Though Question 3 was approved by 63% of voters last week, paving the way for medical marijuana to be made available in Massachusetts, residents in some towns are being proactive by working to ensure that a pot shop doesn’t open in their neighborhood. The Boston Globe, reports today that Melrose officials are considering a proposal to ban a so-called medicinal marijuana “treatment centers” from their city. The city’s Board of Aldermen and Planning Board will hold a joint meeting Monday to consider the changes to city ordinances that would ban the pot shops in all zoning districts.
Residents in Wakefield, Reading, Malden and Saugus have also said they are considering ways to keep the dispensaries out of their towns. “We do not want these dispensaries in the town of Wakefield,” town administrator Stephen Maio said in a post on Nonprofit Quarterly. “We feel there are incidents of crime around these facilities, that they bring down property values.”
It is interesting to note that Rhode Island passed a medical marijuana dispensaries bill in 2009, but three years later, not one has been opened.