I’m not sure what it is going to take to wake people the hell up, but I figured this might help
An old joke comes to mind …
A guido in a muscle car is circling the block looking for parking.
After ten minutes and no luck, he throws his Mustang into neutral, looks toward the clouds, and prays …
“God, I know I’m not supposed to ask you for this kind of thing, but if you somehow give me a spot I swear that I will go to church every Sunday for the whole rest of the year. And I won’t steal nuttin’ for a few months either.”
Right after saying “Amen,” though, Vinnie sees a Jetta pull out of the spot beside him. Without a shred of irony, he looks back at the clouds and re-summons the man upstairs as he parallel parks …
“On second thought, don’t sweat it God. One just opened up. Maybe next time.”
That’s what it will be like if the ballot referendum to shutter adult-use pot shops in Mass narrowly fails. Most people who doubted that the prohibitionists behind the effort had a chance of winning won’t thank those of us who fought the battle.
Instead, they’ll say, I told you so. As if the advocates who knuckled up hadn’t defeated a real threat.
Or, in a much sadder outcome, there will be no rec spots at all if the deceitful proposal passes. Just a glorious return to parking lot handoffs, innumerable shattered pot industry dreams, and 30,000-plus people out of work because many whose whole livelihoods lay on the line couldn’t be bothered to campaign against the repeal question. Many were too busy building companies that will tragically have to go dark.
This is hardly a specific condemnation, but rather a general assessment of the current appetite around the industry for countering the prohibitionists. I am sad to report that some readers have told us how confusing it is that their local dispensary hasn’t mentioned a damn thing about it. Every week, I speak with people on the front lines, from budtenders who interact with members of the public to wholesalers who meet with buyers and other executives. They’re all reporting versions of some varying phenomena, all equally troubling, from stakeholders who doubt the referendum’s danger and therefore will not help with or subsidize the fight, to those who still don’t know that there’s a looming threat.
It’s late June. Election Day is on Nov. 3, fewer than five months away. In political years, that’s like a week. The so-called Coalition for a Healthy Massachusetts, the state campaign behind this nonsense that is linked to the deep-pocketed Virginia dark money group Smart Approaches to Marijuana, has access to tens of millions of dollars through its national network. The formal opposition, the Committee to Protect Cannabis Regulation, reportedly has much, much less.
It’s already a bloodbath. While a few select dispensaries are using their storefronts and platforms to condemn the repeal, the prohibitionists are crisscrossing the state spreading more lies and propaganda. On top of the 75,000 signatures they already submitted, the group needs to file an additional 12,429 signatures from registered voters by July 1 to advance the initiative, and they’re bullshitting a b-line to the ballot box. They’re acting with impunity and no one with a damn shred of authority is willing to step in and end the madness.
While I discourage anyone from escalating with the goons gathering signatures on false grounds, I am happy to see members of the public pushing back. Someone has to. Between their ample resources and open disdain for democracy—the spokesperson for the repeal front blamed people who regretted signing their petition on bad information for not reading the fine print—it’s likely they will persevere through all of the preliminaries. So it’s all hands on deck.
There’s a lot that can be done to repel the repeal between now and November. In the short term, that includes rallying alongside the organized opposition campaign, and attending our upcoming July 16 event with Quincy Cannabis Co. But in the longer term, over the next few months, it’s unfortunately going to have to mean perpetual vigilance for everyone—even evangelizing to nonsmoking friends, relatives, and neighbors when you’re not on canna time. Because despite the lunatic barkings of some boorish wannabe contrarians who claim to pine for the old days of looking over your shoulder for cops in lots, we’d rather just be looking for spots near our favorite legal pot shops.
