The States first pot shop drive through
Not only has Uxbridge seen the light regarding the potential benefits of added revenue, but they now suggest allowing a drive through pot shop and even expanding the limit of pot shops in their Town.
And we can't even get one going here in the Ham.
By Susan Spencer
Telegram & Gazette Staff
Telegram & Gazette Staff
Posted
Mar 27, 2019 at 5:48 PM Updated
Mar 27, 2019 at 7:39 PM
UXBRIDGE – Uxbridge may become home
to the region’s first drive-in retail marijuana dispensary, if a proposal that
received approval for a host community agreement by selectmen on Monday
succeeds in getting a license from the state Cannabis Control Commission.
Ironstone Express Inc., proposed by
its president, Barry Desruisseaux, who is also vice chairman of the Planning
Board, is the fourth retail marijuana business that selectmen have voted to
sign a host community agreement with. The town has capped the number of retail
pot shops at three, however, and one, Caroline’s Cannabis, has opened for
business. The other two are pending in the state licensing process.
Selectmen expressed a desire to “let
the market sort it out” and place an article on fall town meeting warrant, or
through special town meeting or citizens’ petition earlier, that would raise
the retail marijuana cap.
Mr. Desruisseaux said the express,
drive-in facility would be in what is now a car wash at 454 Quaker Highway.
The idea came to him, he said, from
concern over people with disabilities having to wait in long lines to get into
traditional marijuana retailers, and from a privacy perspective.
“It’s none of your business what I
do,” he said, noting that there still is stigma about purchasing marijuana.
“Everyone stays in their vehicle. It’s a one-on-one transaction,” in his
proposed store.
A few drive-in marijuana retailers
have opened in Colorado and elsewhere, but not in Massachusetts, Mr.
Desruisseaux said.
Ironstone Express would not be the
kind of retailer with 48 different strains of marijuana, he added. “This is
something where people can come in, get what they need and get out.”
Mr. Desruisseaux said he intended to
sell prepackaged marijuana grown by cultivators in Uxbridge.
He has met with other town
officials, including the chief of police, to discuss security, health and
safety concerns. Drivers would have their license scanned before entering an
order bay and then when they pick up their product down the line. No one would
leave their vehicle and drivers won’t be allowed to have passengers under age
21.
Under the host agreement, Ironstone
Express would pay a 3 percent community impact fee, plus the 3 percent local
sales tax. The town manager was authorized to negotiate additional terms.
According to projections presented
by Mr. Desruisseaux, the community impact payments, at 3 percent of gross
sales, would range from $81,000 in 2019 to 96,236 in 2021.
A host community agreement proposal
for another marijuana business, a 130,000-square-foot cultivation facility
operated by Cultivate, which has a retail store in Leicester, was tabled until
a future meeting because company representatives weren’t able to attend. The
cultivation plant would be in Campanelli Business Park, west of the Interstate
146-Route 16 interchange.
posted by Jim Pillsbury @ 9:19 AM
5 Comments
5 Comments:
Not to rain on your parade Jim but I hear a report today that emergency rooms visits related to pot in Colorado have increased by 40% since it became legal. Those types of numbers are upsetting, don't you agree?
This makes about as much sense as a drive through liquor store. Do we have any of those in Framingham? Hopefully no drive through pot shops either.
I'll wait to weigh in on that report... I've not heard about it. Seems like a big increase just because of pot. I wonder if we (Mass hospitals) have seen a 40% increase in ER visits related to pot. And I'd even look back as far as 2012 when we approved medical use. That would be telling if it's happening here. And I would be very surprised.
we don't have drive throughs except for banks and drug stores.. hmmmm drug stores can do it.. but not pot shops? The Town is smart to recognize the potential imo.
I found the report on CNN. Digging a little deeper I found this from 2015.
The Rocky Mountain HIDTA 2015 report says data on “marijuana-related” hospital visits come from “lab tests, self-admitted or some other form of validation by the physician.”
The report breaks the data down into Colorado emergency department rates for visits that are “likely related” and “could be related” to marijuana. The former showed a 77 percent increase from 2011 to 2014; the latter a 68 percent increase.
Emergency room visits that could be related to marijuana included “any mention of marijuana” in the medical codes, and that was “not necessarily related to the underlying reason” for seeking medical care, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
Emergency room visits that are likely related to marijuana included instances in which medical codes for poisoning by psychodysleptics are mentioned. They also included instances in which codes for cannabis abuse are listed first, second or third by medical coders.
Furthermore, Andrew Monte, an emergency medicine physician and medical toxicologist at the University of Colorado, Denver, told us by email that the order in which medical codes are listed is, in his experience, “arbitrary” because they are “assigned by billers, not practitioners at the bedside.”
For this reason, Monte and his colleagues chose to look at all instances of only marijuana-related medical codes in their recent study on emergency department visits related to the drug.
Still, Monte told us his “study design is flawed” because “many of the included cases are not due to cannabis,” since the data comes from medical codes.
The state health department report also states that increases in emergency room visit rates in Colorado “have many potential explanations” and that without a full medical record review, it cannot “determine with certainty whether marijuana was truly a causal or contributing factor,” even in “likely related” cases. “This is a significant limitation,” the state health department report says. Monte agreed. In fact, he currently has “a group working on this but it takes months to get through these charts.”
Overall, Monte said, he has “clearly seen increased adverse effects from cannabis use,” but Colorado’s “emergency departments and hospitals are not overrun by cannabis related complaints.”
Interesting on the study. Why hasn't someone actually done a real study on this issue of medical effects of pot? Seems we are overdue to see something like that.
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