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Councilors vow to stop hordes of potheads from running rampant through Boston neighborhoods
By adamg on Wed, 10/07/2015 - 1:17pm
Several city councilors today signed onto an effort to figure out how to keep what appear to be increasingly inevitable pot shops from taking over residential commercial districts, should voters approve a referendum next year to legalize recreational marijuana use.
Councilors say they want to draft zoning-code amendments to limit the number of pot shops in a given area now so the city is ready for possible passage of that ballot question.
City Councilor Michael Flaherty (at large) said one place to start would be by prohibiting marijuana sales within a half mile of any medical marijuana dispensary - of which Boston still has none despite voter approval in 2012. In August, the Zoning Board of Appeals did grant permission to a proposed dispensary on Milk Street downtown.
"No one neighborhood should have to bear the burden," Flaherty said, predicting that if marijuana is legalized in 2016, "thousands of people will be cured of those nagging disabilities" for which they now have medical-marijuana prescriptions. He said he doesn't want to see neighborhood coffee shops, dry cleaners and other small businesses driven out in a mad dash for pot profits.
Councilor Frank Baker (Dorchester) said that he has heard that entire streets in Colorado towns have been given over to pot shops.
Councilor Tito Jackson (Roxbury) said councilors don't have to look to Denver - they can look at Newmarket Square, which is home to several drug-treatment programs, to see what happens when too many drug-related facilities are crammed into a single area.
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Comments
Take a look at how we do it
Take a look at how we do it in Washington: there's a minimum distance between recreational marijuana stores. In my neighborhood, there were two applicants for locations on opposite sides of a street. The people who filed first got to open a store, which is a quiet, respectable neighbor, sharing a block with a dog groomer and a furniture store. I don't see anyone hanging around outside when I walk past.
Limit Pot Cars Too!
And can they include zoning-code amendments to limit the number of cars parked around Forest Hills station with drivers and/or passengers smoking pot while waiting for someone? You can get high just biking through that area!
Huh
I actually spent about 20 minutes standing outside Forest Hills yesterday (waiting to pick the kidlet up from school) and all I smelled was chicken fingers from the Chinese take-out place across the street, and all it made me want to do was go buy a box of chicken fingers.
Duh
You wanted those chicken fingers because of the contact high, duh! ;-)
Liquor stores
Cause far more problems. Just saying.
Hey every City Councillor in this story
Open the weed store in your house or shut the (expletive) up.
I can do this all day. It's fun!
Really?
Would anyone object if it were a CVS, Walgreens and Rite Aid opening up all on the same block?
And Adam, drop the "potheads" label. We're talking about ill patients, who have a right to medicine.
Actually, no we're not
We're talking about zoning regulations related to recreational marijuana use, not medical-marijuana dispensaries. Does the post not make it clear that's what was at issue today?
Tweaked the post
To, I hope, make it even clearer we're talking about a possible 2016 referendum on recreational use, not the 2012 referendum on medical use.
I missed the part where Adam
I missed the part where Adam's post mentions Glaucoma and terminally ill patients. What should they be called other than potheads? Is drug addicts a better term?
They aren't recreational users
I also believe he was mocking the "Refer Madness" aspect of the discussion.
Would anyone object if it
Yes, take a look at the silliness going on in Hopkinton right now. "Not in my back yard!" knows no bounds.
Frankly, CVS and Wallgreens
Frankly, CVS and Wallgreens should be dispensing it. They are already spread out across the city in proportion to how many residents live in an area. Rather than create a handful of places for every pot smoker to decend on all at once, why not let them pick up their perscription in the same place I buy my eye drops and my pepto?
Reefer Madness versus Observed Reality
Having been to three major cities both before and after pot legalization, I can honestly say that I was surprised that I smelled far less weed use on the street after legalization. In fact, the only place I even smelled it in Denver was on a bike path going under a bridge. In Boston it seems that all of Fort Point lights up after 5 on Friday.
I'm not sure why legalization seems to have reduced public use (the time of year was similar, too), but it may have to do with people using designated smoking areas or not being concerned about smoking at home. It may also have to do with the availability of "edibles" - I went to a concert where there were benches near the entrance to the hall. Nobody was smoking, but people were munching chocolates (and handing around scissors to open them).
I don't know why there is this OMG BOSTON IS DIFFERENT mentality. If people want to see what happens after medical and recreational weed are legalized, they can just travel to places where that has been underway for sometime.
