St. Croix Expects a Second Fully Operational Cannabis Grower This Week as the Board Weighs Licensees Who Win Office

October 23, 2026. A second commercial cannabis grower on St. Croix should be fully operational by the end of this week, Office of Cannabis Regulation Executive Director Joanne Moorehead told the Cannabis Advisory Board on Thursday, October 22. The first, a Tier 1 grower, received the territory’s first commercial Certificate to Operate in September. The second is Tier 3, the largest commercial tier. A third, which Moorehead also expects to be Tier 3, could follow “within the next couple weeks.”

The goal is regulated product on a St. Croix dispensary shelf by festival season. OCR is “still working with the one dispensary that we have so far to hopefully be on track to have some regulated products for festival season,” Moorehead said. On St. Croix, that means the Crucian Christmas Festival, which runs from late December into early January. No licensed dispensary is open anywhere in the territory yet.

The board had no quorum. Three voting members attended: Chair Dr. Catherine Kean, Agriculture Commissioner Louis Petersen, and Chris Jones. The board could not adopt the agenda or approve minutes, and it took no votes. The full draft intoxicating hemp rules, still unadopted after the September session, did not come up. Members heard OCR’s status report and took up a question about cannabis licensees who win elected office.

Where Each Island Stands

St. Croix. Moorehead said the island could be closer to having “more than one dispensary” if second-round scores come out on time. Two of the three dispensary applications filed in September were for St. Croix. Product still has to pass the territory’s testing lab before it is sold. In September, Moorehead said the lab was up and waiting on plants. The lab was not discussed on Thursday.

St. John. Two of the island’s three licensed dispensaries are “pretty close” to opening. “The only problem is we don’t have product for them,” Moorehead said. Cannabis cannot legally move between islands, so St. John’s shelves wait on St. John growers. Three of the micro-cultivation applications now in the compliance phase are on the island, and Moorehead said OCR wants to move them quickly because St. John “really needs some cultivation operational.”

St. Thomas. No timeline yet. OCR is partway through status meetings with every conditionally approved licensee, many of whom have been in the compliance phase for most of 2026. “There are a myriad of reasons why,” Moorehead said of the delays, which have run longer than licensees or OCR hoped. She expects a firmer timeframe for St. Thomas cultivators “maybe in the next month or two.”

Second-Round Scores by the End of October

OCR is assembling the 16 dispensary, cultivation, and manufacturing applications from the second licensing window, which closed September 15, for the merit evaluation committee. Moorehead hopes to convene the committee next week and get scores to applicants by the end of October, “which I think is a record for the OCR.” She said the office is applying lessons from the first round to move faster.

OCR scores micro-cultivation permits itself. Every micro-cultivation application received in September has moved forward, and one that had “a little issue” has been corrected, Moorehead said. Eleven are now in the compliance phase: four on St. Thomas, three on St. Croix, three on St. John, and one on Water Island, the first application OCR has received from that island. The September slide counted 10 micro-cultivation applications, two of them on St. John. Moorehead did not address the difference.

A Licensee Who Wins an Election

Moorehead asked the board to consider a gap she sees in Section 778(g) of the Virgin Islands Cannabis Use Act. The section reads:

A license authorized by this chapter and issued by the OCR may not be held by, or issued to, directly or indirectly, any person or any Immediate Family Member of any person who, at any time within the previous 12 months, held elected office in the executive or legislative branches of the Government of the Virgin Islands, or was employed by the Department of Licensing and Consumer Affairs, the OCR, or who was a member of the Board.

Moorehead reads it as running in one direction: a sitting official, or one who left office less than 12 months ago, cannot hold or receive a license. Her question was the reverse. “What if I already own a cannabis license? And then I decided to run for office. And I get into said office. Then what?”

“It’s campaign season, it’s election season, so it just came up,” she said, adding that who is likely to win is not OCR’s business.

Jones said a licensee who wins should give up the license. “I don’t think they should be able to hold their license after being elected,” he said, since they could then influence decisions that affect their own business.

