This election, Massachusetts voters will decide whether to put an end to legal recreational cannabis.
WAMC's Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief James Paleologopoulos spoke with the Berkshire Eagle's Nate Harrington about how Ballot Question 8 could affect the Berkshires, beginning with why many municipalities are asking residents to vote against the proposition.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
Editor's note: this conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Harrington: Municipalities really appreciate any business, especially in small rural towns. Any loss of business is a loss of revenue for them. And they not only see the cannabis industries as a business, but a lot of times they're valuable partners. In the town of Lee, town officials actually signed a resolution urging voters to vote no on Ballot Question 8, because of how integral those operations are to the town, and that goes beyond tax revenue. They're very vocal businesses in the town. They do a lot for the town. And Berkshire County has kind of become a hot spot for cannabis operations, particularly growing. Berkshire County has 10% of all grow facilities statewide, and when you compare that to our 1.8% of population statewide, that's a huge difference. And so Berkshire County was really eager to jump on this, and municipalities were really eager to jump on this. And so I don't think they want that revenue, no matter how large or how small it is, clawed back away from them.
Paleologopoulos: Now we should note at this point in time, unlike Question 9, which has to do with the 2024 gun law, in Question 8, a no is actually what keeps things as is, whereas a yes is in favor of repealing.
Harrington: Correct.
Paleologopoulos: It just it bears repeating, I feel, time and time again. So, with that in mind, let's just go ahead, take a look at what led us to this moment.
Harrington: Absolutely. So, cannabis was legalized in 2016. It wasn't overwhelmingly popular. It only passed with 54% of voters voting yes. The first recreational cannabis was sold in 2018 in Berkshire County. It was sold in 2019, and since then it has really grown into a billion-dollar industry. Truly, it made $1.5 billion in retail sales last year. In its lifetime, according to the Cannabis Control Commission, it's seen over $10 billion in retail sales, and that is a huge industry with a lot of infrastructure built into it. And so, what we have seen is a continuing train of industry being built upon itself, and we see a lot of dispensaries opening. We see a lot of grow facilities opening, and I think something that's worth noting is it's Massachusetts from top to bottom. Anything you buy in Massachusetts was grown, packaged, manufactured in Massachusetts, and that's kind of something that a lot of municipalities also recognize: they're not losing just one facet of this; they're not just losing the retail facet of this; they're losing every single step.
Paleologopoulos: I know in my corner of Massachusetts, or rather in my dip of Massachusetts, the Pioneer Valley, I've noticed a number of repurposed factory spaces, commercial spaces that had been vacant for, Lord knows how many years, and certain gateway cities, more suburban towns as well. These pot shops occupy a bunch of literal real estate in Pioneer Valley. I’ve got to ask Nate: in the Berkshires, can you measure the impact in that kind of way?
Harrington: I think that's something that my story touched on. The thought of the physical space left behind by this industry. Kind of putting aside what cannabis is, most of these buildings are specialized. There are a few that are repurposed, but if they're repurposed, they're heavily changed over. The HVAC system, the cooling system, the heating system for cannabis grows is not really applicable to anything else. And dispensaries oftentimes have really intense security features. They have a lot of room dedicated to giant safes.
Paleologopoulos: With all the benefits that we've touched on so far, of course, there's Question 8.
Harrington: Yeah. So, this was put on the ballot by Coalition for a Healthy Massachusetts, which is primarily funded by a Virginia-based group, which is Smart Approaches to Marijuana. They are a more national advocacy group standing in opposition to marijuana and cannabis, from medical all the way to recreational use, and their main rationale is they think it's a public safety risk. They worry that the commercialization of cannabis will lead to higher potency in the products, and they just don't think that cannabis really is…they think for the negatives that cannabis has, it isn't worth the tax and economic benefits that the state is seeing.
Paleologopoulos: I realize I'm casting a wide net here Nate, but the implications, if this repeal were to go through — any sense of what might happen overnight, or what might happen in the short term?
Harrington: I think there's going to be an immediate fallout, even though those laws won't be repealed until 2028, these businesses that have invested so much money into the area are immediately going to withdraw. They are going to cut their losses. They are going to see how much money that they can take out of it, and they're going to go elsewhere. And for the few that do remain, something about Ballot Question 8 is that they say retail recreational cannabis dispensaries will have an expedited process to become medical dispensaries, and dispensary owners say that's just not feasible. You have many millions of customers available for recreational cannabis, but there's only 80,000 medical cannabis users, and so that difference…the math doesn't work. These businesses are businesses at the end of the day. Nobody really knows what's going to happen. All we know is there's going to be a big fallout if this were to pass.
Paleologopoulos: We're actually speaking about 36 hours after a sizable UMass Amherst WCVB poll dropped regarding the ballot questions. When we look at Question 8 results, it looks pretty one sided.
Harrington: Yeah, I've really seen two big camps for pro and one big camp against. The two people in the pro are either cannabis users or they truly understand why people would use cannabis. Or the second group is maybe they don't see why cannabis is important. Maybe they don't want to use it, but they understand that it's somebody's right to have cannabis, and it's somebody's right to choose that they want to consume cannabis. And then the other side, there's still people who are really worried about the public safety side of it. They are really worried that people are driving high, are putting other people at risk because of cannabis consumption. And what I'll say about the UMass Amherst poll is that 61% are properly or somewhat likely to vote no on the question. And that is concerning dispensary owners because they want a wider margin. I know from the University of New Hampshire poll they said 71% were going to vote against it, and even then, some strategists for the cannabis industry were like, "That's too close.” This is a billion-dollar industry. This is a place that has millions of dollars in investment. They want something a little bit wider than a 20% margin, which tells you how much time and energy these companies have invested into the state.
Paleologopoulos: Nate, thank you so much for your time.
Harrington: Thank you for having me, James.
