Earlier this month, the Campaign for a Safe and Healthy Massachusetts (the vaguely named organization pushing against Question 4, which would legalize marijuana for adults) sent out an email that warned voters, “We know their playbook. Pass Question 4 and usher in the dangerous edibles market; Allow home grows of thousands of dollars of marijuana, even over neighbors’ objections; Create more pot shops than McDonalds and Starbucks combined.”
Sure, the danger of edibles is something worth debating, and the initiative explicitly allows people to grow marijuana in their own homes no matter what their neighbors think (just like you can brew beer or grow any other plant without asking your neighbor’s permission). But this final claim, that Question 4 would create more storefronts than McDonald’s and Starbucks combined, is just plain wrong.
To start with, there are 484 Starbucks and McDonald’s according to the website Menuism.com (187 Starbucks, 297 McDonald’s). So would Question 4 authorize about 500 dispensaries across the state? Short answer: no.
Long answer: Theoretically, but only if hundreds of elected officials all over the state decided they wanted that many dispensaries (which isn’t going to happen). If Question 4 (full text here) passes, towns and cities will have the power to tie recreational marijuana licenses to the number of medical marijuana licenses or liquor licenses, which would be hugely different numbers: we only have 7 medical marijuana dispensaries in Mass, while we have 2,917 liquor stores. In the very likely event that municipalities pick the first option, there would only be dozens, not hundreds, of dispensaries in the state. Municipalities can even ban marijuana sales entirely if they put it to a popular vote and a majority of residents approve the ban.
I can see where this talking point came from: Colorado certainly has a lot of dispensaries, and that makes some people uncomfortable. But their law is completely different, and does not allow for the same type of local controls that Question 4 specifically includes. Conflating the two is not only dishonest, it’s blatant fear-mongering.
So yes the claim is true. 3000 / 5 = 600 which is more than 500.
Some municipalities may opt out, but it requires a vote of the town, not a decision of elected officials.
From the initiative, towns are allowed to:
They’re only required to put it to a vote if they want to ban marijuana dispensaries entirely, if they want to make it fewer than 20% of liquor stores (say, 5% or 10%), or if they want to make it fewer than the number of medical marijuana dispensaries. Towns could say they just want the same number of recreational marijuana dispensaries as medical marijuana dispensaries, and since most towns are only allowing 1 (and many are slow-rolling it and will have 0 for a long time), this could keep the number of stores relatively small.
A vote of the town is required in *any* of those cases. So any town that wants fewer pot shots than either the number of medical shops, *or* 1/5th the available liquor licenses, needs to put it to a vote.
… It’s a vote of the voters. Does that preclude a Town Meeting or City Council vote? Does it mean referendum?
So a referendum in a town would be superfluous
Town Meeting votes can be challenged by referendum… The people have the final say.
It’s still unclear to me what ‘vote of the voters’ means.
Even in towns with open meetings
Which is to say that if the folks want to limit the marijuana retailers [etc] in their community, they need to have an election — but it could coincide with a November election, a September primary election, a Town election [if those are elsewhere in the calendar], or a special election for another vote.
The backers wanted to make it hard for towns to opt out.
Get ready for a bountiful bevy of special elections if question 4 passes.
I’m pretty sure it has to be a referendum. “Vote of the voters” refers to a public, popular vote, rather than a town meeting or a city council vote.
…though I have never known communities governed as cities to have them so this might be a new thing in those cases.
Including bigger ones like Newton. We had non-binding ones in Cambridge, but our city council was the final authority on a medical dispensary.
Why would the number of places allowed to sell marijuana be related to the MEDICAL dispensaries at all? They are for very different purposes.
And in a town with a single dispensary, does that mean that NO recreation establishment is allowed?
Just giving you heads up, in case this measure passes: zoning rules for Marijuana Dispensaries were very contentious at the local level, and a super majority of Town Meeting members in my town refused to allow Marijuana Dispensaries anywhere except in a very remote area, far from Town center & schools.
I’ve seen a lot of towns and cities try to zone marijuana dispensaries out of existence, just because they completely misunderstand how the regulations work and how those facilities are run. I hope that people will eventually come around, but that will probably only happen once they see dispensaries in their neighboring communities aren’t causing any problems.
To be fair, the Marijuana Dispensary regulations were completely broken – actually, by design. These dispensaries are supposed to be medical facilities, and are supposed to offer the same medical control that all other clinics are offering.
Nothing remote to that came into existence, the main reason being (I think) that a complicated law was passed by ballot question as a one-shot fail-or-pass, rather than going through the General Court.
We might be headed for the same law of unintended effects with the new ballot question on recreational marijuana.
You’re completely right. The medical marijuana program has been incredibly slow to get moving, with only 7 dispensaries in the entire state nearly 4 years after we passed the law in 2012. This is because while activists who wanted a lot of patient access wrote the initiative, government officials who didn’t want patient access were the ones who wrote the regulations, so it began as a slow process with massive barriers to entry.