Kean framed it as “the question of ethics versus legality.” “We don’t really have to deal with it right now, because nobody actually has a dispensary open,” she said. A licensee who runs a dispensary for four or five years and then wins office would face a conflict of interest, in her view. She said the board would need its full membership, and perhaps legal advice, before deciding anything. For now, the law stands as written.

Petersen asked whether the restriction reaches every license type. It does, Moorehead said: dispensary, cultivation, manufacturing, and research and development. Micro-cultivation is a permit, not a license.

Moorehead asked the board to come back to it “sooner rather than later” and to aim for a decision at its next meeting. The general election is November 3, and the 37th Legislature is seated in January. If the board waits until a licensee has won a seat, she said, any change would look aimed at that person. “I would hate for an instance to happen, and then we’re doing it while it pertains to somebody specific, and then it feels like it’s something that we’re doing as punitive or somehow personal. And it really isn’t,” she said. Any change would also take a legislative amendment, not just a rule change. Kean agreed to bring it back on November 19.

Every Owner Has to Be Disclosed

Petersen also asked whether licensing is where a person would disclose a connection like this. Moorehead said every financial interest holder, a term the law defines carefully, must be named in the application, and leaving one out is grounds for immediate disqualification. Each is subject to a background check and a source-of-funds review. Licensees also file management agreements, partnership agreements, and similar documents, and every applicant signs an attestation that the information is accurate. False or incorrect information is grounds for disqualification, “including and up to perjury,” she said.

She gave one example. Last year, a major financial interest holder in an application died a few months after the deadline, and OCR allowed a change in ownership after reviewing the documents. “Anybody who does not disclose that information accurately puts the license at risk,” Moorehead said.

Medical and Sacramental Numbers

• Practitioners: five on St. Thomas and five on St. Croix. OCR’s September slide showed three on St. Croix. The USVI medical cannabis practitioner directory lists who can certify a patient.
• Patients: “still around mid-40s,” Moorehead said. She reported 40 active patients in September. The USVI medical card guide covers how to apply.
• Sacramental organizations: one approved and two pending. In September, one was pending and a third organization had said it intended to apply.
• Agent cards: OCR is registering them but is not reporting a count to the board.

Career Expo, October 26 and 28

OCR’s Cannabis Industry Career Expo is next week:

• St. Thomas: Monday, October 26, noon to 4 p.m., at My Brother’s Workshop.
• St. Croix: Wednesday, October 28, noon to 4 p.m., at the DC Canegata Center.

The expo is free, and members of the public do not need to register. Attendees can stay the full four hours or drop in over lunch, Moorehead said. OCR’s flyer sets the minimum age at 21. Licensees will have tables, and any licensee who has not registered should contact OCR at info.ocr@ocr.vi.gov. Current openings are on the VIBE HIGH jobs page.

Responsible Vendor Training, November 16 and 19

Working in a licensed cannabis business requires an agent card, and the card requires Responsible Vendor Training. OCR set the next round:

• St. Thomas: Monday, November 16, at the Port Authority conference room.
• St. Croix: Thursday, November 19, at the Florence Williams Public Library.

Sessions are in person and usually take about two hours. OCR asks attendees to reserve 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. in case questions run long. The office does not know when it will hold another round. Moorehead urged licensees to attend these sessions if they can. The training and agent card are required for full access to Metrc, the territory’s seed-to-sale tracking system, and a licensee without them can stall on the way to a Certificate to Operate.

What to Watch

• This week: a second fully operational cultivator on St. Croix, with a third expected within a couple of weeks.
• By October 31: scores for the 16 second-round applications, if the evaluation committee meets next week.
• October 26 and 28: the career expo on St. Thomas and St. Croix.
• November 3: the general election.
• November 16 and 19: Responsible Vendor Training on both islands.
• November 19: the next board meeting, on the same day as the St. Croix training. The elected-official question returns, and the full hemp rules still need a vote.
• The next month or two: a firmer timeline for St. Thomas cultivators, per Moorehead.