MONTPELIER, VERMONT — A visitor walking the Statehouse grounds spotted something that did not belong in the formal flower beds: cannabis. Capitol Police pulled 32 immature plants on a Monday in July 2019, then two more in the following days. Thirty-four in all, mixed into the cultivated blooms lining the walkway in front of the Montpelier building.
Chief Matthew Romei was fairly sure the plants were not on Buildings and General Services’ landscaping plan. Workers who tend those beds may have found still more. He would not test them. Without a lab, nobody could say whether the crop was hemp (0.3% THC or less) or marijuana (above that line), and he had no interest in making a criminal case. « The only way we can make a criminal case is if someone comes down and claims it, » he said.
Vermont had already become the first state to legalize recreational marijuana through its legislature rather than a ballot measure, in 2018. Adults 21 and older could possess up to an ounce and keep two mature and four immature plants at home. Growing it in public was still illegal. Hemp farmers could plant for income. The Statehouse lawn satisfied none of those rules.
Romei was not surprised the plants thrived. « You could plant a 2-by-4 piece of lumber in there, and it would grow into a palm tree. So it is totally not surprising that if somebody would put some marijuana seeds in there, they would grow like weeds. » Similar plants had turned up in the gardens before his two years as chief, but this was his first. « This was a humorous thing to come back to off from vacation. » Nobody ever claimed them.
Commercial cannabis sales in Vermont began on October 1, 2022, once licenses went out under the regulated market the legislature built after that 2018 possession law. The flower beds in front of the Statehouse are still not a licensed canopy. The 0.3% hemp-versus-marijuana line that Romei declined to test is itself being rewritten at the federal level: P.L. 119-37’s total-THC hemp language takes effect November 12, 2026, which will pull a lot of « hemp » products back under controlled-substance math.
Related from The AEGIS Alliance: the U.S. government’s cannabis patent, the Florida man who handed out free marijuana because it was Christmas, and Odd News.
Photos: Matthew Romei, Vermont Capitol Police
