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Recreational pot wins nod in Downtown Crossing and across the city

The Boston Cannabis Board yesterday approved a proposal by the city's first medicinal-marijuana dispensary, on Milk Street, to add recreational pot to its offerings and approved a number of proposed pot shops from East Boston to Roslindale.

The votes by the board do not mean the shops can now open - they still need to win approval from the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission, which can prove a lengthy process.

However, Patriot Care, which won city approval for its medical dispensary at 21 Milk St. after promising it would not seek to add "adult use" products, will get an expedited review for its shop because it already has approval to sell medical marijuana.

In its vote yesterday, the city board set several conditions on its approval, including that the new shop sell recreational pot only on an appointment basis for its first six months and that it would have to return to that model if, starting in the seventh month, lines start forming outside. Also, the shop can't sell "pre-rolled cannabis products," has to set a minimum order of $35, and has to include educational information about marijuana in each products.

Also yesterday, the board approved:

  • A proposal by HVV Massachusetts to open a recreational-pot shop at 220 McClellan Highway in East Boston, alongside the medical dispensary for which it has a state license but which it has yet to open;
  • A proposal by New England Cannabis Corp. for a pot shop at 204 North Beacon St. in Brighton, next to the Dunkin' Donuts at North Beacon and Market Street;
  • A proposal by Massachusetts Citizens for Social Equity owner Brian Chavez to tear down his uncle's bodega at 3997 Washington St. in Roslindale (the one with the bodega-cat mural on the Archdale Road side) to build a pot shop; Chavez also owns Hi-Fi Pizza in Fields Corner and is an "equity applicant" - who gets preference both as a member of a minority group and as somebody who had legal trouble because of marijuana before it was decriminalized;
  • A proposal by LowKey LLC for a pot shop at 571 Washington St. in Codman Square. The owner is an "equity applicant."

The board rejected a proposal by Dragon Vapors, LLC for a pot shop at 354-358 Chestnut Hill Ave. in Brighton and deferred until October a vote on a proposal by New Dia LLC for a pot shop that would share space in the building housing the Cask and Flagon across from Fenway Park.

The board approved a proposal by Beacon Compassion, Inc. for a medical dispensary at 1524 VFW Parkway in West Roxbury - it would go in the basement of the building that already houses a liquor store and a sex-toys shop.

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Comments

May as well have legal drugs in addition to illegal in DTX to bring in much needed tax revenue. Either way it's still a shit-show.

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Can we please stop using the language "pot shop"? It sounds like I'm reading news from 1980.

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I've been smoking since the late 60s and pot shop is just fine with me.

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No one under 45 says “pot”

Sounds really goofy to me

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Is the term the cool kids use.

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I can recall I and my friends referring to the stuff as "pot" in a lightheated, ironic kind of way. It was so goofy and retro. We called it "reefer" and "weed" in the same spirit. The only thing we didn't call it was "grass", which was supposedly current. This was around 1969.

We also called it "dope", mostly inspired by a Nixon-era War On Drugs TV commercial, the punch line of which was "Why do you think they call it dope?" Sometimes a few of us woud be sitting around a campfire, too wasted for words, staring at each other in amazement at how stoned we all were; and then one of us would say "why do you think they call it dope?", and we wouldn't stop laughing until dawn.

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It was always dope in my world. Let’s smoke some dope!

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Sounds to me like the name of a 1970s or '80s cookware emporium. I'm sure there was one with that name somewhere in greater Boston/Cambridge.

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">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACtraE9qlzw[/youtube]

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It's a pot shop... if you feel ashamed by the name then don't shop at the pot shop.

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What a ridiculous thing to be judgey about.

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still more cost efficient

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It all depends on what you factor into your costs.

For example, I put a high personal cost on doing anything illegal or giving money to someone doing something illegal.

I have morals. It's a problem, I know.

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... except that "legal/illegal" and "moral/immoral" aren't perfectly aligned. For many cases such as theft, assault, driving drunk, building with unsafe substandard materials, etc. they do align, but selling to another person a natural plant that you grew in your garden may be one of the cases where they don't.

