THE MALDEN ADVOCATE - Friday, August 4, 2017
Page 5
State marijuana regulations set high standards By Barbara Taormina s the city struggles with how best to implement the new law legalizing the recreational use and sale of marijuana, Malden’s state senator, Jason Lewis, has released a statement defending the legislation and predicting it will become a model for the rest of the country. Lewis has been immersed in marijuana policy since early 2015 when he was appointed chairman of a Special Senate Committee on Marijuana. Lewis and fellow committee members spent more than a year researching marijuana policy and interviewing experts. They even took a field trip to Colorado to get a firsthand look at how the legalization of recreational marijuana has worked in that state. In March 2016, Lewis and his committee released an extensive report on a wide range of marijuana policy issues, such as the regulation of sales, marketing and products offered by retail marijuana businesses. “I con-
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cluded that I could support marijuana legalization in Massachusetts, but only if public health and safety were put ahead of industry profits,” said Lewis. Roughly eight months later, Massachusetts voters went to the polls and approved ballot Question 4, an initiative that legalized marijuana and approved commercial sales that would follow the example of the alcohol industry. Malden voted 11,866 to 10,004 in favor of legalized pot. Lewis voted against Question 4 because he felt the initiative did not go far enough to ensure public safety and protect public health. He was particularly concerned about possible marijuana industry efforts to target young users. In the wake of the Question 4 victory, the legislature launched a new Marijuana Policy Committee that was given the task of fixing the flaws in the ballot question. As a member of the statehouse’s new marijuana committee, Lewis spent the next six
months holding public hearings and conducting interviews with law enforcement officials, state and local leaders, public health experts, business owners and marijuana advocates to understand their concerns about the legal use and sale of marijuana. “The legislation that resulted from this process is a very strong bill that addressed many of these concerns, including my own,” said Lewis. According to Lewis, the legislature’s revised marijuana law creates a tightly regulated legal market that protects public health and safety and still fully respects the will of voters. “I believe many of the specific provisions in this legislation will make Massachusetts a national model for how to safely and effectively legalize marijuana,” said Lewis. Much of the talk about the legislature’s revised version of the marijuana regulations introduced in Question 4 has focused on the decision to bump the 12 percent tax approved by voters
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to 20 percent. There’s also some interest in the guidelines cities and towns must follow to ban retail pot shops in their communities. If the majority of vot-
ers approved Question 4, a community is required to hold a referendum on a proposed ban.
MARIJUANA | SEE PAGE 7
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