No need for all this toxic and absurd imagination that leaves me wondering what these guys are smoking! I swear - Frank Baker needs to change his name to Frank Baked if he insists on being soooooo freaking ignorant of how Colorado law is working. Or just watch some of the mainstream documentary work that follows the growers and those seeking the limited number of dispensary permits for each area.
sometimes
Sometimes ideas and thoughts aren't "completely baked" ;)
And in this case, not baked at all.
(PS - I agree 100%.. I've been out west, and outside smoking was REDUCED after it was legalized. And I agree that much of it has to do with edibles)
Plus tax revinue
Colorado has made an enormous amount of money ($70 million last fiscal year) on marijuana taxes. That alone should have everyone working to make this legal. New revenue stream? Yes please.
what you don't hear
is that a lot of that money goes to fund the regulatory agencies needed to inspect growing operations, stores etc
[citation needed]
[citation needed]
The legislature should do this
If the legislature wasn't so afraid to appear "soft on drugs" they would pass their own legalization law and build in all this extra stuff. Instead, we'll let the voters pass their own, likely imperfect, law and then have to scramble to dot all the i's.
P.S. I give the city council credit for seeing the future and doing some thinking now about what problems might arise.
Unfortunately ineffective
Unfortunately, this amounts to "ignoring the present", "not bothering to actually google things before opening mouths" and "making up totally ridiculous and wild stuff". That isn't productive or proactive.
Which is EXACTLY
why such matters should NOT be decided by initative petition. This is the reason why we have no medical MJ dispensaries yet, despite the fact the voters legalized it in 2012.
It should be a law that any proposal whose practical implementation requires revision/creation/etc of other laws or ordinances (at both the state and local levels) should not be eligible for decision by initative petition.
Example?
It's hard to imagine how this wouldn't end up simply mooting practically all initiative petitions.
and then have to scramble to
I'm sure the state will scramble just as fast as they have on the medical marijuana issue.
Out of curiosity...
"City Councilor Michael Flaherty (at large) said one place to start would be by prohibiting marijuana sales within a half mile of any medical marijuana dispensary,"
If marijuana becomes legal and you can buy it anywhere, do we still need different dispensaries for medical use? Is that how it works in the states where it has become legal? I figured if it was legal it wouldn't matter where you bought it.
Of course, given the way things are going, it doesn't look like there will be many medical marijuana dispensaries built by 2016 anyway.
Different doses?
Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't there limits on how much you can buy at one time in Colorado? Would somebody with a prescription be allowed to buy more at a time?
Medical to Recreational
There is no need for medical dispensaries when it is outright legal. There may still be dosage and quantity differences, but I know that Oregon is just shifting over the medical dispensaries to general vending.
Oregon and Washington did, however, restrict dispensary sales to medical clients until October, to prevent recreational consumers from consuming all of the supply needed by medical consumers. Since Washington was about a year ahead of Oregon, we simply jumped the border to make our recreational purchases, which are legal to consume in Oregon.
I'm not sure how Colorado handled the transition or if they had medical dispensaries before.
We jumped the border to Oregon?
Don't you live here? Or were you on vacation?
Vacation
We jumped the border into Washington, which had recreational dispensaries open in August. Easy to do from Portland, as (Fort) Vancouver is a suburb.
It was a very pleasant experience. We entered the facility and were asked for our ID, which was logged. Then were were sent through a green door (yes, green) into the showroom, where knowledgeable "budtenders" helped us make our selections, asking us questions about what we wanted and advising on the products. We paid and left with our purchases in a plain bag.
It kind of felt like that first time in a liquor store making a legal purchase.
completely agree.
just got back from Bellingham WA and made a non-med visit for the pure novelty of the experience; this place was innocuous, not inexpensive, and very much like a likker store. It is a unique experience to talk about buds the way one would a dry syrrah...not a big deal but you cain't help feeling paranoid with your little white paper bag.
FYI: excited labrador retrievers at the pre-security lines at the Seattle airport giving everyone a sniff....put it in your dirty laundry if you check a bag!
would not want to see these everywhere in the same way I feel about nail and hair salons over-running the neighborhoods, as well as pharmacies.
(deleted duplicate)
as someone with a family
as someone with a family member who has seen great response to long term severe health issues with medical marijuana, I have learned from his experience that there are different strains of Pot that are grown to do different things.
The stuff that addresses his issues best does not actually make him very "high" He does keep stuff that DOES around because it manages severe pain, but the medical stuff is better on the day to day to control symptoms.
