Who won Maryland’s social equity cannabis lottery? Over 200 new licensees starting businesses.

A cohort of new cannabis licensees in Maryland are facing their first hurdles and finding their identities as they set out on an 18-month venture to get their business up and running.

The 205 prospective businesses were selected at random earlier this year through the state’s social equity lottery for cannabis licenses. Many of the people behind them are entering the legal pot industry from other careers — some are lawyers, some are educators, others are engineers and electricians. Many of them are now getting their conditional licenses, starting the clock to hit certain benchmarks and ultimately get their businesses operational.

“It felt almost like ‘Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory’ for the first couple of weeks,” said Tracee Cheek, whose business, The Righteous Hippie, won a license to open a dispensary in Baltimore County. She intends to operate in the Pikesville area. “And then for me, it was like, ‘Now, do we want to just be happy, or do we really want this to happen?’”

Maryland set up its cannabis reform package with a social equity system intended to give communities harmed by cannabis prohibition a fairer shot at competing in the newly legal market, in part by regulating access to the state’s limited amount of business licenses. The lottery drew from a pool of applicants who have lived in or attended school in areas disproportionately impacted by cannabis possession charges. [Read More @ The Baltimore Sun]