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Medical-marijuana dispensary approved for Newmarket Square
By adamg on Tue, 02/27/2018 - 12:20pm
The Board of Appeals today approved Boston's fourth medical-marijuana dispensary at 50 Clapp St., off Massachusetts Avenue in Dorchester. Because of its location near the Methadone Mile, the proposed operator agreed to set a minimum purchase price of $40 to discourage any nearby addicts thinking of putting together enough money to buy a joint.
"It's almost like the anti-nip policy if you're a liquor store," Mike Ross, attorney for Natural Selections, told the board.
Natural Selections already has permission to run dispensaries in Watertown and Fitchburg.
The board's approval came with a condition that the company would have to come back before the board for approval should it seek to move into recreational marijuana if the state ever releases regulations actually allowing that. Ross added Natural Selections would agree to prohibit on-site consumption of its wares, which would rule out a marijuana cafe.
Unlike the other two dispensaries approved by the board - on Milk Street downtown and on Newbury Street in the Back Bay - nobody spoke against the proposal. The mayor's office and the office of City Councilor Frank Baker (Dorchester) supported it.
The board has also approved a dispensary on McClellan Highway in East Boston. On Wednesday, the City Council could consider whether to formally "not disapprove" a dispensary on VFW Parkway in West Roxbury.
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Comments
Snark turned up to '11'
Are we working on a new Red Light District/Combat Zone ?
Also - is this THE Mike Ross? Former city councilor ?
Um, what?
You haven't heard that monicker before? It's been in all the papers.
As for Ross, yep, the one-time city councilor is now a zoning lawyer (at Prince Lobel in International Place). I think he also represented the Milk Street dispensary.
Oh, cool
Mike Ross is also an obnoxious tool in the private sector as well as in public service.
Addicts in Newmarket Square
Addicts in Newmarket Square who rarely have $40 in their pocket for longer than an hour certainly aren't going to spend it at a Med Mar. Dispensary. Newmarket Square is a retail and residential ghost town, except for South Bay shopping center. The people who stay around Newmarket Square are already medicated and penniless enough.
$40 minimum
We can see which the City would rather see in the area, $10 to collapse in the middle of Mass Ave high off the horse or $10 to smoke a joint.
This is supposed to be a medical marijuana dispensary, as in you have the correct paperwork to purchase at the store. Seems setting minimum amounts are discriminatory to those that may only have access to the area not just addicts but also those who live with an 8-10 block radius.
You show me a $40 minimum
I'll show you a business owner who gives out a giant pile of coupons. Was our idiot government smart enough to write something against that into the law?
Not Really Newmarket
Location feels closer to the Polish Triangle than Newmarket. And is about to be enveloped by the ongoing South Bay sprawl anyway. My guess is the landlord gave them a short placeholder lease that serves both parties until someone offers him $5M for the parcel to build condos on.
Five-year lease
So not super long but not exactly tenancy at will.
One very important point
Adam, reread your fourth paragraph. You got distracted, I think, and left us hanging.
I think it's very clear
Without on-site consumption (which I think is pretty standard for dispensaries?) I think it's just not very likely that they'd
On site consumption?
Here? What are you smoking?
In my haste to make a joke, I
In my haste to make a joke, I suppose I did leave that ambiguous. What I meant was that yeah, I believe it's standard to forbid on-site consumption.
Shoot
It flew over my head. Well played, good sir.
Huh?
A marijuana what? And why no period after marijuana if that is the end of the sentence.
Apologies to Adam for having to explain this in more detail.
The phrase that pays is "cafe"
Sorry for leaving you hanging!
Thanks, bud
N/t
Let's just dehumanize everyone
So I know I'll never, ever visit this place... Because they agreed to such an asinine and dehumanizing rule.
First off, cannabis helps to TREAT addiction. Cannabis is only a "gateway drug" in that it helps people get off harder stuff. What heartless monster proposed this plan? (Even the "no nips" liquor rule comparison makes no sense when small "non-nip" bottles are still $5 and even large bottles of cheap vodka are only $10.)
ALSO when did junkies all get both a MMJ card and a secondary State-issued form of ID (the basic requirements to enter a dispensary)? It's $200 to see the doctor, another $50 to the State, and THEN the cost of weed is somewhere around $15 for a joint! You really think addicts will "pool together" to get a 2-hour high where one joint might not even work for one person? Who took this proposal seriously?
They were so eager to open that they agreed to a Faustian deal. This is an anti-business proposal and this dispensary agreed to it because they care about profits over patients. Period.
Five and we're out ...
The medical marijuana law passed (overwhelmingly, btw) in 2012 allows for anywhere from 1 to 5 dispensaries in each of Massachusetts' 14 counties.
Not surprisingly, instead of the five Suffolk County facilities being spread evenly across the county, all five are in Boston.
Open:
21 Milk Street, Downtown
To come:
50 Clapp Street, Dorchester
VFW Highway, West Roxbury
Newbury Street, Back Bay
McClellan Highway East Boston
There are 22 dispensaries open, currently, out of the 35 allowed (as of January 1, 2018).
Several counties still have zero. (There are no facilities on Nantucket (Nantucket) or Martha's Vineyard (Dukes), for example.)
https://www.mass.gov/lists/medical-use-of-marijuana-program-monthly-dash...
I question your logic
Boston makes up the vast bulk of the population of the county, so having all of them in the city makes sense. Now, if there were none on the other side of the harbor, that would have been bad, but Eastie has one, which people from Revere, Chelsea, and Winthrop should be able to reach without much trouble.
Revere City Councilor Claims Medical Marijuana Is A Gateway Drug
... and he wants to charge patients an extra 3% tax!
He's a doofus
He's a doofus. Its clear he has no idea how the rec law works, and he could collect 20% but Revere is fighting rec places tooth and nail... "but for the children" they say. Yeah they care about the children to watch a 20% tax rate go out the window because they want to zone rec places out of their city. So much for "the children".
But no, let's be ignorant instead and try to charge 3% people who are using to get it for medical purposes.
Funny, he wants to be Facebook Friends with me, I should give him a piece of my mind.
Oh...the tales I could tell
about some of the people in this idiot's family that I knew growing up!
Fail
I can't believe no one showed up to speak against this considering it narrowly got support from the neighboring associations. It's also barely outside the perimeter of two schools. It's extremely easy to get a med mar card btw; I think every dealer was first in line for those. And they don't care about the sick, it's all about getting the commercial license down the road. Very disappointed in my city councilors.
Wow
IGNORANT COMMENT ALERT
Please tell us your sources on this. Other than "you think".
Please tell us how easy it is.. how I had to make an appointment weeks in advance, and then wait for the card to be approved. Please tell me how I had to sit there for 2 hours in the place to be seen, and provide all the proper bloodwork and tests.
But go ahead keep spewing your ignorant comment about something you don't know.