Maine

Workers at Maine’s illegal cannabis grow sites report signs of human trafficking

Published

1 year ago

August 12, 2024

Workers at Maine’s illegal cannabis grow sites report signs of human trafficking

A Homeland Security Investigations agent and a deputy from the Somerset County Sheriff’s Office stand on May 30 inside an illegal marijuana grow site in St. Albans. Somerset County Sheriff’s Office photo

In late December, someone claiming to be a worker at an illegal cannabis grow site in the Kennebec County town of China called the police. The caller claimed to have been brought to the rural house at 1144 Route 3 against his or her will and was being held without food or sleep in order to maintain and harvest the marijuana crop.

“No cellphones. We were abducted from China, passports were confiscated,” a transcript of the call reads. “No escape from the house, only work but no salary. I want to leave here, we tried to escape but failed. We were beaten. Please come and save us.”

Kennebec County Sheriff’s Office deputies who responded to the call found three people and nearly 1,000 mature cannabis plants inside the house. Two men, Changgeng Chen, 36, and Bing Xu, 41, and a woman, Aiqin Chen, 43, were arrested at the scene.

Officers said they found no one in distress at the house, and Kennebec County Sheriff Ken Mason would later say there was “no indication the tip was authentic.”

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maine says it has found no credible evidence that there is human trafficking involved in any of the illegal grow sites the office has investigated, more than 40 of which have been raided by members of law enforcement.

“Human trafficking is a heinous crime that our office takes seriously. Any evidence of human trafficking will be thoroughly investigated and if discovered, vigorously prosecuted,” Darcie N. McElwee, U.S. attorney for the District of Maine, said in a statement in May.

Local law enforcement officials and anti-trafficking advocates said in interviews that the illegal marijuana growing operations bear the hallmarks of human and labor trafficking. In court records, some workers detained at the grow sites say the same thing, raising the prospect that workers are being brought to the locations in rural Maine under false pretenses and kept here against their will.

Officials say they have identified more than 200 illegal marijuana growing operations in Maine. Federal prosecutors say the illegal marijuana grows may be operated by transnational criminal organizations with links to China, and similar operations can be found in at least 20 states.

Because they are new immigrants to the United States in search of work, money and housing, workers are often vulnerable to being exploited by the operations, which are seeking cheap, expendable labor they can tightly control.

Human trafficking is defined as “the exploitation of a person through force, fraud or coercion for labor, services or commercial sex,” according to Hailey Virusso, director of the anti-human trafficking division of Preble Street in Portland, which provides services and seeks solutions for those experiencing a variety of issues, including homelessness, a lack of stable and affordable housing, hunger and poverty.

A raid earlier this year revealed what officials say was an illegal cannabis growing operation at a single-family house at 368 West Ridge Road in Cornville, top. The lower photo, taken by the Somerset County Sheriff’s Office, shows the house’s interior.

It is an umbrella term that includes a number of other crimes, including labor exploitation and trafficking, Virusso says. Advocates say all three are likely occurring at Maine’s illegal cannabis grow houses.

Traffickers specifically target Chinese immigrants with promises of good work and steady pay, taking advantage of new immigrants’ trust in the communities they have traveled thousands of miles to join.

Among the grow house workers arrested in Maine, all with Chinese backgrounds, many have given home addresses in Massachusetts, New York, Florida or California, with several coming from the Brooklyn borough of New York City.

Officials say some workers are aware they are growing illegal cannabis, while others are misled and brought to the grow sites through more dubious means.

On numerous Chinese-language job boards, dozens of veiled job listings appear for grow houses in Maine. They are presented as openings for “four-season indoor crop planting,” courier drivers, energy company apprentices and other jobs.

Many of the listings describe themselves as plant harvesting or processing facilities, but none discloses what it is growing. Some present themselves as entry-level jobs with warehouses or electric companies that offer free training and room for growth.

Most require basic legal documents, such as a driver’s license and tax filings. Nearly all offer free accommodation and transportation, which experts say are hallmarks of human trafficking operations.

