POT BOSS’ COLO. TRIP FULL OF FIREWORKS
Smoking joint, spectacle all part of vacay in July 2016
The newly appointed chair of the state’s marijuana commission said he supports the “objectives” of legalization and even smoked weed as recently as July 2016, when he visited friends in Colorado, bought a T-shirt and joint at a pot shop and toked up before taking in some fireworks. Addressing reporters for the first time yesterday, Steven
Hoffman sought to pacify advocates’ concerns that he voted against legalization last year, explaining that it was the ballot question’s proposed timelines — not legalization itself — that worried him.
The retired corporate executive said he’s used marijuana — “I went to high school in the ’60s and college in the early ’70s” — and even visited a dispensary in Breckenridge, Colo., partly as a “sociological experiment.”
“I was impressed,” Hoffman, 64, said of his visit to a Rocky Mountain State dispensary. “We went to a store, bought a T-shirt, bought a joint, smoked it and watched the fireworks.”
It’s more recent compared to those involved in appointing the commission. A spokeswoman for Treasurer Deborah B. Goldberg, who nominated Hoffman, said she couldn’t remember her last time using marijuana because it was in high school. Attorney General Maura Healey last used marijuana in college, according to a spokeswoman. Aides to Gov. Charlie Baker, when asked when his last time was, pointed to comments he made in 2015: “I went to college in the ’70s.”
Unbeknownst to Hoffman at the time was his future as the top regulator of the Bay State’s marijuana industry. Hoffman told the Herald he didn’t seek the job, and instead was approached by a former colleague who had been asked by Senate President Stanley C. Rosenberg for recommendations. Rosenberg, who Hoffman said called him this week to congratulate him on the post, then put his name before Goldberg.
“I was retired (in 2016) because it was easier than saying I want to do something totally new and different. I want to be challenged, I want to be stimulated,” Hoffman said. “... This meets all that criteria.”
The former Bain & Company partner said the post’s $160,000 annual salary — viewed as a potential hang-up for a position that required someone from the wellheeled corporate world — didn’t play into his decision-making. He acknowledged there will be a learning curve for operating in state government, but he said he intends to get pot shops open by July, the earliest state law allows.
“I’ve done startups. This is a startup,” Hoffman said. “It’s a big startup and it’s a startup that’s very different from anything I’ve ever done before, in terms of the visibility and the public scrutiny. But it’s a startup.”
Jim Borghesani, a spokesman for the pro-pot Marijuana Policy Project, said advocates “take comfort” Hoffman isn’t opposed to legalization philosophically. But he said he needs to push for more funding beyond the $2 million currently allotted to the commission.