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Date: 6/29/2022
SOUTHWICK — Four years after voters in Southwick voted against allowing recreational cannabis shops in town, members of the Select Board said it is an issue that voters could revisit in the future.
After cannabis was legalized in Massachusetts in 2016, municipalities where a majority had voted against the statewide ballot question were given the option to opt out of allowing recreational cannabis shops within their borders. Southwick was one such community that chose to opt out, in a vote at the 2018 Annual Town Meeting.
More than five years after state legalization, the landscape of the business has changed dramatically. Several hundred cannabis dispensaries have opened across the state, and the laws governing dispensaries have been adjusted several times.
Last month, Southwick voters elected Jason Perron as the town’s newest Select Board member, the first new board member since the town rejected recreational cannabis. Perron, a Westfield police officer, said he would like to see Southwick reconsider its ban on cannabis businesses, as their presence in other communities has shown there is not much public safety risk, and the tax revenues are significant.
Select Board member Doug Moglin said that he thinks the town handled the controversy the right way by putting it up to the voters. At the time, he said, the law was still new, and even in states like Colorado and Washington, legalization, and everything that comes with it, was still in its infancy. He said he is still concerned that portions of the state law are changing.
“The thing that gets me is that everyone likes stability, and the state law is not stable,” said Moglin.
He pointed to potential coming changes to the rules on community host agreements, which might result in individual communities having fewer incentives to allow dispensaries.
Moglin said that if the issue is to be revisited at all, the Master Plan Advisory Committee may serve as an effective vehicle to do so. Part of the process of developing a new Master Plan involves collecting data from surveys and focus groups, which will inevitably include people’s feelings towards cannabis and allowing dispensaries in town.
Regardless, the issue will have to go back through the town’s voters if it is to be addressed at all.
“The best government is always local. There are things the state does well, but they can’t imagine or take into account what any given town wants to do,” said Moglin.
Select Board Chair Russ Fox said that he opposed allowing dispensaries in town at the time of the Town Meeting vote. He didn’t think it was something Southwick should have, but he also said he wanted to see how things played out in other communities that did allow them because of how new it was to the state.
“At the time it was so new that you wanted to watch what happened in other communities,” said Fox.
Even if Southwick were to reverse course and allow recreational cannabis dispensaries, Fox said it may not even be economically feasible to open one.
“We might be reaching a saturation point, and then some businesses will just go belly up,” said Fox.
He said he wouldn’t be opposed to large cannabis growing facilities in Southwick, considering the town’s agricultural character, but getting a viable operation to open up so far in town has proven unfruitful.
One way to possibly gauge whether the issue could be revisited, Fox said, would be to send out surveys along with the annual town census, or with a non-binding ballot question at the next town election.