The same contact information appears on nearly a dozen job listings across several Chinese-language job boards, offering roles ranging from “watering and cleaning potted plant debris” to “warehouse workers with legal jobs and basic English reading and writing.”

A reverse search for the Maine telephone number listed on nearly a dozen job listings across several websites does not return results. Many other listings direct applicants to anonymous recruiters on WeChat, a Chinese messaging platform.

Offering free housing and requiring tax documents allows criminal organizations that operate grow houses to scoop up low-income immigrants who largely come legally to the United States from China, according to officials.

Misleading online job listings have rapidly become the primary avenue for human traffickers to recruit workers across all fields. According to data from the National Human Trafficking Hotline, 67% of victims of labor trafficking were recruited through what appeared to be a legitimate job offer in 2021, the most recent year for which data is available.

Human traffickers often take advantage of people’s individual needs and trust in their communities to coerce them into forced labor, according to Rafael Flores Ávalos, director of bilingual communications at the Polaris Project, which operates the National Human Trafficking Hotline.

Ávalos says those with lower incomes and a lack of stable housing are most susceptible to forced labor.

“There’s a big myth that if you’re going to be trafficked, you’re going to get kidnapped in a white van. That is not the case,” he said. “What we hear more of from the hotline is of the recruitment process, of people attracted to these opportunities by someone they trust.”

Aside from their Chinese descent, many of the grow house workers have little else in common. Some are men, some are women. Some are elderly, some are in their early 20s. Some have received education, others have not.

INSIDE THE HOMES

Once workers are brought to Maine, they are put to work planting, watering and harvesting hundreds of cannabis plants each day inside single-family homes that have been gutted and converted into massive marijuana farms growing as many as 2,000 plants at a time, according to several sources in law enforcement.

At the grow houses that have busted in Maine, workers have been kept in squalor and are rarely allowed to leave the sites, according to several law enforcement sources who have been present for the raids. The living space for as many as three or four workers is confined to one room at each house, oftentimes the kitchen, while industrial-scale heating, lighting and ventilation systems are installed at the houses to accommodate the growth of thousands of marijuana plants.

As a result of the high humidity and warm temperatures needed to efficiently grow marijuana, the houses are often filled with black mold. Potent and sometimes carcinogenic chemical fertilizers are used inside the houses.

While laborers were previously living and working for months at a time within each individual cannabis grow house, the operations have adapted since the first police raids in January by further restricting workers’ movement, according to several law enforcement sources.

Police who raided a home in Madison in April say they found evidence of an illegal marijuana growing operation and signs of black mold. Somerset County Sheriff’s Office photo

Somerset County Sheriff Dale Lancaster, whose office has busted more than 20 grow houses, says the number of sites and the amount of people staffing them has shrunk in the months since the first busts earlier this year, partly due to a shift in how the workers are managed.

“We are executing these search warrants, but there’s no one at the residence, and I think that’s by design,” Lancaster said. “We’re dealing with smart people, and they’re adjusting how they do business.”

Laborers are increasingly being transported by their managers from house to house, diligently watched as they harvest and process each site’s cannabis crop for several hours, before being brought to the next location, according to several law enforcement sources.

Nearly all have their movements restricted to and from the cannabis grow houses by managers overseeing the movement of the fertilizers, electrical equipment and people required to operate the facilities. The organizational structure beyond that remains murky.

Federal and local investigators say they are seeing fewer lower-level workers living within a single grow house, with more laborers being taken from one site to another — trends indicative of labor trafficking.

“They’re being dispatched to work in these places, where they were originally staying in these places, sometimes in vans or cars,” one law enforcement source said on the condition of anonymity because the source was not authorized to speak publicly about the investigation.

Restricting transportation is one of the most restrictive ways control their victims, Virusso said, especially when workers are brought to remote areas where they have not been before.

“If you’re faced with a situation where your employer says, ‘You’re done for the day, but my buddy down the road needs some extra help,’” Virusso said, “you have basically only two options: Go work at the other location, or say no to the person your employment, housing and livelihood is tied up into.”

KEPT IN THE DARK

At one Somerset County marijuana grow site, workers did not know the names of the towns where they were being sent to work and sleep. This was not because they did not know English, but because their bosses never let them see the outside world, according to Lancaster.

