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Chinatown fights dispensaries
By adamg on Sun, 02/26/2023 - 12:25pm
Sampan reports on ongoing efforts to keep dispensaries out of Chinatown. One argument: Unlike other places where pot shops have opened, Chinatown isn't just a commercial area, it's one of the most densely populated residential parts of Boston.
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Comments
Hey Chinatown
What’s worse, a licensed dispensary or an unlicensed rub and tug.
They’re playing the same card every other neighborhood group has. Dispensaries haven’t lead to increased crime in any other section of the city.
A different angle
They may just not want Chinatown to be treated as "the vice district".
Think of the Children
The validity of the argument breaks down with the following statement:
If we ban all vices then demand for all vices will be gone.
They also hit the "gateway
They also hit the "gateway drug" meme. All they need now is "pushers will make your kids use drugs and get addicted" and they'll have covered all of Nancy Reagan's greatest hits.
Short-sighted thinking...
Weed gives people the munchies and people with munchies by more Peking Ravioli, chicken fingers, chicken wings and scallion pancakes, among other delicacies.
Maybe it’s not all about….
…. profits for them and more about community.
Buzzkill...
Had to be said :)
I mean
...you came up with "chicken fingers" as an example of the typical cuisine to be found in Chinatown, so...
"Young people"
" Take the cigarettes out of the bodegas, the alcohol out of the corner shop, and the lottery tickets from behind the counter. Those are all legal, but they’re destroying our young people.”
I never see "young people" buying lottery tickets. I know one has to be 18 to purchase, but they seem almost exclusively the province of much older people.
Just like if you go to the methadone mile or North Station, the opiate addicts are all middle aged, or at least in their 30s. Go look for yourselves. Yet we continually hear politicians and other officials talk about saving our "young people" from drugs, as if it were the 1960s.
“ Take the cigarettes out of
“ Take the cigarettes out of the bodegas “
I agree with him there. And so do a majority of Americans who believe all smokable tobacco product sales should be banned, according to a recent nationwide poll.
Chinatown has a serious secondhand smoke problem and has the worst air pollution in the entire state. No one should ever have to should be exposed to secondhand and third hand smoke. From tobacco nor from cannabis.
Restricting smoking in public areas has proven to be a big factor in getting smokers to quit.
The air quality issue in Chinatown
Is attributed largely to transportation (i.e. 93 and 90 traffic and South Station).
It is not largely due to smoking (2nd/3rd hand) or (surprisingly) people like me with weak digestive issues who insist on eating the most spicy menu options (don't nobody go in there for 40-45 minutes or so).
You misread. Obviously the poor air quality ….
… is mostly due to motor vehicle emissions.
Smokers in one of the most densely populated, if not the most densely populated, neighborhood in Boston only add to the problem.
You misread. Obviously the poor air quality ….
… is mostly due to motor vehicle emissions.
Smokers in one of the most densely populated, if not the most densely populated, neighborhood in Boston only adds to the problem.
“ Patricia, a longtime agency
“ Patricia, a longtime agency director, remembers the many years it took to push the nude bars and clubs (Boston’s Combat Zone) out of Chinatown. “We would be allowing that same kind of culture back into our community if we permit these cannabis shops into our community. We must be vigilant and never allow businesses who only care about making money to ever use Chinatown and its people again. ” ”
She has a point.
Sounds like she’s using the past
To justify her point. But pot shops aren’t nude bars.
They already exist around the city, including Brookline and soon to be JP. It’s not like the city is sticking all of the pot shops in Chinatown.
She further says, “ Isn’t it
She further says, “ Isn’t it frightening that 3 different cannabis dispensaries have been trying to open in Chinatown since 2020 ?”
Chinatown is tiny. JP and Brookline are enormous in comparison.
As far as pot shops not being nude bars, it looks like that might not be far off in the future. See this recent article in UHub:
https://www.universalhub.com/2023/man-who-part-investment-group-buys-bos...
Whats the population of Chinatown?
I can't find a reliable, recent number for Chinatown specifically.
Wikipedia has a 2010 population of 5,848 people, but even if it's a small geographic neighborhood, it is in the middle of a larger, populous city.
Wellfleet has a year-round population of 3,566 from the 2020 census. Wellfleet has 3 cannabis dispensaries now.
So do I find it troubling that 3 different entities are seeking to be able to open shops in Chinatown? Not really. There's a whole lot more people year-round in and around Chinatown than in Wellfleet.
There are pot shops in JP and
There are pot shops in JP and it shows.
Right, sorry was thinking
Of Center st location opening soon.
Chinatown
Ward 3 precincts 7 and 8 voted almost 2:1 in favor of recreational marijuana in 2016, similar to the rest of the state of Massachusetts. Give the people what they want.
They voted to decriminalize it.
They did not vote in favor of having it stink up the air they breathe.
Huh?
This is about allowing the sale of products.
The vote in 2016 was to LEGALIZE the sale recreational marijuana in Massachusetts. Not decriminalize, that vote took place in 2008. If members of a neighborhood strongly voted in favor of sales of a product that was previously not legal to sell, presumably they might support the purchase of such a product in their neighborhood.
Forget it Sampan; It's
Forget it potheads; It's Chinatown.
So?
Nobody voted for that, and in fact it isn't legal to smoke in public anywhere, currently.
As if smokers actually respect …
…. non smokers and non smoking areas.
Or anyone actually enforces them.
ymmv
If you hang out outside dispensaries and have actual data, or even anecdata, I'd love to hear it. I've yet to see this thing that you are bald-faced claiming happens all the time.
Read my comment again.
You misread.
Oh I'm sorry
Oh I'm sorry, I thought it was obvious that since the subject is marijuana, I was talking about smoking marijuana. So I'll put it to you again: have you observed people standing outside dispensaries smoking or otherwise consuming the product that they just purchased?
Apology accepted.
Apology accepted.
Weak
Dodged the question again, I see.
So in that case
who cares where the dispensaries are? There's no reason to believe that people are more likely to smoke up immediately outside of a dispensary vs anywhere else, and there's nothing stopping anyone from buying pot elsewhere and coming to Chinatown to smoke it.