Anecdotal? Sure, but the point is that just like the apples you eat are not good to make hard cider with, the pot you smoke to get High is not the right pot to manage long term health issues per say.
Rather interesting reading, request Text Transcripts of remarks
Rather interesting reading, request the Text Transcripts of the remarks of each Councilor. Ask for the Stenographic Record and/or the Full Transcript of Captions from the Webcast/Cablecast of the Wed 7 Oct 2015 Public Meeting of Boston City Council at
http://www.cityofboston.gov/contact/?id=36
and/or
http://main.wgbh.org/wgbh/pages/mag/captioning.html
So what you're saying is ...
Ask for steno or get off the pot?
For Those Who Have Never Seen It
Reefer Madness (originally Tell Your Children!) was an anti-marijuana drama from the late 1930s. MTV used to show it fairly regularly. It is literally hysterical - both in terms of overwrought drama and the amusing misrepresentations of people using marijuana.
great research there, councilor..
So instead of spending 15 minutes on google to find the real data, our leaders are basing their decision on something they heard from their sister in law's neighbor's dog groomer's babysitter, who knows someone who went to Denver once. Wonderful.
What's holding up the 21 Milk
What's holding up the 21 Milk Street dispensary from opening?
Politicians elected to speak
Politicians elected to speak for the people telling the people they know better than the people what's best for the people.
actually
it was approved by the city to open.. that was the last hurdle.
Side point re: "Half Mile"
I'm always struck that such legislation has sort of a "one size fits all" approach.
Laws that require or forbid something from being within a stated geographic distance of something else completely miss the concept of varying density.
In Downtown Crossing, to walk half a mile puts you in an entirely different neighborhood (through downtown into South Boston, or through Chinatown into Bay Village, or through Beacon Hill into the North End). In West Roxbury, half a mile doesn't get you out of the immediate neighborhood.
Not to mention that
restricting availability will cause exactly what they think they're trying to avoid (the "Reefer Madness" hordes). A half-mile walk from DTX would put you around Copley to the west (three or four T stops). That's worth about 5 CVSs, which as a drug store would be the obvious place to sell anyway (out west, Walgreen's is the best and one of the cheapest places to buy alcohol). There are at least four or five places to buy alcohol within a half-mile of me in Southie. Why would marijuana be more dangerous? It is the opposite, IMO. If there are fewer places to make a purchase, there will be lines where it is available. And if those lines spill onto the street, then you begin thinking about dramatic shenanigans.
Pandering to the paranoid constituencies of Beantown?
As many commentators have already noted, liquor stores smuggle in more problems than what a cannabis dispensary or cafe may bring. The research into decriminalization is growing and Portugal's ban on the prohibitions of many drugs augurs well for those who want the liberty to take whatever recreational substance, so long as no else is harmed...
I live in a building adjacent to a liquor store. It's a blessing and a curse. For one, there are vagrants that panhandle on the sidewalk, and some of these have been aggressive when one declines...one even went into the liquor store to berate me for lack of respect, citing his age--"I'm old enough to be your father!" somewhat pathetically...
The loading of merchandise seems more complicated for liquor stores than it might be for weed stores. Also, some of the drunk clientele sometimes drive to the liquor store...
I have life insurance for a reason!
Potheads--people who enjoy or are even now addicted to marijuana--are simply less harmful than those who drink, engage in unsafe sexual practices, ingest narcotic stimulants, or pop pills...
Only those who fear the drug...and the confusion which an intoxicated state promotes---would favor regulating this to invidious levels...
It's much ado about nothing--what are they smoking indeed?! The City has more pressing concerns. But the cranks and those riled up and afraid are easily mobilized...
Potheads running rampant
Silly pearl clutchers, potheads don't run! They mosey, or amble if they're feeling particularly motivated.
Great time for a junket...
Seriously, why don't a few of them fly to Colorado and 1 or 2 other places where medical and/or recreational are legal.
Talk to city councilors in those places. Hang out in neighborhoods near dispensaries or shops.
It would be worth a few thousand $ in travel funds to become informed instead of letting their imaginations run wild.
What I read in this story makes me very unimpressed with their thinking. (And I have no intention of buying or using weed).
They nees to repeal the law!
Ever since the decriminalization of under an ounce of marijuana, I have seen people walking down Winter Street I'm broad daylight during the day where thousands of professionals and visitors walk. I have seen dozens of people smoking the major dragon while stopped at a red light and the cops don't do anything about it. Isn't that DUI?