“Speaking with them, one of the males didn’t even know what town he was in or what town he was staying in,” Lancaster said. The man only knew “that he got picked up in the morning, taken to a facility to work and taken back.”

In court documents and police affidavits, several people arrested at the cannabis grow houses have described being brought to the sites against their will and having their pay withheld after they arrived.

A worker at a growing operation in Whitefield told police he had “been working for a few years,” but never received a paycheck. When arrested in January, the man, Ding Zhan Liao, said he had less than $500 despite having grown illegal marijuana for years.

Federal investigators say each cannabis grow house is run differently, and some laborers receive payment based on the amount of marijuana they harvest and process.

“Typically, workers on the ground are earning at least several thousand dollars (monthly),” Andrew Lizotte, the assistant U.S. attorney who is leading the federal investigation into the illegal cannabis grow houses, said. “It’s an agreed-upon labor structure where they are acting in exchange for payment to staff up these illegal operations.”

Still, many of those arrested at the cannabis grow are unaware that what they are doing is illegal, according to several sources, because they are new to the United States, unfamiliar with cannabis laws and sometimes being told lies by their bosses.

Some workers are told by their bosses that what they are doing is legal under Maine’s marijuana laws, according to a law enforcement source who asked not to be named because the source has not been cleared to discuss the investigation publicly.

The Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office in January raided 615 Wiscasset Road in Whitefield, where officials say they found 300 marijuana plants that were part of an illegal grow operation. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal file

“Some of them don’t know that what they’re doing is illegal because they just have been told (marijuana) is legal in Maine,” the source said. “Some of the houses even have fake (marijuana growing) licenses they can point to and say, ‘See, we’re not breaking the law.’”

The fact that workers are being forcibly kept at and trafficked between marijuana grow houses is indicative of forced criminality, Virusso said, regardless of how much they know about Maine cannabis law.

“Forced criminality is a form of labor trafficking that is oftentimes deeply invisible,” Virusso said. “(It) is when someone’s trafficking experience required or compelled them to engage in illicit or criminalized activity. That could be selling drugs, if somebody’s forcing them to engage in that.”

Federal investigators maintain that their investigations have found no evidence of human or labor trafficking within the cannabis grow houses, though Lizotte noted that nearly identical operations in nearly a dozen other states have employed forms of human trafficking.

“It’s been reported that different states and different regions have disparate dynamics; for example, Oklahoma, the Pacific Northwest, California,” Lizotte said. “But here in Maine, we haven’t seen evidence to suggest that there is human or labor trafficking. The U.S. attorney’s views on that remain unchanged.”

Local law enforcement and anti-trafficking advocates dispute that assertion, noting that the cannabis grows are cloaked in layers of secrecy.

“Illicit marijuana grows are rife with the potential for exploitative conditions because they create layers of invisibility, which creates real fear and justifiable fear,” Virusso said. “Just because we don’t see something doesn’t mean it’s not there.”

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Maine

How labels make or break Maine’s recreational cannabis compliance system

Published

11 hours ago

January 6, 2026

Press Room

How labels make or break Maine’s recreational cannabis compliance system

A group of recreational cannabis flower products purchased in October at Brilliant Buds in Bethel were fully compliant with state requirements.

The stickers for the “Find.” brand products displayed required warnings, strain names, potency values, processor license information and batch identifiers.

A Find-brand package purchased at Brilliant Buds in Bethel shows a medical-use label faintly visible beneath the recreational sticker, including the strain name MAC 1. Find is Curaleaf’s economy and mid-tier product line, typically selling for about $75 an ounce in Maine’s medical market and around $125 an ounce in recreational retail. (Courtesy photo)

But when the recreational stickers were peeled back after being purchased on Oct. 24, medical cannabis labels were found underneath. The labels included Curaleaf’s Auburn facility address and medical-style batch data. Curaleaf is one of the largest multistate medical cannabis operators in the United States.

Was it a labeling error? Was the product for medical use instead of recreational? Was it simply a case of recycled packaging?

