PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – The Thomas Slater Compassion Center has been fined $10,000 and is agreeing to make timely payments to vendors after regulators discovered the cannabis retailer wasn’t paying its bills on time.
The consent agreement signed late last month was struck between the Providence retailer and the R.I. Office of Cannabis Regulation, which had been looking into the company’s finances since last April.
State regulators discovered through an audit that Slater owed cannabis-growing companies, also known as cultivators, roughly $554,000 for products they had acquired earlier in the year but were late making payments on.
According to state regulations, all cannabis sales between retailers and cultivators must be finalized within 30 days unless otherwise there is a formal agreement otherwise.
State regulators noted Slater didn’t have formal agreements with several of the businesses that were waiting for past-due payments. A Slater executive acknowledged in the agreement that the company had violated state regulations by not making those payments on time.