u/louisrinaldi

Hey anonymous friends! Who should we give our money to, in your view?

• Trump donors (Verano/CTPharma/Zen Leaf, Trulieve, Curaleaf, GTI/Rise)

• Former GOP state senator who voted against cannabis 6 times (Rodeo)

• The owner who can't wait for the medical program to die off (Affinity)

• The nepo baby "hometown MSO" funded by grandpa's telecom fortune (Fine Fettle)

• The failed SPAC venture now owned by a Greenwich-based hedge fund (Theraplant)

Can't wait to hear all of your recommendations for high-quality products from these companies that definitely deserve our money!

If you've been following Connecticut's regulated cannabis market, the latest QA testing data (33,929 samples from January 2023 through early 2026) tells a story that should surprise absolutely nobody who's been paying attention: mold is still winning.

Out of 754 failed QA tests, the single biggest driver of failures is Aspergillus — the four species (A. flavus, A. terreus, A. niger, and A. fumigatus) combined account for roughly 35% of all failures, and that's not a fluke or a one-time batch problem, it's a persistent, systemic issue that keeps showing up month after month. Connecticut's humid climate has always made mold a serious challenge for cultivators here, and the data backs that up: Flower Lot products fail at a 6.7% rate, which is more than three times the overall average, a pretty clear signal that the contamination is happening at the cultivation level before the product ever gets processed or packaged.

Pesticides come in second at 8.4% of failures, and heavy metals — lead, cadmium, arsenic, and mercury — pile on with another ~22%, but mold is the story. There was a massive spike in October 2023 that likely reflects a new or more strictly enforced testing requirement kicking in, which means the problem almost certainly existed before it was being caught at this scale.

The uncomfortable truth is that Connecticut's cannabis industry has a mold problem that stricter testing is revealing but not yet solving.

That old Webster bank is a terrible location and nothing ever thrives in that spot. Let’s hope that trend continues!

It's been wild watching how things have shaken out over the last year or so, especially if you've been following the behind-the-scenes movement in Connecticut cannabis. For a while, Nautilus Botanicals and their planned New Haven spot on Amity Road felt like they were supposed to be one of the bright spots of the social equity push. But if you look up the records now, that adult-use hybrid retailer license under Nautilus Botanicals EJV1 is lapsed and defunct. Between the financial strain, mounting vendor debts to micro-cultivators, and the whole mess with grey-market THCA products, the storefront collapsed. Their attempts at expanding into Stamford and North Haven hit dead ends or voluntary withdrawals, and as it stands, they don't have a single active retail license left in the state.

What makes it sting more is where Luis Vega ended up. If you check the state's eLicense portal today, Vega's active employee credential (ACER.0006716) lists his supervising licensee as Connecticut Social Equity LLC, operating under the Rodeo Cannabis brand.

And that brings us to who is actually running Rodeo. The CEO and primary financial backer behind that operation is none other than Art Linares. Yes, the former Republican state senator who spent his entire legislative career in the 33rd District fighting tooth and nail against cannabis reform. Back when he was in office, Linares consistently voted down decriminalization and stood on the Senate floor arguing to keep the plant strictly prohibited. Now, he's sitting comfortably at the top of a commercial cultivator operation, cashing in on the legal market he used his political power to block.

It’s honestly pretty somber to watch. Luis Vega used to be held up as one of the genuine rising stars of CT's social equity program, a guy out there trying to build an independent, community-driven space from the ground up. To see Nautilus crash and burn like that, only for Vega to end up punching the clock for Art Linares, a guy who spent years criminalizing the culture before turning around to profit off it, feels like a textbook case of how corporate consolidation and politics swallow up the original promise of equity.

Why is a story about a Colorado cannabis scandal relevant to CT? Because our state gave the company responsible $1.25 million of our taxpayer money.

