You may have seen the news reports last week. Here’s NECN summarizing the original State House News Service (SHNS) story:
A Massachusetts senator is facing multiple charges after allegedly driving drunk over the weekend. According to State House News, Sen. Michael Brady, of Brockton, was arrested in Weymouth early Saturday morning while on his way home.
Brady’s office confirmed to State House News that he had been arrested. He pleaded not guilty during his arraignment Monday in Quincy District Court on charges of operating under the influence, negligent operation of a motor vehicle, and marked lanes violations.
In the time since, the senator, who was reportedly found “unsteady on his feet, glassy-eyed and smelling of alcohol,” has said he is entering “professional treatment and counseling for alcohol use,” according to the SHNS. Which means people are supposed to just forgive the guy and say nice things, though that doesn’t appear to be happening. As SHNS reporter Andy Metzger reported this week:
Facing potential criminal repercussions for allegedly driving drunk, Sen. Mike Brady could also eventually face consequences in the legislative chamber he joined three years ago. Senators should discuss possible action, according to Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr, and Senate President Harriette Chandler said this week a decision over whether to take action in the Senate would follow adjudication of Brady’s case in the courts.
Cannabis advocates should do some adjudicating as well. Because as you may have guessed, Sen. Stumble Pants is no friend of trees. Imagine that. Here’s Brady in a Boston Globe magazine article from a year ago hobbling farmers who want to grow weed:
In Massachusetts, “right to farm” laws exempted agricultural activities from local zoning restrictions. In other words, growing crops—including, presumably, legal marijuana—didn’t require a special permit. But that changed after Jeffrey Randall, a fourth-generation farmer, proposed a medical marijuana facility on his cranberry farm in Plympton last year.
While two of the town’s three selectmen at first supported his plan, a vocal contingent of Randall’s neighbors opposed it. That led the town’s state legislators, Representative Thomas Calter and Senator Michael Brady, to sponsor a bill that excluded marijuana from Massachusetts’s right-to-farm laws. Lawmakers passed a version of that right-to-farm exclusion late last year as part of a bill to delay by six months the implementation of the recreational marijuana program.
Brady told the Globe, “That bill was to support the residents in Plympton who don’t want this grown in their backyard.” Meanwhile, Randall [the farmer] told the Globe that “the bill sunk his plan to grow cannabis on his agricultural land. … They basically disallowed it in any place but commercial and industrial zones. … Basically this stops any agriculturalist from entering this industry.”
While the Cannabis Control Commission’s final regulations for “Adult Use of Marijuana” certainly open up more opportunities for farmers than Brady probably hoped for, it’s nonetheless a perfect moment to consider the goons who hold office in Mass, and to mock and scrutinize the prohibitionists among us. Brady is a joke, a politician who opposed Question 4. He can’t even be trusted to operate a motor vehicle, let alone participate in regulating an intoxicant that he clearly has a strong distaste for.
