When selectboard Chair Steve Bannon opened the floor to comments from the audience, most seemed to agree that, in addition to placing restrictions on the stores, the larger question remains about what kind of image the tourism-minded town wants to project.
Theory Wellness, the first medical cannabis dispensary to launch in the Berkshires and one of the first recreational retailers to open in the state, has stepped forward to fund and operate a social equity program designed to support "economic empowerment" entrepreneurs in opening cannabis dispensaries.
"Ultimately, it costs so much money for people to start these businesses, that it's just another way for rich people to make more money. That's not a great thing for a town that touts itself as progressive."
-- Great Barrington Selectboard member Kate Burke
In the push for medical cannabis approval in 2012 in Massachusetts, and then to the passage of recreational in 2016, the ACLU, Drug Policy Alliance and others stressed the racial and class disparities of the war on drugs. It is a fair guess that many of the more than 60 percent of Berkshire County voters who checked “yes” on the 2016 ballot question did so at least in part to help right these wrongs.