TL;DR: When Connecticut legalized cannabis, politicians promised the industry would be built around "social equity"—helping local mom-and-pop entrepreneurs. Instead, a state-run venture capital fund handed $1.25 million in taxpayer money to a Wall Street executive whose company, 1906, was actively causing liver damage in Colorado consumers. He took our money, never even bothered to get a CT cannabis license, and left local startups fighting for scraps.
If you just read the attached ProPublica article, you might be wondering why a story about Colorado's marijuana regulators matters to us here in Connecticut.

Here is the context they left out, and it’s a textbook example of how the wealthy and well-connected operate in our state at the expense of everyday residents.

1. The Colorado Scandal (The Article)
The article investigates a company called Sima Sciences (which operates under the brand name "1906"), founded by Peter Barsoom, a former Wall Street finance executive. 1906 made a cannabis sleep pill called "Midnight Drops." Shortly after launching, the pills started causing severe liver damage in consumers—some even required liver transplants. The company knew, the regulators dragged their feet for 15 months, and eventually, the Colorado Attorney General fined 1906 $400,000 and kicked them out of Colorado's regulated market entirely.

2. The Connecticut Connection (Follow the Money)
Right around the time those liver damage reports were piling up in early 2022, Connecticut Innovations (CI)—our state’s taxpayer-funded, quasi-public venture capital arm—decided to give Peter Barsoom $1.25 million in public funds. The goal was to entice 1906 to move its corporate headquarters from Colorado to Stamford.

3. The Subtext: An Insider's Club
When CT legalized cannabis in 2021, the law was heavily marketed as a win for "Social Equity." The promise was that the people and communities most harmed by the War on Drugs would get first dibs and financial support to build local wealth.
Instead, our state’s venture capital arm (whose board is appointed by the Governor’s office) handed a massive bag of cash to an out-of-state, well-connected Wall Street guy. This highlights a glaring issue in CT's economic strategy: the incestuous nature of state capital. Good-government watchdogs have repeatedly pointed out that CT Innovations frequently deploys taxpayer money into the exact same insular venture capital, biotech, and digital asset ecosystems orbited by First Lady Annie Lamont’s multi-billion-dollar VC firm, Oak HC/FT. While Oak doesn't have a direct equity stake in 1906, the deal is a perfect snapshot of a system designed to subsidize elite, out-of-state corporate bros while locking out working-class locals.

4. The Ultimate Betrayal: No License, No Regulated Jobs
So, what did CT taxpayers get for their $1.25 million? Absolutely nothing.
Despite taking the money and moving to Stamford, Peter Barsoom and 1906 never obtained a Connecticut license to cultivate, manufacture, or sell adult-use cannabis. Instead of participating in the heavily taxed and regulated market our state set up, 1906 exploited a loophole in the federal Farm Bill to sell unregulated, hemp-derived Delta-9 THC edibles online and ship them directly to consumers. They bypassed our system completely.

5. What that $1.25 Million Could Have Done for Locals
To understand how insulting this is to local entrepreneurs, look at the math. The state charged massive fees for locals to enter the cannabis market, but the $1.25 million handed to Barsoom could have completely covered the state licensing and lottery fees for:
1,428 local Social Equity Micro-Cultivators (Fee: $875)
81 local Social Equity Cannabis Retailers (Fee: $15,250)
Alternatively, if that money had been routed through the state's Social Equity Council as startup grants ($50,000 each), it could have fully seed-funded 25 local, minority-owned small businesses.
Instead, the state gave it to a Wall Street guy whose product was poisoning people out west, all so he could set up an office in Stamford and bypass our state's cannabis laws entirely.

Sources:
ProPublica (Sept 2026): Regulators Knew This Marijuana Product Was Harming People.
Colorado AG Enforcement Records (Sept 2025): Executed Assurance of Discontinuance for Sima Sciences/1906.
MJBizDaily (May 2022): CT-owned VC firm invests $1.25M in 1906.
CT Dept. of Consumer Protection: Adult-Use Cannabis License Fee Schedule.