Pot panel targets June for bill

Posted Wednesday, March 8, 2017 6:12 pm

BOSTON — The Legislature's new marijuana committee will begin its work in earnest later this month with an "overview" hearing at the State House before holding similar hearings elsewhere in the state, the committee chairs said Wednesday.

The hearing, scheduled for 11 a.m. on March 20, will be the first for the committee charged with researching and vetting marijuana-related bills filed since it became legal for adults to use, possess, grow or gift marijuana in December.

Legislative leaders are looking to the committee to produce a bill changing the ballot law written by marijuana advocates and approved by Massachusetts voters in November. The Legislature delayed implementation of most of the bill by six months.

"We're going to start with hearing from some of the people who are already engaged or who would be engaged," Senate Co-chair Sen. Patricia Jehlen said. "Some of the people we had in mind were the proponents, the treasurer, the attorney general, (the Department of Public Health), Gaming Commission, the governor, agriculture, Department of Revenue."

House co-chair Rep. Mark Cusack said the hearing would be "more of an overview of the people who are going to play a role in this" and said the committee is eager to hear their thoughts.

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The committee met as a group for the first time Wednesday, though the press and public were barred from attending the hour-long meeting, which the co-chairs described as a "meet and greet."

"It was a very informal, casual meet and greet. A lot of the committee members, particularly between the House and the Senate, had not met before," Cusack said. Jehlen added that a lot of the committee members were new to her.

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Jehlen and Cusack said the Committee on Marijuana Policy hopes to visit medical marijuana cultivation facilities and dispensaries in Massachusetts, and hopes to have completed its work on the ballot law changes by June, to coincide with the new fiscal year.

But what the committee's bill will encompass has not yet been determined. Forty-three bills have been referred to the fledgling committee, but the committee expects to receive more.

"All the bills have not been assigned yet, the House is hopeful to have them assigned by Friday. Once we gather those and go through them and see the issue we'll make the best decisions from there," Cusack said. "An omnibus bill in June, but what is necessarily going to be in that omnibus bill is what we need to see what legislation is being assigned to us for."

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Lawmakers over the years have largely avoided altering ballot laws, but they seem eager to change the marijuana law and that's likely to trigger constant debate over whether their recommendations go too far.

Among the possible changes to the law, the tax rate on marijuana sales appears most ripe for revision. The ballot law established a 3.75 percent tax rate on marijuana sales, on top of the state's 6.25 percent sales tax. Cities or towns have the ability to add their own 2 percent tax as well.

Sen. Jamie Eldridge, who supported the ballot question legalizing marijuana and now sits on the Marijuana Policy Committee, said he looks forward to hearing from people around the state on the issues surrounding legalization.

"It's everything from public safety issues to jobs created through the legalization of marijuana to certainly how marijuana should be taxed," he said. "Those are three that I've heard a lot about in my district."

The Joint Committee on Marijuana Policy's first public hearing will be held Monday, March 20 at 11 a.m. in hearing rooms A-1 and A-2 of the State House.