Slowing pot rollout
Pot advocates are whining that the Baker administration is engaged in a “coordinated intimidation campaign” to “coerce” the independent Cannabis Control Commission into tightening up its proposed regulations that will govern retail pot sales in Massachusetts.
Right, because it couldn’t possibly be that administration officials with expertise in public health and safety have legitimate concerns about the very permissive regulatory regime that the commission has drafted to govern these early days of legal pot.
And what of the 78 lawmakers, both Democrat and Republican, who have now signed a letter asking the commission to simplify its plans? Or Attorney General Maura Healey’s request for the commission to “take it slow.” Are they all “coordinating” with the Baker team?
The advocates’ temper tantrum at the State House Thursday had us wondering whether people in Massachusetts really have forgotten the medical marijuana debacle.
After voters approved the legal sale and use of marijuana for medical purposes the former Patrick administration moved too quickly to license dispensaries. This is an inherent challenge with making laws by voter referendum; often the dates and deadlines are too optimistic, with too-little time to enact appropriate regulations.
Background checks were botched. Applicants fudged financial information. Licenses were awarded subjectively. The commonwealth had to fight off a slew of lawsuits, and the entire system had to be overhauled.
We’d all like to avoid that kind of chaos this go-around, no?
In the case of retail sales of recreational marijuana Gov. Charlie Baker and his team have raised valid concerns about process. But they’re also raising legitimate concerns about the commission’s substantive decisions — to allow home delivery of pot, as just one example, straight out of the gate (an issue that worries Healey, too).
In raising these concerns to the independent Cannabis Control Commission they have done nothing to impede the rollout of retail pot sales by the July 1 deadline. No one is saying home delivery or pot massages or marijuana movie theaters can’t be an option. They have merely asked the commission to focus, for now, on the basics — on ensuring that the commonwealth can “crawl before it can walk.”
(Or walk before it starts running ultra-marathons, more like it.)
If submitting valid concerns to the commission amounts to an “attack” (as Sen. Jamie Eldridge called it Thursday) and a “coordinated intimidation campaign,” then maybe pot really make people paranoid.