Andréa Hawkins has sat on Connecticut's Social Equity Council since at least 2023. A Glastonbury café her husband co-owns, and in which the state's business registry lists her as a principal, received $100,000 in legislative grant money routed through the Blue Hills Civic Association. A state-commissioned examiner could not verify that the reported expenditures served a documented public purpose.
Connecticut alleges Affinity Grow sold 78 gummy products without required residual-solvent testing. The certificates that prove it are the ones the company filed to register those products, and the state approved all 78. It then approved three more carrying the same defect.
— updated October 25, 2026
Connecticut placed natural kratom leaf in Schedule I on April 2, 2026, after its own regulators wrote that they do not study drug safety and must defer to federal agencies. On October 9, 2026, those federal agencies drew the exact distinction that hundreds of commenters, a Yale epidemiologist and the Rhode Island House Speaker Pro Tempore had asked Connecticut to make.
We bought three THC seltzers at Connecticut stores this month and followed every QR code. None led to a lab report for the can in hand. Behind the shelf is a state market built on a separate legal category, a dollar-per-can fee that funds enforcement, a supply chain that runs through other states, and a federal deadline that puts every one of these drinks outside federal hemp law on December 11.
A Connecticut CannaTimes investigation found that 91.6% of documented cannabis enforcement locations, 96.7% of search-warrant raids, and 92.7% of enforcement actions involving arrests occurred inside or within five miles of areas Connecticut designated as disproportionately harmed by the drug war.
A federal judge dismissed the original complaint in Smith v. Lamont without prejudice. An amended complaint is on file, a Massachusetts grower is asking to join, and no court has ruled on whether Connecticut’s social equity licensing restrictions are constitutional.
Connecticut legalized cannabis. Seven people connected to an Ansonia cannabis event now face a reported 20 felony counts involving cannabis and psychedelic mushroom products.
Lab results, agency emails, contracts, license paperwork, a raid you witnessed. We read everything and we protect sources. No name required.
Send a TipHow we workWe publish the documents behind our reporting: FOIA productions, court filings, financial disclosures and agency correspondence, each with a permanent page, a phone-friendly reader and a note on what, if anything, was redacted. 418 of 420 records are full-text searchable.
FOIA Productions · Testing Records · Financial Disclosures · Federal Cannabis Cases · State Civil Cases · Agency Enforcement Actions
Where Connecticut's cannabis raids, inspections and arrests happen, measured against the census tracts the state itself designated as disproportionately harmed by drug prohibition, and who pays for the enforcement.
What Connecticut's certificates of analysis show, how the state's own reference laboratory at CAES works, which testing requirements the legislature has removed, and what patients can find out about the products they buy.
How Connecticut hands out cannabis licenses, who qualifies as a social equity applicant, what the Social Equity Council decides and how, and the state and federal lawsuits testing the system.
The families, companies and lenders behind Connecticut's cannabis licenses, the campaign money and lobbying around the industry, the financial disclosures of the officials who regulate it, and the federal probe touching all of it.
The 2025 bill that routed cannabis tax money into a policing fund, the amendments and follow-on bills that reshaped it, the enforcement board it created, and the reporting on how it moved through the General Assembly.
What Connecticut agencies release, what they withhold, and what the records show: the Pequot compact production, financial disclosures, audits, and the state's positions on public access.
Connecticut lawmakers quietly inserted a major cannabis power shift into HB 5222.
That is the date the United States government was granted U.S. Patent No. 6,630,507 for cannabinoids, formally recognizing them as compounds with medical value, including antioxidant and neuroprotective properties with potential applications in conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and stroke.
Hartford, CT — A provision in the amended version of House Bill 5350 creates a clear pathway for Social Equity cannabis businesses in Connecticut to be sold or transferred after a set period; while requiring a fixed state fee each time ownership changes.
O’Dea is pointing directly at cultivation concerns in the regulated market and acknowledging a reality policymakers rarely say out loud: the legacy market hasn’t gone anywhere, for a reason.
For years, Connecticut officials have warned us that cannabis grown outside the state’s regulated dispensary system is an “imminent threat” to public health and safety.
The phrase “fentanyl-laced cannabis” is frightening because fentanyl is frightening. Nobody serious should minimize fentanyl. It is potent, dangerous, and responsible for mass overdose deaths across the country.
Bridgeport Police announced this week that cannabis and THC products seized from Dice Convenience Smoke Shop at 4016 Main Street “tested positive for the presence of fentanyl.”
When Connecticut legalized cannabis, lawmakers made a promise.
Connecticut’s cannabis industry openly honors the lawmakers and regulators who shape its market. Maybe the problem isn’t what’s hidden. Maybe it’s what we’ve decided is normal.
As Connecticut prepares to distribute millions of dollars in cannabis tax revenue through the Social Equity Council’s Reimagine & Revitalize (R2) Community Reinvestment Program, an uncomfortable question is emerging:
A federal investigation into the collapse of a Hartford nonprofit is raising new oversight questions that now sit uncomfortably close to Connecticut’s cannabis social equity system.