Those questions and more are at the core of labeling irregularities in Maine’s cannabis packaging, verification and retail compliance model: repurposed or mislabeled consumer packages can move through intake, stocking and point-of-sale without triggering an alert.

One recreational-use bag labeled “Turnpike Cookies” revealed a medical label beneath it printed with the strain “MAC 1.” A second bag of “Mintz Snackz” had the same label. In both cases, the originally labeled strain name was faintly visible through the sticker.

The discovery does not establish wrongdoing or intentional misconduct, but it does raise questions for consumers and regulators who may not necessarily be able to distinguish if a product on the shelf had an old label that was not properly removed or if the product was intended for one market but was being sold in the other without following all required rules.

In the case of the layered labels at Brilliant Buds, it was all legal. Maine’s recreational cannabis rules do not prohibit layered labels, and the final, visible sticker is treated as the compliance record at retail.

With labels from different regulatory programs remaining visible beneath a retail sticker, however, it has created confusion among consumers who want to know exactly where their cannabis is from and raised questions about packaging quality control.

Under Maine rules, the label itself is the mechanism by which retail compliance is communicated and enforced. The Office of Cannabis Policy allows multiple labels on a recreational package, provided required information is not obstructed.

Maine’s recreational cannabis program includes mandatory testing, track and trace, stringent labeling and universal symbols. The medical cannabis program does not require mandatory testing or track & trace.

Kaspar Heinrici, chief executive director of SeaWeed Co. in Portland, said the recreational cannabis market operates under a level of scrutiny that is often misunderstood by the public.

“There is still a misperception that cannabis operators are putting a plant into a bag with little oversight,” he said. “The reality is that regulated recreational operators are working with a level of organization, testing and standard operating procedures closer to the medical or financial services industries.”

TRACING CANNABIS

Maine’s recreational system requires cannabis sold at retail to be identifiable for recall purposes through batch information printed on the label.

Heinrici said Maine’s batch-based approach is intended to balance public health protections with operational practicality.

“If there is an issue with one unit of a product, it likely extends to the rest of the package and potentially the package it came from,” he said. “Being overly specific at the individual unit level is not going to provide additional benefit.”

At the retail shelf, compliance and recall depend on the accuracy of the information printed on the visible retail label. Inspection quality can vary depending on staffing levels, lighting, workflow and training. Batch numbers are often printed in small type.

The rule does not require individual retail units, such as eighths, quarters, ounces or pre-rolls, to carry a unique electronic identifier, radio frequency identification tags or scannable code. But it does for cultivation and wholesale inventory movement.

Maine uses Metrc (short for Marijuana Enforcement Tracking Reporting Compliance) a track-and-trace inventory system adopted in many cannabis jurisdictions.

Other states use different track-and-trace platforms. For example, Connecticut uses BioTrack. In Connecticut, each retail cannabis unit carries a printed unit identification number with a machine-readable barcode, as well as a QR code with a link.

Curaleaf is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, and operates more than 150 operates medical and recreational dispensaries nationwide.

Maine consumers do not have a comparable consumer-facing verification tool.

Heinrici said that while testing and traceability are essential, additional regulatory layers do not always translate into better consumer outcomes.

“The track-and-trace and testing requirements are important for public health, but they verge on being overly detailed and overly burdensome for the end consumer,” he said. “More regulation always comes with a cost, and that cost ultimately shows up at the register.”

SHIFTING MARKET IN MAINE

Curaleaf entered Maine in 2016 through its relationship with Remedy Compassion Center, one of the state’s original eight nonprofit medical cannabis dispensaries and the first to open under Maine’s medical program.

While Curaleaf exited recreational retail storefronts in Maine in 2023, citing competitive pressures, the company remained active in the state’s medical cannabis program as well as recreational cultivation and manufacturing.

It appears Curaleaf is dipping its toes back into recreational retail. In late November, job postings for Curaleaf-managed operations at Brilliant Buds in Bethel signaled a return through a licensed partner rather than a Curaleaf-branded store. Additional Curaleaf job listings in Bangor indicate a recreational retail component planned for that location.

Curaleaf did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this article. Attempts to seek comment from Brilliant Buds were also unsuccessful.

