Despite a succesful statewide ballot initiative stipulating a January 2018 opening date for recreational marijuana shops in Massachusetts, state legislators on Wednesday voted to push that deadline back by six months. On Friday, Gov. Charlie Baker signed the postponement into law.

As Statehouse News Service reported the governor's decision to proceed, opponents of the delay had just started a planned rally outside the State House, calling on Baker to veto the bill. With the governor's signature, Massachusetts pot shops will now open their doors in the summer of 2018, under a new law passed hastily with few legislators present this week, a move The Boston Globe called "extraordinary."

Previously, some lawmakers have argued the recreational legalization law moves too fast, as law enforcement and local municipalities grapple with the new regulations and impending potential marijuana retail openings. Critics have argued that a year and change was time enough for other states with similar ballot initiatives to ready for the change wrought by legalization, that Massachusetts deprives itself of tax revenue by delaying and that it flies in the face of voters' will. An aide to the governor told WHDH 7News that Baker "shares the desire of state lawmakers to thoroughly prepare for launching a new industry aimed at distributing a controlled substance."

The Massachusetts Cannabis Reform Coalition, which planned the rally, previously called the delay legislation "shameful and unwise," writing it "not only flies in the face of the will of the voters who voted for the January 2018 deadline, it shows contempt for the legislature itself." Possession, use and in-home growing for recreational marijuana is already legal, after a majority of voters this November approved a statewide ballot measure legalizing the practice. Medical marijuana shops, additionally, are already legal and open here as well, even if their approval seemed like a slow-moving process to many.

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