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Date: 9/27/2022
NORTHAMPTON – As cannabis shops in Northampton continue to be a point of discussion, the City Council is using their various committees to learn more about the effects cannabis has had on the youth and the larger Northampton community.
The discussions are coming after some public outcry about a proposed retail store called “Euphorium” planned for 143 Main St. in Florence. Currently, the shop is allowed by right, and two community informational meetings have already been conducted with contentious debate. The meetings are part of a year-long process to get the shop open. A community-host agreement has to be signed for a cannabis retail shop to open.
Currently, the city features a booming cannabis market with 12 dispensaries already open, while another one awaits approval by state regulators. The fourteenth is the one proposed in Florence Village on Main Street.
Ever since the Florence shop was proposed back in the middle of summer, residents living in that area have expressed opposition to the idea of a dispensary in their neighborhood, citing concerns about cannabis addiction, their suspected influence of cannabis on children and families in the area, as well as a belief that 12 dispensaries are more than enough.
As a result of these concerns, the City Council is inviting different experts and panelists across their committee meetings to discuss what effects the cannabis business has had on Northampton since the city’s first dispensary opened in 2018.
The council’s Community Services committee spearheaded one of these panel discussions on Sept. 19 to see how retail cannabis sales have affected community resources like human service agencies and prevention and recovery service providers.
For this particular discussion, the committee invited President and CEO of ServiceNet Susan Stubbs; Heather Wagner, the manager of the Strategic Planning Initiative for Families and Youth (SPIFFY) Coalition at the Collaborative for Educational Services; SPIFFY’s Public Health Data & Evaluation Specialist Caroline Johnson; lawyer and cannabis consultant Ezra Parzybok and Volkan Polatol, owner of Mulino’s Restaurant and Honey Dispensary.
Below are some thoughts from some of the panelists. The full video can be viewed on the Northampton Government Video Archive YouTube page.
No connection between addiction and the influx of dispensaries?
Stubbs told the panel that she interviewed the director of their outpatient clinic and the person who oversees their addiction services in Northampton, as well as other therapists who work with people with addiction.
According to Stubbs, everyone she talked to felt that cannabis was immediately available even prior to legalization and the insurgence of cannabis shops in Northampton. “They said that their clientele are not even frequenting dispensaries because they’re too expensive,” said Stubbs. “The cannabis they can buy outside of the legal channels is still much cheaper.”
While there are a lot of mental health challenges borne from the coronavirus pandemic, Stubbs said that there has not been an uptick in addiction issues or problems relating to cannabis. In other words, there seems to be no connection between addiction and the recent influx of dispensaries.
“One of them pointed out…that there are some people who self-medicate with cannabis, and who have self-medicated in the past, and now have prescriptions for medical marijuana, which actually can be a harm reduction strategy,” said Stubbs. “It was also pointed out by my staff that the alcohol addiction problem is actually larger in our community than the cannabis.”
Safety and regulations
Polatol, who has been involved in the cannabis industry for three years, highlighted the laborious process of getting licensed for a shop. He mentioned the fact that everyone who enters the shops must be accounted for and at least 21 years old, and all of the handled products must be childproof.
“It’s not easy to open these places up,” said Polatol. “It’s not like opening a restaurant, a burger joint or another bar…it’s very strict, it’s very regulated; we have inspections constantly.”
According to Polatol, most people who enter dispensaries are either looking for the pleasure of smoking or to replace something they were on before, and while he understands some people’s concerns, he does not believe capping the number of dispensaries is going to make that much of a difference.
“There’s already 12 within the city,” he said. “I think the market is already capping itself out to be honest with you.”
Youth substance use
Johnson from SPIFFY gave a presentation to the group about the effects cannabis has had on the youth in the area. For them, there appears to be a link between the number of retailers in the community, substance use and negative consequences.
“Science shows that adolescent cannabis use affects brain development and sets the stage for addiction, social-emotional and economic problems later in life,” Johnson said.
According to Johnson, 40 percent of middle and high school students in Northampton have experienced acute negative consequences, including extreme confusion or anxiety, elevated heart rate, hallucinations, nausea or vomiting.
Johnson’s presentation also stated that academic research consistently shows that the closer youth and young adults live to outlets that sell alcohol or cannabis products, the more often they will use. Additionally, other local data states that 30-day use rates and edible use rates are higher among students in districts where there are five or more adult-use retailers versus in districts where there are fewer than five retailers.
The data presented by Johnson also states that 12 percent of Northampton Public Schools youth have entered a cannabis shop compared to 7 percent of nationwide youth. Additionally, two of five Northampton middle and high schoolers who use cannabis report that they received it from a cannabis retailer, and over one in four Northampton youth report living within a 10-minute drive of at least six retailers.
“Given the data I’ve been presenting, the research I’ve been presenting, I think these results right here are cause for concern about rates of youth cannabis use in the coming years,” said Johnson. “Especially in the past two years, so many retail shops have opened.”
But what about the market, and how it could affect children?
Despite the statistics presented, Parzybok disputed Johnson’s statistic about how 12 percent of youth have entered a retail shop, saying it was an “insane” statistic since all shops are heavily surveilled and regulated.
“I understand the perspective of fear…I assume people who are speaking in opposition are not around [cannabis] culture,” said Parzybok. “If you think more in the sense of, ‘it is here, how do we develop an economy in this town.’”
Parzybok described the consequences of capping shops through the lens of the capping of liquor licenses. “A liquor license can be sold [if there are caps],” said Parzybok. “If you have a liquor license where it is limited, those liquor licenses become more valuable.”
According to Parzybok, as the value of those licenses go up, the people who participate in the business have to be wealthier. This, in turn, creates a corporate foothold in a city.
“The same thing is going to happen with cannabis,” said Parzybok. “You lock down the number, those who have licenses who aren’t making enough money…all of a sudden somebody says, ‘I’ll give you $1 million for your host agreement,’ great, they’ll sell to one of these corporations.”
If this were to happen, Parzybok said that all of the local growers and passionate small business owners will lose out, and when that occurs, Parzybok said it would be harder to prevent children from using cannabis because the chain-of-command will be more corporatized and less likely to prevent children from using.
“If Euphorium is this tipping point of acceptance…I’m not sure that capping from the perspective of those who spoke here is based on a limited understanding of where the market is going.”
Parzybok also disputed Johnson’s statistic about how 12 percent of youth have entered a retail shop, saying it was an “insane” statistic since all shops are heavily surveilled and regulated.
“If we cap the retails…they [shops] will still be here,” said Parzybok. “How does our community use its resources to make sure that we have information that can help the youth? Social media and pop culture has ubiquitous cannabis, so how do you possibly control for that? Are these shops actually increasing use in Northampton?”