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Medical marijuana dispensary that now says it wants to sell recreational pot insists it didn't lie to neighbors, city

WGBH reports on the contretemps involving an attempt by Patriot Care, which runs a medicinal marijuana dispensary at 21 Milk St. downtown to add recreational pot sales, even though it told downtown residents and city officials looking at its dispensary plans three years ago that it would not seek to sell recreational versions of the stuff.

Patriot Care says it wasn't lying, it just never realized that recreational pot would become legal so fast - an assertion some are finding hard to swallow.

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Comments

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So I'm sure neighbors are worried this will change the place from being pharmacy-like to effectively a neighborhood smoke shop. And they were explicitly promised this wouldn't happen!

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Medicinal smokers are just recreational smokers who got a doctor to sign off on a prescription. Promises notwithstanding, many of the same people will be frequenting this place either way. And since weed is basically legal now in Mass does it really matter?

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I know several people who use marijuana for medicinal purposes (not always smoking, either) who never used it recreationally and are using it despite it's psychoactive effects, not because of them. People taking it for epilepsy, severe nausea from chemo, or intractable pain are not looking to get high - they are looking to be able to function.

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I know several people who use cannabis (cause let's not use a racist made-up word that was intended to help make it illegal by associating it with Mexicans) entirely for its psychoactive effects with medical cards for completely made-up reasons because they paid a doctor $150.

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It is more than 150. To get into a dispensary, you need an additional $200 card.

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Your friends may be deceiving you or are uninformed. The medicinal benefits can be attained without the psychoactive side effects via CBD oil and the like (how they treat children). Maybe they just like, ya know, getting stoned.

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Plenty of places to educate yourself about this. You might want to start with Google.

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What do you mean by smoke shop? A place where you can buy products and then go home...like CVS? B/c you aren't going to be able to smoke it in there. That will be another fight...it will go something like "we can have bars that serve alcohol but over my dead body can you have a coffee shop where you can enjoy a coffee/tea and a toke. THE CHILDREN"

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CVS stopped selling tobacco in 2014.

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( all their customers start guzzling bottles of booze while leaving the store! )

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Sire Naturals (formerly Sage) on Mass Ave. in Cambridge is trying to pull the same switcharoo. I think you are going to see a lot of this from both medical dispensaries and vape shops. This was always their long term business plan.

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The medical dispensaries were the first to be allowed to sell recreational, if they had a clean track record of understanding and following the rules.

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I believe Question 4 on the ballot even specified this for MA.

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They should be denied, if only for making this statement:

"We made that commitment three years ago, and never in our wildest imagination did we think that within any period of time, certainly in 10 years or so, that would this have happened — that the state would vote in favor of adult-use marijuana," Kunian said. "There were no indications three years ago."

If they simply said "We changed our mind" then fine, but this sort of flaming BS should be stomped on.

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They said what they had to say to be able to open in the first place. That's how you have to play the game in Boston. If they had said that they might want to sell recreational marijuana in the future, those same "concerned" neighbors, the ones who now say that Patriot Care has been a great neighbor, would have definitely said no to them even opening in the first place. Patriot Care really had no choice but to make a promise they know they couldn't keep because it's the only way to reassure irrational people that their concerns of impending doom will not actually come to fruition.

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Expecting a business to keep a promise for infinity seems rather naive.

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to get money. That's fraud.

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I work downtown 6 days a week and I'm more concerned about all the meth and crack addicts that get to hang out all day/night around the Tremont and Otis st areas harassing people! The only thing you can complain about with pot smokers is that they smell...not as bad as cigarette smokers in my opinion, but they do smell pretty bad...

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irrational NIMBYs are up in arms about something that's no big deal. Breaking news in Boston!

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I get that the majority of the voters of the Commonwealth are okay with recreational marijuana, but these guys lied. If they had not said that they were not going to go into the recreational marijuana business, sure, let them sell.

And that crock about not foreseeing the advent of recreational marijuana sales is really tough to swallow. I might not think it's a good thing (and please, let's not debate this, since no one will change their minds) but even I saw this coming.

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Things untrue in the present are lies, for example: "Marijuana is a gateway drug to opioid abuse".

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This place is run by ex-Goldman Sachs investment bankers: deceitful liars that mislead the public and local communities.

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This is why you always ask whether the promise is being made in the subjunctive or indicative!

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NIMBYism comes in all kinds of forms.

Also, was the statement they made legally binding?

Business is all about that $$$

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Where you got to see that moron who thinks his shit doesn’t stink, Bob Mayerson, CEO of the ex-Goldman owned Patriot Care, lying through his veneers about the benevolent intentions of Patriot Care while his piece of shit lobbyist, ex-DPH bureaucrat Dan Delaney stood in his usual position in the background looking like a goon with his arms folded in an off the rack suit.

The future of weed, everyone!

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However, criticizing the guy for not having a custom made suit is a bit much.

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that cut your finger if you try to touch them. This putz made chump change to get the old Goldman scumbags he works for their little monopoly,he could at least dress like a Goldman guy.

Is that too much to ask of a lobbyist or one who plays at being one while fucking medical marijuana patients?

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Still illegal per Federal law.

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