Weed out HempFest

Even that geyser of water that erupted on Boston Common yesterday wasn’t enough to wash away the lingering stench of the three-day weed marathon in the city’s premier park.

Officials at Boston’s Parks Department insist the HempFest crowd — this year rebranded the Boston Freedom Rally — has a First Amendment right to use the park. And it’s true that they are a fairly litigious group that has in the past sued to enforce that right.

But what the hell gives them the right to take over a public space

for three days, smoking their little hearts out, sending stoners adrift throughout the area, the aroma of pot reaching to Arlington Street and beyond (a full city block away) and generally making the park uninhabitable for anyone else? (Parents and grandparents wary of the little ones getting a contact high were forced to abandon the Frog Pond.)

And all of this taking place just days after a daytime shooting on the Common and what amounted to a mere 24-hour crackdown by police on the usual dope smoking and illegal dealing that goes on pretty much 24/7 on the main thoroughfare of the Common.

“It will be a zero-tolerance approach to violations, whether it’s smoking or the sale and distribution of marijuana,” police spokesman Michael McCarthy told the Herald on Thursday — even as the bong vendors and the trucks selling fried Twinkies and Oreos (because, well, serious cases of the munchies need to be dealt with) were setting up.

“We are not taking this lightly,” he added. “There will be some changes made down there.”

The city’s attention span is exceedingly short on such things. A stabbing near the War Memorial also resulted in a brief stepped-up enforcement effort earlier this year.

But HempFest was the wrong message at the wrong time. It wasn’t a “rally” at all, but a threeday commercial venture aimed at promoting a product which under current law is not permitted to be consumed in public — and yet apparently was in abundance. It is one thing to accommodate an event and quite another to allow its commercial expansion over a three-day period. What, for example, would the city administration do if that alt-right “free speech” rally wanted to occupy the Common for a three-day event?

It’s time HempFest found another home — where it won’t interfere with the rights of others to enjoy a weekend in the park.