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Wide-ranging marijuana legislation that targets some of the most persistent issues that activists, regulators, businesses and municipalities have said are holding Massachusetts back from realizing the full potential of the 2016 legalization law cleared the Senate unanimously Thursday afternoon, with senators pitching it as both an economic development and racial justice bill.

The bill (S 2801) would put tighter restrictions and enhanced oversight on the host community agreements marijuana businesses are required to enter into with their host communities, make grants and loans available through a new Cannabis Social Equity Trust Fund to participants in the Cannabis Control Commission’s social equity (SE) program or economic empowerment (EE) priority applicants, and create a method for cities and towns to authorize the on-site cannabis consumption establishments that are already authorized under the CCC’s regulations.

“By clarifying the requirements of the host community agreements, making financial investments to increase social equity and allowing for the full implementation of the cannabis industry through permitting social consumption authorization, I am confident that this legislation aids in the continued growth of a competitive and equitable commercial marijuana industry here in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,” Senate Ways and Means Committee Chairman Michael Rodrigues said as he introduced the bill on the floor.

The Legislature has long maintained a mostly hands-off approach to marijuana policy. Lawmakers passed up their opportunities to act before voters approved decriminalization in 2008, medical marijuana in 2012 and adult legalization in 2016, but then delayed and rewrote significant portions of the 2016 ballot law legalizing marijuana. Aside from a bill that the House passed in early 2020 with provisions similar to the Senate bill, the Legislature has largely avoided cannabis issues since 2017.

Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz, who chairs the Cannabis Policy Committee for the Senate, said the bill that sailed through her committee without opposition seeks to remedy “long-standing problems with long-identified solutions.”

“If you talk to advocates, to policy experts, to the Cannabis Control Commission, you will find near-universal agreement. They will tell you … that the costs of entry into the industry are too high and that there is a severe lack of access to capital in this industry. It typically requires one to one and a half million dollars in liquidity to open a new cannabis retail shop or three to five million for a manufacturing facility,” Chang-Diaz said. She added, “So when you need that kind of cash on hand in order to get into the business, in order to get your foot in the door, it’s no surprise that despite our best intentions, the industry has remained predominantly white and predominantly in already wealthy hands.”

Massachusetts was the first state in the country to mandate that equity and inclusion be part of its legal cannabis framework and was the first to launch programs specifically designed to assist entrepreneurs and businesses from communities disproportionately harmed by the decades of marijuana prohibition.

But more than three years since the first legal sale here, just 6 percent of the licenses issued for the cannabis industry have gone to SE program participants or EE priority applicants, the Joint Committee on Cannabis Policy said when it released its draft of the legislation. Out of more than 1,000 applications submitted to the CCC as of November, just 232 came from SE or EE applicants.