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Cannabis Legal in RI
Gov. Dan McKee signs into law Wednesday afternoon the legal selling and use of recreational marijuana.
David DelPoio, The Providence Journal
PROVIDENCE – A total of 98 entities submitted applications for Rhode Island’s 24 cannabis dispensary licenses, with the northern part of the state only seeing two applications.
The Cannabis Control Commission announced the retail license applications during its meeting on Jan. 16.
Applications opened in mid-September and closed on Dec. 29, 2025. The applications will be vetted before being assigned via a lottery system, but a date for applicants to get zoning approval for their retail establishments has been pushed out to March 2, while some cities and towns, such as Pawtucket, are changing their zoning rules after the application period closed.
While Rhode Island passed a law allowing for the opening of retail dispensaries in 2022, the licenses have yet to be issued, although dispensaries that sold medical marijuana have been selling recreational marijuana as well.
The license applications were not evenly divided across the six zones Rhode Island has been carved into for the purposes of assigning the licenses. The northern division of the state, called Zone 1, with easy access to Massachusetts’ plentiful and less expensive dispensaries, saw only two applicants, both of them in the social equity category, and none in the general retail or worker-owned cooperative categories.
Rhode Island law recognizes three categories of applicants: social equity, general retail and worker-owned cooperative. Of the 98 applications, 23 were social equity, 56 were general retail and 19 were worker cooperative.
Of the 24 licenses, six are reserved for social equity applicants and another six are reserved for worker cooperatives. However, with no worker cooperative applicants in Zone 1 and Zone 4, and no general retail in Zone 1, the Cannabis Control Commission will only issue a maximum of 20 licenses, Administrator Michelle Reddish said during the Jan. 16 meeting.
Of the 19 worker cooperative applications, 12 were submitted in Zone 2, the state’s urban core, including Providence, North Providence, Central Falls, Johnston and Lincoln. None were submitted in Zone 1, the north, or Zone 4, the West Bay.
“We were expecting one, two or three worker-owned cooperative applications in every zone, or even zero, but 12 is a huge outlier,” worker cooperative organizer Emma Karnes, with United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 328, said in an interview. “There were only 10 traditional license applicants in Zone 2, so who are all of these coops? We have no idea what happened here.”
Karnes has been working with Co-op Rhody to help four worker cooperatives with their applications, including finding real estate and investors.
“Hopefully, we’ll be able to organize, even if it’s not with these founding four cooperatives, into cooperative programming and, ultimately, raise awareness about cooperatives and achieve and strengthen cooperatives’ power in the state,” she said.
There were 23 social equity applicants, spread across all the zones, with the most, eight, in Zone 4. According to the RI Current, there were initially 94 social equity license “requests,” but only 36 met the eligibility criteria in November, and the number appears to have dropped to 23. Applications for social equity applicants opened in August.
The social equity provisions in state law are being challenged in lawsuits revived by the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals after a District Court judge dismissed them. The appeals court directed the judge to issue rulings on merits at least 45 days before the date that the Rhode Island Cannabis Control Commission intends to issue retail licenses. There is no timeline for license issuance.
Of the general retail applications, where were none in Zone 1 in the north; 24 in Zone 6, which includes Pawtucket, East Providence and Aquidneck Island; and two in Zone 3, the middle-western portion of the state.
Among the four cooperatives Karnes is working with is Permaculture, which has secured a location in Coventry.
Here are the cities and towns in each zone.
Six municipalities rejected retail sales via a referendum vote in 2022, described at the time as the only way to opt out of allowing it: Barrington, East Greenwich, Jamestown, Little Compton, Scituate and Smithfield.
Zone 1, northern portion of the state: Burrillville, Cumberland, Glocester, North Smithfield, Smithfield, Woonsocket. Smithfield rejected retail sales via a 2022 referendum vote. There were a total of two applications.
