Framingham Abandons Marijuana Zone; Moves Ahead with Temporary Ban on Dispensaries
Massachusetts Attorney General's Office rules communities can place temporary moratoriums on medical marijuana dispensaries but it can not ban them within its borders.
The Town of Framingham has decided to put on hold a zoning district to allow medical marijuana dispensaries along Route 9, next to Natick.
Tuesday night, Framingham Selectmen removed the proposed medical marijuana dispensary zoned district from the Annual Town Meeting Warrant.
But Framingham Town Meeting will still have a say on medical marijuana as Framingham Selectmen Tuesday placed on the warrant a proposed article to establish a temporary moratorium on medical marijuana dispensaries until July 1, 2014.
“We’ve developed a bylaw but we’re waiting to see if it will fit with the state’s direction,” Planning Board Chair Tom Mahoney said last week at a public hearing on the proposed moratorium article. “This moratorium gives us time to wait for the state’s guidance.”
“We’d hate to accept someone based on our bylaws and then when the state bylaws come down we’d have to go back and tell them no,” Planning Board member Andrea Carr-Evans said last week.
The Massachusetts Department of Public Health has been given oversight of implementing the rules of the new medical marijuana law, which takes effect in 2013, after voters approved a ballot question in November 2012.
Framingham Town Manager Bob Halpin said the Massachusetts Municipal Association (MMA) estimated the Health Department's rules & regulations may come in April, but the MMA was recommending everything be delayed until July 1, 2013.
Such bans would frustrate the purpose of the medical marijuana law, passed by referendum last fall, that allows patients with certain medical conditions to obtain marijuana for medical use, the ruling said.
In a separate decision, the AG's office approved the Town of Burlington’s temporary moratorium on medical marijuana treatment centers, which bans such centers until mid-2014, reported Boston.com.
This is the course the Town of Framingham has decided to take.
Halpin told Selectmen Tuesday night that neighboring Natick was also looking at a proposed moratorium, like Framingham.
JSnr
4:27 pm on Friday, March 22, 2013
Speaking of pushing, look at what is happening in Colorado: ..."Spike in children using marijuana"
http://denver.cbslocal.com/2013/03/06/drug-testing-company-sees-spike-in-children-using-marijuana/
74% of children in a Denver youth substance abuse treatment program report getting their pot from a "medical" marijuana cardholder an average of 50 times. (-- Journal of Child Psychiatry, June 2012, Thurstone)
If this is supposed to be medicine, why is the ONLY requirement for dispensary personnel that they be 21 years of age and have no felony drug convictions? This law required NO qualified medical staff on site whatsoever.
IF there is medicinal value in this plant, prove it through clinical trials, and get the legitimate FDA approved medicines behind the counter at a legitimate pharmacy.
We closed the opium dens over 100 years ago -- because of public health crises from broad scale use. From the opium poppy was derived heroin, and finally morphine. Why start pushing raw crude marijuana out into broad public use now? It defies logic. Isn't this a history lesson it would be better not to have to repeat?
97% of medical marijuana users in states with no specifically qualified medical conditions (like the Mass. Law) claim non-profound ailments like stress, ADD, pain, insomnia, and other self-reported symptoms. And new research and evidence of physical and mental health risks is mounting -- most dramatic and concerning in the adolescent through age 25.