Maine’s chief cannabis regulator said Wednesday that the Office of Cannabis Policy (OCP) is aware that it’s been issuing licenses to individuals associated with transnational organized crime.
However, the agency lacks the authority to deny licenses to those who apply for medicinal cultivation licenses even when the applicant was previously linked by law enforcement to illicit cannabis activity, said OCP Director John Hudak.
At a hearing before the Maine Legislature’s Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee (VLA), Director Hudak attempted to address concerns about the hundreds of illegal cannabis cultivation operations in mostly rural Maine that are controlled by Asian Transnational Criminal Organizations (ATCOs).
“We know that these networks are sophisticated and well-funded,” Hudak said. “They rely on complex schemes to establish illegal grows under the radar of enforcement agencies.”
Hudak confirmed that intelligence and enforcement efforts had identified connections to international criminal enterprises.
“Our enforcement partners have seen clear patterns that align with activity tied to transnational criminal organizations,” Hudak explained. “These groups are exploiting Maine’s medical and recreational cannabis systems for illicit gain, and we are working tirelessly to close those gaps.”
Hudak, a Brookings Institution fellow and the founder of Freedman & Koski, said Maine’s statutes don’t give him the effective tools to crackdown on the illegal grows. As he has told the Maine Wire, purely illegal grows don’t fall within the jurisdiction of OCP.
The director also admitted for the first time that individuals linked to marijuana grows that have previously been raided by law enforcement are applying for medicinal licenses as a form of protection or cover. He also said that OCP is giving licenses to individuals even when they disclose that they’ll be growing cannabis in a facility previously raided by law enforcement.
“I do believe that, in some of these cases, individuals who are getting arrested in connection with these search warrants, or addresses that are connected to these search warrants — they are not applying to our medical program to come out of the shadows and into the light,” said Hudak.
“They’re applying so they can have a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card, or what they perceive as a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card to continue to do the operations that they’re doing. Which, by and large, is directing product out of state as well,” he said.
Once an individual previously associated with transnational organized crime obtains a medicinal license from Hudak’s agency, it becomes almost impossible for local police or county sheriffs to take enforcement steps against them, even instances where it’s clear the illegal activity has continued.
Hudak has seldom talked about the illegal Chinese marijuana grows and has never publicly acknowledged that the vast majority of large-scale illegal marijuana trafficking arrests in Maine have involved individuals of Chinese descent, including both legal and illegal Chinese immigrants.
According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security memo that leaked in 2023, the networks Hudak now admits he’s giving medicinal licenses to have financial ties back to mainland China.
Hudak disclosed that OCP is at least attempting to track internally all the instances in which the agency gives medicinal marijuana licenses to locations or individuals previously linked to illegal drug trafficking and organized crime.
“We do have some internal processes that we have tried to implement to at least identify when individuals are applying to enter the program from addresses that were previously associated with a search warrant that gives us some visibility about what might be going on,” he said.
In addition to the sprawling network of transnational criminal organizations that has sprung up in Maine on his watch, Hudak also voiced concerns about “decorum.”
According to Hudak, sexual harassment and violent threats from cannabis industry participants, including threats directed at him, have become a big problem for OCP and Maine cannabis generally.
Although he told the committee that he was tough enough to deal with “nasty commentary,” he wouldn’t tolerate harassment of his staff.
When Sen. Craig Hickman (D-Kennebec) asked whether any of the alleged conduct had resulted in criminal charges, Hudak admitted that it had not.
“The times that we are in, unfortunately, are murderous,” Hickman said.