Zone 2, East-Central and urban core: Providence, North Providence, Central Falls, Johnston, Lincoln. There were a total of 26 applications.
Zone 3, Middle-western: Coventry, Foster, Scituate, West Greenwich, West Warwick. There were a total of nine applications.
Zone 4, West Bay: East Greenwich, North Kingstown, Cranston, Warwick. East Greenwich rejected retail sales via a 2022 referendum vote. There were a total of 19 applications.
Zone 5, South west corner: Charlestown, Exeter, Hopkinton, Narragansett, Richmond, South Kingstown, Westerly. There were a total of 14 applications.
Zone 6, a combination of Aquidneck Island, the East Bay and Pawtucket: East Providence, Newport, Pawtucket, Barrington, Bristol, Jamestown, Little Compton, Middletown, New Shoreham, Portsmouth, Tiverton, Warren. Barrington, Jamestown and Little Compton rejected retail sales via a 2022 referendum vote. There were a total of 31 applications.
WARWICK, R.I. (WPRI) — Two people are dead and another person seriously hurt after a crash involving two vehicles on the highway in Warwick Saturday.
Rhode Island State Police said the crash happened around 1:34 p.m. on the ramp from Route 113 West to I-95 South.
According to police, a Hyundai SUV that was driving in the middle lane of the highway started to drift to the right, crossed the first lane, and then crossed onto the on-ramp lane. The car struck the guardrail twice before driving through the grass median.
The Hyundai then struck the driver’s side of a Mercedes SUV that was on the ramp, causing the Mercedes to roll over and come to a rest. The impact sent the Hyundai over the guardrail and down an embankment.
The driver of the Hyundai, a 73-year-old man, and his passenger, a 69-year-old woman, were both pronounced dead at the hospital.
A woman who was in the Mercedes was rushed to Rhode Island Hospital in critical condition.
State police said all lanes of traffic were reopened by 4:30 p.m.
The investigation remains ongoing.
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A federal judge on Friday tossed the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) lawsuit aiming to force Rhode Island to hand over its voter information as part of the Trump administration’s push to acquire voter data from several states.
Rhode Island U.S. District Court Judge Mary McElroy wrote that federal law does not allow the DOJ “to conduct the kind of fishing expedition it seeks here,” siding with Rhode Island election officials. She added that the DOJ did not provide evidence to suggest that Rhode Island violated election law.
McElroy, a Trump appointee, wrote that she sided with the similar decision in Oregon. That decision ruled that the DOJ was not entitled to unredacted voter registration lists.
“Absent from the demand are any factual allegations suggesting that Rhode Island may be violating the list maintenance requirements,” she said in her ruling.
Rhode Island Secretary of State Gregg Amore (D) praised McElroy’s decision. He said in a statement that the Trump administration “seems to have no problem taking actions that are clear Constitutional overreaches, regularly meddling in responsibilities that are the rights of the states.”
“Today’s decision affirms our position: the United States Department of Justice has no legal right to – or need for – the personally-identifiable information in our voter file,” he said. “Voter list maintenance is a responsibility entrusted to the states, and I remain confident in the steps we take here in Rhode Island to keep our list as accurate as possible.”
The Hill reached out to the DOJ for comment.
The DOJ called for the voter lists as it investigated Rhode Island’s compliance with the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which allowed Americans to register to vote when they apply for a driver’s license.
The DOJ sued at least 30 states, as well as Washington, D.C., in December demanding their respective voter data. This data includes birth dates, names and partial Social Security numbers.
At least 12 states have given or said they will give the DOJ their voter registration lists, according to a tracker operated by the Brennan Center for Justice.
The department stated after it lost a similar suit against Massachusetts earlier this month that it had “sweeping powers” to access the voter data and that, if states fail to comply, courts have a “limited, albeit vital, role” in directing election officers on behalf of the administration to produce the records. The DOJ cited the Civil Rights Act as being intended to unearth alleged election law violations.
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