Cambridge has to follow state’s pot retail laws

For an example of progressivism gone wild, look no further than Cambridge, where the city is continuing its fight against a medical marijuana dispensary’s bid to sell recreational pot.

Recreational pot is legal. And the dispensary, Revolutionary Clinics, operates within the law. But the city decided last fall that the dispensary, and others like it in Cambridge, should hit the brakes for two years, so that only “economic empowerment candidates” as designated by the Cannabis Control Commission could operate retail pot shops in the city.

As the Boston Herald reported, the empowerment program was designed to help businesses in communities disproportionately and negatively affected by the prior criminalization of weed.

In other words, though what you’re doing is legal, and what you want to do is legal, don’t do it for two years so that other businesses can establish a foothold in the market while you sit it out. CEO Keith Cooper wrote in an affidavit that the inability to sell recreational cannabis “would cost Revolutionary Clinics upwards of $700,000 in profits per month at each of its Cambridge stores.”

Unsurprisingly, Revolutionary Clinics fought the ban, and won after the ban was ruled unconstitutional in superior court.

Superior Court Associate Justice Kathleen M. McCarthy stated that lifting the ban “promotes the public interest” by “invalidating conflicting local ordinances.”

But the public interest is not part of Cambridge’s agenda, and the city announced that it has filed an emergency motion to halt the ruling.

Marijuana’s a booming industry in Massachusetts, despite its nascence. Legal sales of recreational marijuana brought in over $445 million in revenues for distributors and growers in Massachusetts last year, according to the Cannabis Control Commission. Investment analysts at MarketWatch predict that the state could bring $900 million in legal weed sales in 2020.

The demand is there, and growing. Enough to handle competition in Cambridge, in which 71% of voters voted for the legalization of marijuana. There is nothing stopping the city from issuing licenses to economic empowerment candidates at the same time medical marijuana dispensaries do business.

And there are many factors that could affect where the public chooses to buy pot — location, pricing, inventory range. The fact that a shop is owned by an economic empowerment candidate could itself be a selling point. But that’s for the consumer to decide. Not the government.

Cambridge thinks otherwise, and has from the beginning, when it attempted the moratorium.

As pot advocate Jim Borghesani, a leader of the 2016 cannabis legalization campaign, noted, “The statutes passed by the Legislature in 2017 say that municipalities cannot prevent the conversion of a medical marijuana treatment center that has a provisional license before July 1, 2017 — and all of those Cambridge medical establishments do.”

So the moratorium against medical dispensaries was verboten from the get-go, yet Cambridge went ahead. A judge has declared the ban unconstitutional and overturned it, yet Cambridge is filing an appeal.

Surely there are better ways for Cambridge city government to spend time and the taxpayer’s dime.