In light of a rebellion among Massachusetts cannabis dispensaries against the payment of community impact fees, the decision of some towns and cities to eliminate the fees, and the state Cannabis Control Commission’s (CCC’s) decision to rework the rules around them, the Great Barrington Selectboard has decided to follow the lead of Boston, Northampton, and Cambridge not to include community impact fees as part of renewals of Host Community Agreements for the town’s six dispensaries, five of which are in active operation. (To date, Calyx is the only dispensary with this new, five-year agreement.)
In another impactful decision for Great Barrington and, in particular, its most successful dispensary, Theory Wellness, the state CCC has announced that municipalities will not be required to refund the community impact fees they have already collected. Theory had not only stopped paying the fees; it had also requested a full refund of the $4.1 million it had paid in, but which has not yet been spent by the town.
Theory Wellness CEO Brandon Pollock responded to this news in an email by acknowledging that he had not expected an across-the-board refund policy to be established, as some towns and cities might have “legitimate cost impacts” due to the cannabis industry. But, he stressed, “municipalities such as Great Barrington that have determined year after year that they haven’t experienced any impacts should absolutely return the fees, as those funds can only be used to offset documented negative impacts. Theory has requested our community impact fees to be returned and are waiting to hear back on when that may occur.”
Clearly, despite these recent decisions, open questions remain, and, in addition to Theory, former Great Barrington Selectboard member Ed Abrahams has a few of them. He was one of the central figures in the town’s establishment of its Host Community Agreements in the rollout years of recreational cannabis. He wants to know where Theory Wellness—as well as Rebelle, which stopped paying the fees in fiscal year 2022—stands in regard to their current agreements, with which they are now out of compliance. “The ones who are behind their payments just because they stopped paying, what does that mean? They don’t have to pay? Are they required to pay in order to get a new host agreement? Do the new rules, whatever they are, change the host agreements that are still in effect?” Abrahams is frustrated by the state’s ongoing lack of specificity all along. “Why do I still have these questions, seven years after legalization?”
History of community impact fees in Great Barrington
In the wake of the November 2016 vote to legalize recreational marijuana in Massachusetts, the Cannabis Control Commission, the governing body established to set the rules, required those towns and cities that had voted in the majority to establish Host Community Agreements with their cannabis outlets, to be renewed every five years. Towns and cities could—but were not required to—include in those agreements a community impact fee (CIF), to be calculated at three percent of gross sales, and paid quarterly.
Great Barrington chose to impose CIFs, which were meant to offset what were then the unknowable—but presumed negative—impacts of hosting cannabis stores. Ambiguity reigned. As far as the state commission was concerned, the only requirement of the programs or projects the fees could fund was that they must be “reasonably related to the costs imposed upon those municipalities” by the presence of the dispensaries. But the CCC offered no definition of “reasonably related,” so municipalities defined it for themselves. Among the related costs officials were predicting back then was the need for a hugely increased police presence in town, a rise in traffic fatalities, and general wear and tear on infrastructure.
Without state direction, the town decided on a conservative approach to spending its windfall, distinguishing between direct and indirect impacts. As Theory’s Pollock pointed out, Great Barrington has consistently stated its state-mandated annual letter to each dispensary that “no significant costs have been imposed on the town related to the operation of your establishment.”
But Town Manager Mark Pruhenski clarified in an interview that, as one of the first cannabis destinations on the eastern seaboard, Great Barrington had its eye on other, less tangible harms. “We’ve been really careful and very mindful of how we use this money. … We decided to fund programs that would help youth prevention education, based on the assumption that the industry would have an indirect impact on our community.”
He set up a committee of five citizens—which today is made up of Chair Rebecca Gold, Selectboard member Garfield Reed, Holly Hamer, Martha Klay, and Tori Pajeski—to review grant applications. The committee, under Gold’s leadership, followed Pruhenski’s conservative lead, looking ahead to when the fund would run dry. According to her, they agreed among themselves, “This money could make a huge difference in our community, so we’ve got to spend this very, very thoughtfully.”
When it became clear that parking and infrastructure were not going to be long-term headaches, the committee’s attention turned toward youth. Says Gold, “We’ve got higher than average depression rates here, we’ve got higher than average substance use here, and we’ve got kids driving through town with all these dispensaries and more stuff available in a lot of their homes. That’s a concern.”
Over the four years of CIF grant-making, the committee has spent about $1.45 million total, allocating $185,000 the first year, and $350,000 in each of the following two years. This year $500,000 is available for grants. That leaves approximately $4.2 million collected and unspent.
Berkshire Hills Regional School District has been the largest recipient of Great Barrington’s CIFs, with $185,000 allocated last year to fund the district’s wellness efforts, which now include a full-time director of health and wellness and a school adjustment counselor at Monument Mountain High School.
