a host and its applicant must follow in accordance with state law. Apotho Therapeutics will be “vertically integrated,” meaning it will not only play a role in selling cannabis, but also in the cultivation and manufacturing of its products — requiring two host agreements.

Chris Vitale, interim co-town administrator, said the most significant of these changes was made to the community impact fee. While before it served as a 3% flat rate from cannabis businesses to the towns they are operating in, it is now structured as a reimbursable expense to the town “based on actual funds spent.”

In response to these changes, Select Board member Stanley Mickelson said, “They pulled the rug out from under us.”

Select Board member Heidi Silvia Brooks said this has made cannabis “just another business in town.”

She said though it's no fault of the businesses themselves, she is “upset” with the state for “all the carrots they dangled in front of us to get into this business.”

Brooks and Select Board Chair Shawn McDonald clarified their votes against the agreement are not a reflection of Apotho Therapeutics. 

Matthew Medeiros, president of retail operations and chief officer for manufacturing and cultivation operations for Apotho Therapeutics, said the business had its post provisional license review last Friday with the Cannabis Control Commission for the retail operations.

They anticipate an inspection within the next three weeks, with a second in mid-August, Medeiros said. The business projects a late-August open at 747 State Road.

Its manufacturing and cultivation operations are anticipated to begin in March 2025, with the business working with Eversource now to bring in the utilities for the next phase, according to Medeiros.

From August to March, the business plans to source its flower from its other location, which opened in Plainville in 2021, as well as its cannabis partners in surrounding towns, he said.

While the community impact fee has changed, the town will still receive 3% from cannabis sales, coming from the state’s Department of Revenue, according to Vitale.

Gary Carreiro, interim co-town administrator, will work with Apotho Therapeutics to confirm and estimate on what the anticipated revenue to the town would be.