A reporter visited the Bethel store in person but was asked to leave upon entry. A follow-up phone call to the store and subsequent emails seeking comment were not answered.

Office of Cannabis Policy Data Analytics Director Eric Miller said recently that recreational sales are strongest in western and southern Maine, particularly in border-adjacent regions near New Hampshire, a factor that may help explain Curaleaf’s focus on Bethel.

John Hudak, the director of Maine’s Office of Cannabis Policy, said sales data suggest some border effects, but emphasized they are not the primary driver of Maine’s recreational market.

“I think New Hampshire is having an impact in York and Cumberland County, but it’s not the major driver of Maine’s cannabis economy,” Hudak said, adding that tourism and Maine consumers account for most recreational sales.

MEDICAL vs. RECREATIONAL

Maine regulates cannabis under three distinct frameworks: medical cannabis, recreational cannabis and hemp-derived products. Each system operates under different statutes, labeling rules, testing standards and tax structures.

Recreational cannabis is overseen by the Office of Cannabis Policy and is subject to labeling rules, mandatory third-party testing, Metrc oversight and a 10% excise tax. As of late 2025, Maine lists roughly 180 licensed recreational cannabis stores, along with 78 cultivation facilities and 81 manufacturing facilities statewide.

Maine’s medical cannabis program is also overseen, separately, by the Office of Cannabis Policy. Maine lists 86 active medical dispensaries and approximately 1,554 registered caregivers statewide. A medical cannabis caregiver is an individual or business authorized to grow and sell cannabis directly to registered patients, often operating at smaller scale and under less prescriptive labeling and testing rules.

“From a caregiver standpoint, testing and transparency matter because trust is everything,” said a Franklin County-area medical cannabis caregiver who requested anonymity. “Even unintentional confusion around labeling or testing can make patients question whether a product is safe.”

In July, cPort Credit Union notified many medical cannabis caregivers and caregiver storefronts statewide that their business accounts would be closed, citing evolving compliance expectations and regulatory risk. The decision did not apply to licensed medical dispensaries, which are subject to higher levels of oversight.

“Patients ask more questions now than they did a few years ago,” said the Franklin County caregiver. “Public perception around safety is shaped as much by labeling and communication as by the product itself.”

The labeling incident in Bethel illustrates a possible hole in Maine’s recreational oversight model. Cultivation and wholesale movement can be tracked with some accuracy, but at the retail shelf things can get much more dicey, relying on individual inspectors and label accuracy — rather than actual traceability.

At the point of sale, the sticker is the system. Against that backdrop, state regulators are continuing broader discussions about testing standards and consumer protection.

The Office of Cannabis Policy hosted a Cannabis Conversation on Testing Lab Standards on Dec. 22, hosted by director Hudak, which focused on how the state and the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention work together to ensure certified cannabis testing labs, examining laboratory procedures, oversight and public health standards. The video can be watched on Maine OCP’s YouTube page.

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Maine

Maine secures $1.9M settlement for bitcoin kiosk scam victims

Published

23 hours ago

January 5, 2026

Press Room

Maine secures .9M settlement for bitcoin kiosk scam victims

A major cryptocurrency ATM operator will pay $1.9 million to Maine residents who were defrauded by scammers using the company’s kiosks, according to a consent agreement with the state.

The agreement, between Bitcoin Depot and the Maine Bureau of Consumer Credit Protection, follows a two-year investigation that included the Office of the Maine Attorney General. It was signed in December and announced Monday.

Bitcoin Depot is based in Atlanta and operates over 25,000 kiosks in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Mexico and Hong Kong, according to its website. The company operated about 80 unlicensed kiosks in Maine — until the state passed emergency legislation in June to regulate virtual currency ATMs.

Bitcoin Depot’s website no longer lists kiosks in Maine. “They’ve been gone since last summer,” said Linda Conti, bureau superintendent.

Most of the company’s machines were in York, Cumberland, Kennebec and Penobscot counties, Conti said.

It’s unclear how many Mainers have been scammed through Bitcoin Depot kiosks, exactly where they were located or how much money each victim might receive.