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grew in your old backyard!! I love it.

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are morals the same as blind adherence to the law? If you enjoy the feeling of following all the rules then just say that, no need to paint it as some sort of noble pursuit.

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One of the only things I can think of that is actually cheaper on the "black market".

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just how STUPID all their foot-dragging has been and how much money they are losing for it. Other states dump their harvest surplus here on the black market where no one is paying 28% tax on their weed.

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weed is still grown unscrupulously with plenty pesticides but with the end of American life looking more and more possible, we need all the pot we can inhale.

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I know there's no way to put the genie back in the bottle, but I wish they'd never legalized smokeable weed. The lingering skunk smell is unavoidable virtually everywhere you walk in the city, wafting from people on the sidewalks, from passing and parked cars, from open windows in residences. It puts the noxious in obnoxious. And worse yet, if you are smoking or vaping you are not wearing a mask. And I can't help thinking that despite *my* mask, if I can smell your weed I could be exposed to your virus. People are inconsiderate and/or oblivious.

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The pot that people smoke today doesn't smell anything like 1970s pot. Damn genetic engineering.

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70s-vintage and earlier weed that was mostly sativa grown outdoors in Mexico, the Caribbean and Africa, and smuggled in. The rise of indica over sativa (which I believe happened because it thrives better under indoor and/or hydroponic cultivation) is probably the biggest one -- very different psychoactive effects, plus that skunky smell -- as well as selective breeding and seedless cultivation for max flower and resin yield, etc. But I don't know much about the production side, and what I think I know might be apocryphal.

Does the term "genetic engineering" cover that? I thought that was more about direct gene modification using biotech: is that used in the cannabis industry?

I had a neighbor in my apartment building way back when who showed me his closet-based hydro growing system, a very compact, efficient looking, commercially built unit. I mentioned to him that our landlord occasionally had one his lackeys make illegal, surreptitious inspections of our units. I imagine he retired that beastie shortly thereafter. Those were bad days to be caught growing, especially for a lawyer.

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Selective breeding is not genetic engineering. Irradiating seeds to produce new mutations, and then selecting some of them for breeding, is the most basic kind of genetic engineering, although these days they can do it a lot more directly, and not depend so much on luck. I doubt if there's much, or any, real GE going on in the weed business, just lots of breeding.

You can do a lot with breeding; for example, you can turn wolves into poodles and boxers and dachsunds and golden retrievers.

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as someone who microwaves fish in the office

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When we used to have offices. :-)

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"artifical butter" microwave popcorn smell. Although I agree with others - microwave cooked fish is far worse, and hangs in the air far longer than popcorn does.

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Yes, but burnt microwave popcorn has to rank pretty close to microwaved fish, and it's almost inevitable that someone will put their popcorn in the microwave and then walk away...

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ID an inveterate fish-microwaver. The culprit turned out to be a very nice, helpful IT guy, a Russian ex-pat. I imagine it broke his heart not to be able to lunch on fish every day. But in that open-plan office, it had to stop.

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I’m happy to see this unfinished progress. But...no prerolls...gotta have one silly nanny exception, don’t you?!

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The Northampton shop has prerolls on the menu, so yeah, this seems pretty nannyish.

The Northampton shop also has a police detail outside. I don't know if a detail is standard for pot shops, but I swear to you on my mother, they are the most jovial cops I've ever met.

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For these cops, it’s the easiest job they’ll ever have. What could be more law-abiding than a group of stoners lining up to pay 4 times the street price for a mild, mellow substance, just to stay within the law?

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This place, as well as many (most?) others, also provides medical marijuana. As for recreational, buying marijuana no more makes someone a stoner than buying a sixpack makes someone a drunk. Try not to be so judgey.

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Today's Herald reports that the application for a recreational cannabis shop at Quincy Market has been withdrawn by the applicant, following objections from the landlord, Ashkenazy Acquisitions.

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