Three dispensary entities connected to the same business structure made coordinated payments into leadership PAC.
Connecticut Opened a New Cannabis Lane While Its Existing Market Came Under Constitutional Fire - Pequot Compact / Smith vs Lamont
For years, the state treated cannabis licenses like golden tickets. Limited licenses. Lottery windows. Application fees. Social Equity Council reviews. DCP bottlenecks. Ownership audits. Residency tests. Income tests. Backer scrutiny. Management agreement restrictions. Years of delay.
Connecticut’s adult-use cannabis program was sold as “responsible and equitable.” But two records now point to a deeper structural problem.
Original reporting referenced from CT Insider by Jordan Nathaniel Fenster. Additional analysis and commentary by CT CannaTimes.
A federal judge dismissed a constitutional challenge to Connecticut’s cannabis licensing system this week, but not because the court found the state’s social equity rules constitutional. The ruling instead identifies shortcomings in the plaintiff’s case and leaves the door open for an amended complaint. It also raises an important question: Are there cannabis entrepreneurs who
That is the sentence imposed in a Connecticut criminal case involving psilocybin mushrooms and an alleged large-scale operation producing psilocybin and THC products.
Months after telling Connecticut lawmakers he wanted reforms that would help “extinguish the illegal legacy market,” Simonow was charged after troopers and firefighters broke into a non running vehicle containing two dogs at the Haddam Neck Fair
Connecticut’s cannabis framework is being tested in federal court — not over policy disagreements, but over whether the law itself works as written.
Editor’s Note / Correction: Connecticut CannaTimes published an article on September 23 detailing Connecticut’s little-publicized state cannabis testing program at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, or CAES, and the state’s expansion into microbiological reference testing.
State records show Connecticut has operated a government cannabis testing program for years, tested more than 265 samples submitted by regulators, and planned its laboratory as an oversight operation for private cannabis labs. Now the state is adding microbiological testing for mold, Aspergillus and other pathogens using qPCR.
An affiliate of Connecticut CannaTimes has launched CannaScope Lite, a new beta tool designed to make Connecticut cannabis laboratory results easier for consumers to search and compare.
Connecticut cannabis consumers are routinely told two numbers: adults may possess 1.5 ounces of cannabis in public and up to 5 ounces in a locked container at home.
When former State Representative Brandon McGee became Executive Director of Connecticut’s Social Equity Council in August 2024, he inherited an agency at a turning point.
A phrase buried within a June 2, 2026 Social Equity Council legislative update may raise uncomfortable questions for patients, advocates, and cannabis entrepreneurs across Connecticut.
A routine Connecticut Social Equity Council meeting took an unexpected turn on May 5 when a discussion about liability protections, legal disclaimers, and loan programs evolved into a public disagreement over the relationship between Council members and agency staff.
The Connecticut legislative session may be over, but the decisions made this year are going to shape the state’s cannabis market for years and now the Social Equity Council is once again allowing public comment at meetings.
Buried inside HB 5222 is a little-noticed cannabis definition rewrite that could have major consequences for Connecticut’s hemp and cannabinoid market.
The federal government is attempting to rewrite hemp laws in a way that would devastate Connecticut’s entire independent hemp industry — and the media isn’t talking about it.
The state just created a new legal category of high-THC hemp. But is it really about public safety—or market control?
CT CannaTimes would like to thank the bipartisan proponents, sponsors, and supporters of SB 191 “An Act Concerning the Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy Pilot Program” which officially passed both chambers of the Connecticut General Assembly today.
Connecticut has moved to classify kratom; a natural plant used by thousands of residents…as a Schedule I controlled substance, placing it in the same legal category as heroin.
Video Source Credit: NBC News Connecticut (No Affiliation, CT CannaTimes views are our own.)
Connecticut’s decision to move forward with scheduling raw kratom leaf as a controlled substance amounts to throwing out the baby with the bathwater. The state is conflating natural kratom (used by many to avoid opioids) with 7-hydroxymitragynine (7-OH) — a much more dangerous synthetic or concentrated derivative. That conflation is wildly irresponsible, and I fear it will lead
Connecticut’s cannabis industry openly honors the lawmakers and regulators who shape its market. Maybe the problem isn’t what’s hidden. Maybe it’s what we’ve decided is normal.
Connecticut cannabis consumers are routinely told two numbers: adults may possess 1.5 ounces of cannabis in public and up to 5 ounces in a locked container at home.
For years, Connecticut officials have warned us that cannabis grown outside the state’s regulated dispensary system is an “imminent threat” to public health and safety.
Connecticut Opened a New Cannabis Lane While Its Existing Market Came Under Constitutional Fire - Pequot Compact / Smith vs Lamont
Connecticut news outlet covering cannabis law, policy, and regulation. No sales, no promotion. Reporting from public records and court filings.
Records are published as received. Corrections are posted, not buried. Analysis and opinion are labeled so you can tell them from news. Editorial Standards · Corrections