That will be the same case with recreational marijuana: while activists wrote the initiative, government officials will write the regulations. That’s a good thing in many ways, so that they can constantly update the regs and be sure to include protections like not selling marijuana gummy bears. But it also might mean that they take as long as legally possible to implement it, which will make the law much less effective at eliminating the black market and everything else it’s supposed to do.
…rather than use zoning tricks? Communities try this with “adult” venues too, which has the added wrinkle of first amendment interpretations protecting such “expression”. In both cases I think communities should just be allowed to say your business is not welcome here.
What happens when a community says we don’t want newspapers in our town? Irish Catholics? Blacks? Muslim cemeteries and mosques? Those are not hypotheticals. They are part of the history of our country.
For every complicated question there is always a simple answer. And it is always wrong.
newspapers are the only one of those in your list that are businesses. And First Amendment issues aside, we do expect communities to zone particular commercial activities to certain places.
Methinks the SCOTUS/SJC/MA Legislature/Town gov’t tension is a good one. Surely a community shouldn’t have to allow a hazardous chemical factory in a residential community. Conversely, a city or town should leave well enough alone when the community harm is imagined or unquantifiable (the oh noes! crowd).
…touch on constitutional issues such as actual freedom of speech/press/religion and equal protection which do not exist for adult businesses or marijuana dispensaries. Types of businesses should be excludible IMO; people and their opinions cannot.
We’ve debated this before.
In my view, the “pursuit of happiness” provides consenting adults with a basic right to enjoy whatever substances they choose. The burden then shifts to government to demonstrate a “compelling interest” in limiting that right.
That is absolutely NOT what has happened with our marijuana laws.
It was once against the law for consenting adults to enjoy oral and anal sex. Similar arguments were offered in support of those laws, and they were struck down when the courts ultimately determined that the state and local governments were unable to show a “compelling interest” in limiting such behavior.
Here are some provisions of current Massachusetts law that are unenforceable because they are unconstitutional:
These CURRENTLY EXISTING Massachusetts laws are all anachronisms that ought to be repealed if for no other reason than that they have already been ruled unconstitutional.
I must say that as segments of our culture veer further and further into the “alt right” wasteland, I fear what might happen if a future Supreme Court revisits these questions.
I suggest that we are headed in the same direction with marijuana legislation. I wish that Massachusetts was a leader in that movement.
America should legalize marijuana. Massachusetts should legalize marijuana. Period.
Criminalizing the commission of an abominable and detestable crime against nature with a beast is almost certainly both enforceable and constitutional.
…that pursuit of happiness is an aspiration of the Declaration and not a constitutional right? Most sexual activity between consenting adults falls within the realm of privacy (assuming, of course, that such activity is in fact engaged in privately), and would therefore be out of the government’s reach. Businesses and other pursuits which advertise that the public is welcome to partake or patronize are within the public sphere, which the public through their elected representatives has every right to regulate. To be clear, I am arguing strictly constitutional prerogative. Just because I argue that certain things are not absolutely protected by the Constitution doesn’t mean I’m going to make banning or regulating a priority on the merits. As for marijuana specifically I stand by previous objections.
Municipalities are specifically not allowed to ban medical marijuana dispensaries entirely, but many of the more conservative towns have put very long-term moratoriums in place, or created zoning rules so stringent that no locations actually work. That’s because it’s a medical facility that should not be subject to discrimination, unlike a recreational dispensary, which is just another business and can be outright banned (with a popular vote).
That’s just a quote straight from the initiative, but I do agree with you – since they’re for very different things, it’s kinda strange to see them tied together in that way. But I think the idea is that a town might want to regulate all sales of marijuana in similar ways, at least in terms of how many outlets there are and where they can locate.
Since a town can only limit the number of recreational dispensaries to fewer than medical marijuana dispensaries with a referendum. That means that in a town with 1 medical dispensary, they could limit it to as few as 1 recreational dispensaries, but if they wanted to limit it to 0, they would need to hold a referendum.
Towns have to have a vote if the want to either
(1) Prohibit the sale of marijuana
(2) Have fewer pot licences than 20% of the number of liquor licenses
-OR-
(3) Have fewer pot licences than the number of medical dispensaries.
Complying with the third section is not a loophole that gets you out of complying with the second section.
Our town planner is considering having a zone created for hookah bars. It will be in the same gravel field next to the dump which is now our adult entertainment zone. The current owner of the land plans to keep it a gravel field…
Interesting zoning provision. It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “get your rocks off” … 🙂
We had town meeting and amended zoning to prohibit hookah bars altogether
Passed by a comfortable 2/3 majority so we remain hookah-free no matter what happens with Q. 4