Weed bill expected by July

A Beacon Hill committee tasked with coming up with a plan to implement legal pot use in Massachusetts is hoping to have a finished bill on Gov. Charlie Baker’s desk by July 1, after listening to nearly four dozen people testify in the fifth and final public hearing on the issue.

Lawmakers say they ideally would like a bill that tackles the many different areas of the legal sale of marijuana, which is set to begin July 1, 2018, but coming up with a regulatory structure tops the list of priorities.

“First and foremost, I don’t see us really being able to come to an agreement on any issue until we decide ... how we’re going to regulate this industry,” state Rep. Mark J. Cusack, the co-chair of the Committee on Marijuana Policy, said yesterday.

Ballot Question 4, passed last fall by Bay State voters, included vesting the state treasurer’s office with unilateral power to hire officials to oversee the weed industry, but Cusack said he favors an independent commission, similar to the one that oversees gambling.

“The ‘Yes on 4’ people wrote this ballot question; we do not let a regulated industry choose how they are regulated in the commonwealth,” the Braintree Democrat said. “We didn’t do that with Uber, we didn’t do that with Lyft; I don’t see us starting with the marijuana industry.”

Cusack said he favored the Gaming Commission model because of “the explicit areas of expertise the commissioners have to have. As the bill is written now, it’s more generalized, and I really think you have to have expert people.”

State Auditor Suzanne Bump told Herald Radio last week the Gaming Commission model is not a good one for marijuana because the commission “is responsible to no one.... There is no oversight of what they do.”