“We will not know how much each refund will be until we have received and reviewed all of the claims,” according to information posted on the bureau’s website.

Claims must be filed on or before April 1, 2026, and may be submitted online. The bureau will begin issuing refunds in May.

INVESTIGATIONS UNDERWAY

The bureau said the scams involved transactions made at Bitcoin Depot kiosks, where people purchased cryptocurrency and deposited it into “unhosted wallets” provided by third-party fraudsters.

An unhosted wallet is a type of digital wallet that is hosted and controlled by a user, rather than by a financial institution, money transmitter, exchange or other virtual asset service provider.

Although Bitcoin Depot no longer has kiosks in Maine,nearly 100 other cryptocurrency ATMs are still operating across the state, Conti said, including CoinFlip, CoinStar and Coinme machines.

In March 2023, bureau investigators found that Bitcoin Depot kiosks in Maine appeared to provide money transmission functions and invited the company to apply for a money transmitter license, according to the consent agreement.

The company applied for a license that month, but the application wasn’t deemed complete until February 2025 and was denied in April 2025. Bitcoin Depot appealed the decision in May.

In July 2025, the bureau provided Bitcoin Depot with a list of consumer transactions at its kiosks in which Maine consumers may have suffered financial loss and harm as a result of third-party fraudsters.

As part of the consent agreement, Bitcoin Depot must send a $1.9 million check to Maine’s attorney general by Feb. 2 and has agreed to fully comply with Maine’s consumer protection laws as a now-licensed money transmitter.

Bitcoin Depot is still licensed to transmit funds in Maine through online transactions, Conti said.

The bureau continues to investigate other cryptocurrency kiosk operators, she said. “The kiosks are where the trouble happens,” Conti said.

CONSUMER PROTECTION

Gov. Janet Mills praised the bureau for securing an agreement with Bitcoin Depot “that will put money back into the pockets of Maine people who were defrauded by predatory third-party scammers.”

Mills urged all Mainers “to talk with their loved ones about the threats of scammers and precautions to take to avoid these cruel and often sophisticated schemes.”

Maine has recently adopted laws that protect consumers from third-party scammers, including the Maine Money Transmission Modernization Act, which the governor signed in 2024.

In June 2025, Mills also signed emergency legislation that limits daily transmission amounts from virtual currency kiosks, caps fees and exchange rates, and provides redress for consumers.

“Maine’s new consumer protection laws have allowed us to reach this consent agreement,” Conti said. “Whenever you have new technologies, you’re going to have people who are vulnerable and need to be protected.”

The laws include an unhosted wallet provision, which requires money transmitters to employ new technologies to ensure that Maine consumers own and control their virtual wallets.

To be eligible for a portion of the $1.9 million, claimants must have been a Maine resident between 2022 and 2025; used a Bitcoin Depot kiosk in Maine during that period to convert cash to cryptocurrecy; and deposited the cryptocurrency into an unhosted wallet provided by a scammer or third-party fraudster.

The full consent agreement and FAQs for consumers are available on the bureau’s website. For more information call 800-332-8529 or 207-624-8527.

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Maine

How did prices of Maine household essentials change in 2025?

Published

1 day ago

January 5, 2026

Press Room

How did prices of Maine household essentials change in 2025?

Costs are up. It’s all around.

Nationally, inflation charted 2.7% in November, according to the latest available data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That figure was slightly higher in the northeast region, where prices rose about 3.1% in November compared to the same month last year.

The latest inflation numbers were better than some had expected, but many Americans say they still feel the pinch of high prices.

James Myall, an analyst with the Maine Center for Economic Policy, a left-leaning think tank, said that disconnect between “high-level” economic data and consumer sentiment is likely driven by the price of essentials, which carry more weight than other expenses.

“Probably, the things that people are feeling the most are those costs that feel unavoidable: rent, groceries,” Myall said.

Myall noted that the rate of price increases has slowed since its peak during the COVID-19 pandemic, from about 2021 to 2023, but wage growth also appears to be losing steam, which can further weaken Mainers’ spending power in the face of rising prices.

