Cities are bracing for legal potDate: 2/15/2018 Sitting through the most recent Chicopee City Council meeting illustrated to me the less than perfect state of affairs we have when it comes to the legalization of marijuana.
The council was asked to send to the Ordinance Committee a proposed ordinance by City Councilors Joel McAuliffe and William Courchesne that would in their words simply underscore the idea that Chicopee police would enforce the state’s marijuana laws.
McAuliffe and Courchesne believed the ordinance was needed to emphasize the Commonwealth’s laws in light of a potential enforcement of the federal laws by the U.S. Attorney in Massachusetts.
Their idea was simply to get it into committee for further explanation and study.
Their colleagues didn’t agree and took time to make sure they just didn’t approve it, but also to set fire to the body and throw the ashes off a mountaintop. The immediate and often times severe reaction indicated the amount of concern and disapproval when it comes to the legalization of recreational marijuana.
There were discussions among the councilors about marijuana and its links to crime, as well as marijuana being a gateway drug that would lead to opioid addiction.
It was clear that if the council could keep pot shops out of its community it would. If that’s what the voters now want, so be it, but legal pot is the thing that the majority of voters in Chicopee wanted when the referendum was conducted.
The suburban communities have characteristically voted to keep the retail shops out, which makes me smile a bit, because I’m sure plenty of people in those towns will be smoking it. They just don’t want to be seen in their town buying weed.
I don’t see much difference between marijuana and alcohol, when it comes to bad habits. And before you think I’m some sort of a holier-than-thou type, allow me to assure you I have my share of questionable habits. I’m 63 year-old journalist with a bottle of Dewar’s on his desk. I know bad habits.
Here is the bigger issue in my opinion: enforcing pot laws have proven to be to daunting and time-consuming as compared to other more pressing infractions the police and others must address. The use of marijuana is simply too engrained in American society at this point, just like alcohol, and we are not legally equipped any longer to contain it.
So rather than put people in jail and clog up the courts, the idea is now to legalize it, tax it and regulate it – just like alcohol, which has undoubtedly ruined far more lives than pot has.
Perhaps we are beginning to see that like Prohibition, continuing to keep marijuana illegal isn’t really helping anyone.
Our problem in Massachusetts is our state government was not prepared to deal with the will of the voters, a lack of preparation that has caused delay and some confusion. Rather than use the exiting regulatory structure in place for alcohol, we’ve had to create whole separate bureaucracy. It’s the Massachusetts way.
That delay in having the rules and regs in place have frightened and frustrated municipalities and local officials, who either want to keep pot out of their towns as much as possible or want to embrace it in order to have an additional elements of economic development. In both cases, they’ve been stymied a bit.
Socially, the use of alcohol is far more accepted that the use of marijuana, although there will be a generational shift that I would venture to guess probably won’t happen before I’ve passed on. I think it is inevitable.
Reportedly the recreational pot shops should begin operating by the middle of this year, according to The Cannabist. I hope by then the Commonwealth and the cities and towns will all be ready.
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