Latinos Are Building and Regulating Massachusetts’ Cannabis Industry

Editor’s Note: Para la versión en español de este artículo, visita El Planeta.

In 2012, a young professional from Springfield received a diagnosis that could change her life: a chronic, debilitating autoimmune disease. The traditional doctors treating her, she said, encouraged her to try alternative treatments. One of them was medical cannabis. 

“If it wasn’t for that combination, my life would be very different today. I even question whether I would still be here,” said that woman, Xiomara DeLobato, now a commissioner at the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission (CCC).

Governor Maura Healey appointed DeLobato in May, alongside Christopher Harding, now the commission's chair, and Anthony Wilson. The appointment followed comprehensive cannabis reform legislation Healey signed on April 19, the most significant update to Massachusetts cannabis law since legalization. 

DeLobato holds the seat the law reserves for someone with a background in social justice. The daughter of Ecuadorian immigrants, she grew up in Springfield. Before joining the CCC, she served as vice president and chief of staff for the Western Massachusetts Economic Development Council, overseeing economic development across three counties with large Latino populations.

DeLobato said one of her priorities is expanding Spanish-language outreach at the CCC, in part to confront a stigma that still shapes how Latino families relate to cannabis.

“There is history behind why there’s such deep stigma,” she said, pointing to 1980s and ‘90s policies that deliberately targeted Black and Latino communities and drove disproportionate incarceration rates among Black and Latino men.

DeLobato experienced her own version of this gap: her medical struggles became the slow, personal entry point for educating her Ecuadorian parents about cannabis’s medical benefits. As stigma evolves, so has the industry — but for immigrant families, “legal here” doesn’t always mean “safe,” and closing that information gap in Spanish is central to what she says she wants her seat on the commission to do.

Massachusetts ended 2025 with $1.65 billion in adult-use cannabis sales — about $3 million more than the previous year—and by February 2026, total sales since the market launched in 2018 had surpassed $9 billion. 

DeLobato is also working to preserve and expand the state’s social equity program. Massachusetts was one of the first states in the country to include the initiative in its cannabis law, creating a pathway for entrepreneurs to enter the industry through training, business resources, and connections across the supply chain.

Ruben Seyde is one of the entrepreneurs who came through that pathway. The son of Mexican immigrants, he grew up in Fitchburg, one of the communities the state recognizes as disproportionately harmed by the war on drugs. Today he’s CEO and co-founder of Delivered Inc., a cannabis delivery company based in Clinton that became operational in July 2023. 

Seyde describes the social equity program as the door that opened the business for him. Delivered Inc. relies on delivery licenses, the license category reserved almost exclusively for social equity participants. That category generated $16.5 million statewide in 2025, a tiny fraction of the billions moving through brick-and-mortar cannabis stores.

“The lack of access to capital is the biggest challenge. It really hinders our ability to grow,” Seyde said of the difficulties facing the delivery sector.

Damaris Aponte took a different road into the business: the street. Of Puerto Rican descent, she came to Holyoke at age three and has lived there her whole life. Decades later, she founded Blossom Flower, a cannabis delivery company based in that same city.

Aponte is part of a legal cannabis industry that employs roughly 20,000 registered workers in Massachusetts, about 11% of whom identify as Latino or Hispanic, according to the commissioner. Her own company employs 25 people, almost all of them Latino, and she deliberately hires people with a criminal record who have already served their sentence, people other companies turn away. 

“Those people are not the same person they were 20 years ago,” Aponte said of her hiring philosophy.

Seyde applies a similar standard with his vendors. 

“When I’m looking for my services, I specifically try to buy from Latino businesses, whether it’s food for employees, whether it’s contracting services for the warehouse," he explained, adding that Delivered Inc.’s entire warehouse was built out by Latino workers.

For DeLobato, that logic extends to the state level. Every dollar of cannabis sales generates tax revenue that, she said, flows back into communities and schools. She argues the industry should be understood not just as a consumer business, but as a mechanism for directing public resources toward the neighborhoods she says have been most affected by prohibition.

In the coming months, DeLobato will focus on expanding access and addressing some of the barriers that entrepreneurs still face, leading to the rollout of social consumption licenses, a new category that will allow licensed businesses to create spaces where customers can try products on-site. She also plans to bring more Spanish-language informational sessions directly to Latino communities across the state, something she says remains limited.

For entrepreneurs like Aponte and Seyde, those efforts come as they continue navigating a market they say still favors people with greater financial resources and established networks.

From her new post, DeLobato recognizes that gap as part of her job now. The law she’s implementing expands license categories and includes new financial protections for businesses carrying unpaid debt.

“One of the areas that I’m very committed to in my seat is ensuring that we are doing right by our community,” she said of her focus on workforce development and investment in the places where license holders operate.

Rosanna Marinelli is a multimedia correspondent for The Latino Newsletter and the News Editor at El Planeta.

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PROTECT ACT Passes: Via NBC Boston, “Massachusetts lawmakers approved sweeping legislation Thursday aimed at protecting immigrants from federal enforcement actions. Negotiators from the House and Senate said Wednesday that they had come to an agreement on the PROTECT Act — officially ‘An Act promoting rule of law, oversight, trust and equal constitutional treatment.’ On Thursday, Senate President Karen Spilka announced that the latest version of the bill had passed both chambers and would go to Gov. Maura Healey's desk.”

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