Iona Smith is the health and wellness director and says the “momentum” set in place with her work has enabled the district to hire, through their regular budgeting process, a full-time health educator. Other recipients of CIF funds have included Railroad Street Youth Project, Volunteers in Medicine, and Rural Recovery.
Programs applying in this year’s grant cycle must focus on “Health and safety, education and outreach, particularly for youth,” with the application including this further explanation: “Negative health impacts associated with cannabis use have been established, especially in adolescents whose brains have not fully developed. With dispensaries located in highly visible locations in town and the increased possibility that cannabis use is occurring in their homes, youth need reliable education regarding cannabis more than ever…”
Since marijuana was under prohibition until very recently, there is still very little data on how today’s highly potent strains and methods of ingestion affect growing children. But the negative health impacts of cannabis on developing brains and bodies have indeed been well-established, laid out recently in, among other places, the Journal of the American Medical Association and the journal Neuropsychology, as well as through investigations by The New York Times, PBS, and ABC News. Some studies have concluded that cannabis use, for young people, is more damaging than alcohol use.
But where, if anywhere, is the evidence that Great Barrington’s cannabis stores in particular are contributing to the harm? Last spring Abrahams asked Railroad Street Youth Project (RSYP) Executive Director Ananda Timpane to speak about the 2022–2023 school year results of the Prevention Needs Assessment Survey. RSYP helps the two local public school districts administer the health survey to eighth, 10th, and 12th graders.
Timpane spoke at length at the board’s April 24 meeting, stipulating that RSYP takes a public health approach to substance use in general, which means, among other things, acknowledging “that moderate cannabis use is not a problem for adults, and we can also, together as a community, successfully prevent, delay and reduce use among youth, for whom it is a health concern.”
Youth here have historically reported high substance use rates across the board when compared to both the rest of Berkshire County and the nation, so there is nothing new about the recent high numbers. Rather than stress use rates in her presentation, Timpane zeroed in on the risk and protective factors that contribute to use and abstinence. Risk factors, as defined by Bach Harrison, the creator of the survey, are “characteristics of school, community and family environments, and of students and their peer groups known to predict increased likelihood of drug use, delinquency, school dropout, and violent behaviors among youth.” Protective factors “exert a positive influence and buffer against the negative influence of risk, thus reducing the likelihood that adolescents will engage in problem behaviors.”
The four risk factors which drive much of the underage cannabis use in southern Berkshire County, said Timpane, relate to community, parent, school, peer/individual norms. These are the perceptions by youth that the people around them condone drug use, and “the extent to which youth perceive drug use to be a low-risk activity,” and are, as laid out by Timpane, the starting point for considering whether or not the opening of recreational dispensaries and growing facilities, which started in early 2019, had anything to do what young people are reporting.
Prior to 2019, there had been good news regarding “Community Norms Favoring Cannabis Use.” The number of children reporting a community supporting cannabis use had been coming down in recent years, since a high of 61 percent in 2015. “But since shops opened,” Timpane said, “it’s started moving back up.” It has gone up eight points since 2019, from 46 percent to 54 percent, and where we were eight points above the national average in 2019, we are now at sixteen points above. “So we’re seeing change in the wrong direction there.”
The same trend is clear when it comes to youth reporting parental attitudes favorable to cannabis use. In 2017 and ’19, this rate was about 40 percent, and now it is up to 44 percent, which is 13 points over the national average. The decline of youth reporting peer attitudes favoring drug use between 2011 and 2019 was “really big,” Timpane stressed. That rate started at 60 percent and went down dramatically, to a low of 40 percent. It is now climbing again, and is up to 46 percent, or 10 points over the national average.
In terms of youth perception of the risk of cannabis use, that number was also declining. From a high in the mid-60 percent range in the chunk of earlier data, it went down to a low of 56 percent in 2019, when the first dispensaries opened. It is now up to 68 percent, 13 points over the nation.
She pointed out as a particular area of concern the current use rates among eighth graders. Those rates had been mirroring the nation’s but are now over the national average.
To counteract these worrisome trends, dispensaries and community agencies can partner on collaborative steps, Timpane believes. “We can have a community norm,” she suggested, “that people wait to use cannabis until they’ve gotten through most of the big brain development part.” As liquor stores do to keep alcohol out of underage hands, local cannabis vendors can provide information about how to keep your supply safely out of the hands of kids and can work with nonprofits and schools on prevention education. (You can listen to her entire presentation here.)
Of the CCC’s decision not to require towns to refund collected but unspent CIF funds, Timpane commented, “It’s a good thing,” she says, “and it’s a good thing because the town’s approach really aligns well with public health, which means thinking over a longer period of time than two or three years.”
The committee overseeing Great Barrington’s $500,000 community impact fee allotment for the 2024 fiscal year will begin considering applications after an October 31 deadline.
Read Part One of Sheela Clary’s “Berkshire County’s reckoning with cannabis” here.
