Michael D Cutler

I have retired as a licensed attorney. I represented clients seeking municipal and state licenses to cultivate, manufacture (edibles and extracts), and retail cannabis (marijuana), under the new nonmedical cannabis legalization initiative law that I helped draft. This work built on my 30 years of advocacy and consulting with lawyers across the country on marijuana law reform, within the framework of the national legal committee of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML); and, on my experience as a town planning board member where I acted on the special permit applications, making me familiar with the local permitting required for cannabis commerce. I also advised entrepreneurs, nonprofits, municipalities and healthcare providers seeking to participate in and comply with Massachusetts' medical and nonmedical cannabis laws; and, worked with investors, operators and state and local regulators in helping birth a new marijuana industry, increasing state and local tax revenues while building safer, and economically stronger neighborhoods. 

Despite retiring from individual client advocacy, I continue to deliver and design educational seminars on government drug policy (and the reform and history of cannabis prohibition in particular), mental health and disability anti-discrimination law, and prison administration to private bar attorneys, legislators, criminal justice executives, social workers, college students and civic organizations.