A cannabis flower is pictured in Inalåhan in October 2021.
HAGÅTÑA (The Guam Daily Post) — One organization has applied for a cannabis establishment license with the Department of Revenue and Taxation, but there’s still a long road ahead before a legitimate industry can get off the ground.
“As I understand, it is under review with the utility agencies,” DRT Director Dafne Mansapit-Shimizu told lawmakers during a budget hearing Friday, but the development of an industry is “still in its infancy stages.”
The name of the organization that submitted an establishment license wasn’t mentioned Friday.
Recreational cannabis was legalized on Guam in 2019, but the rules and regulations for handling the new industry weren’t ironed out until last year and Rev and Tax started accepting applications for establishment licenses only in November 2022, Post files show.
Mansapit-Shimizu said 12 “responsible official” cards, which go to people who are legally responsible as an establishment goes through the process of getting a license, have been granted. But with no cannabis lab on Guam, there’s just the one establishment looking to take the next step in the application process.
There are other steps to go through, even if the establishment license is approved.
“That’s still not the business license,” Mansapit-Shimizu told lawmakers.
DRT has its own problems with taxes on the proceeds of cannabis sales, she said.
Dafne Mansapit-Shimizu
Because marijuana remains a Schedule I drug on the federal level, accepting cannabis proceeds can be a nightmare for any federally insured financial institution, which makes getting a bank to take the funds a problem.
Figuring out how to receive fees for the cannabis applications was the first hurdle to Rev and Tax. That was cleared, Mansapit-Shimizu said.
“We have not yet moved forward with the discussion of how the proceeds from cannabis will be banked. And so that’s something that still needs to be done,” she said.
The Post reported in April that Greenland Farms Inc. was looking to get an establishment license for a cannabis cultivation facility, but that it wasn’t ready to seek approval from the Rev and Tax Cannabis Control Board.