All told, Myall said the economy appears to be on a better trajectory than he expected in early 2025. But Trump administration policies like tariffs and mass deportations, which could shrink the labor pool, still leave things on shaky ground.

“I feel like we’ve gone from a generally strong and growing economy, especially for workers, (a year ago) to one that’s like plateauing and maybe teetering on the edge a little bit,” Myall said.

In preparation for the new year, we reviewed the cost of essentials to see how prices changed in 2025, and where things stand at the beginning of 2026.

Groceries

In January 2025, the average price for a gallon of 2% milk was $4.91, a pound of 80/20 ground beef was $5.70, and a dozen large, brown eggs cost $5.50. That’s according to data collected by Maine Public, which surveyed four grocers across the state.

On Tuesday, the average price of eggs at Whole Foods, Hannaford, Shaw’s and Walmart locations in Greater Portland was $3.03. That marks a 44.9% decrease — though prices were anomalously high at the beginning of last year, driven up by a surge in avian flu.

For a pound of ground beef, the average price was $6.23, a 9.3% rise. And the average milk price was $4.49 — down 8.6% from January.

Vehicles

Overall, Mainers paid less for new cars and more for used cars in 2025 than in 2024, according to data aggregated by Cox Automotive Group, operator of Kelley Blue Book.

The average sale price for a new car in Maine was $46,289 at the beginning of December 2025, down about 5.1% from $48,756 at the same time in 2024.

Maine’s prices were lower than the national average: $49,913 in December 2024 and $47,042 in December 2025, according to preliminary data shared with the Press Herald. Nationally, the average price for new cars hit an all-time record of $50,080 in September, Kelley Blue Book announced.

But it was a different story for used vehicles. The average sale price for used cars in Maine rose about 7.1%, from $28,813 in December 2024 to $30,868 a year later. Nationally, used car sale prices went from $29,570 to $30,383 — a 2.7% increase, according to the Cox data.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics meanwhile reported a 3.6% increase in used car prices from November 2024 to 2025.

Vehicle retailer CarGurus, which also tracks used car prices nationally, reported a smaller change. Its average price was $27,570 at the beginning of December, up about $112 or 0.4% from a year earlier.

But prices rose more sharply for SUVs and crossovers (1.3%), sedans (2.3%) and pickup trucks (3.7%), according to CarGurus.

Gas

The price of a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline fell about 10 cents between the beginning of 2025 and the same time in 2026, according to data aggregated by AAA.

On average, a gallon of gas ran about $2.93 on Friday, a 3.3% drop since the same date in 2025, when the price was about $3.03. Premium gas fell from about $4.01 to $3.97 a gallon, or about 1%.

The price of diesel, however, rose about 5% in that time frame, from about $3.79 to $3.98 per gallon.

Electricity

Energy costs continue to grow faster than the pace of inflation. In the northeast, energy prices rose 6.3% year-over-year in November — more than double the overall rate of inflation, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In Maine, rising electricity costs are a key concern for ratepayers and public officials. The state’s electricity costs are largely reliant on the price of natural gas, which is used to generate electricity, and customers also have to pay their utility to deliver that power to their homes and businesses.

For customers of Central Maine Power Co., the state’s largest electrical utility, the average bill will be 12.4% higher this month than it was a year prior.

That translates to a charge of $168.41 this month, compared to $149.76 in January 2025 for households using the typical 550 kilowatt-hours, according to the state Department of Energy Resources and Public Utilities Commission. Exact amounts vary based on customers’ usage.

Heating oil

Roughly half of Mainers rely on oil as their primary home heating source — the most of any state.

Statewide, the average cost for a gallon of heating oil was $3.47 last week, according to the latest available data from the Maine Department of Energy Resources.

That’s about eight cents higher, or 2.4%, than it was at the end of 2024, according to an archive of the state’s website. Back then, the statewide average clocked in at $3.39.

During that same window, a gallon of propane fell from $3.32 to $3.29 and the average cost of kerosene rose from $4.18 to $4.40 per gallon. About 16% of Mainers rely on propane and other tank-stored fuels for heat, according to data from the American Community Survey.

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