Cambridge pot shop seeks to hold city officials in contempt over delay
The Cambridge pot shop showdown has taken a new turn with lawyers asking the court to hold city officials in contempt for delaying weed sales.
Revolutionary Clinics filed a request for a finding of “civil contempt” against Cambridge Wednesday for not dropping a two-year ban on legal weed stores opening up for adult use. The shop only holds a license to sell to medical marijuana clients.
A Middlesex Superior Court judge ruled late last month that the city’s two-year moratorium on Revolutionary Clinics opening a full retail pot shop “violates the Home Rule Amendment” to the Massachusetts Constitution and state cannabis law.
Cambridge has since filed an emergency motion to freeze that ruling while it crafts an appeal.
That emergency “stay,” lawyers for Revolutionary Clinics argue, allows Cambridge to “enforce its illegal cannabis ordinance for years while it exhausts” all appeals.
That means no legal weed being sold to adults in Cambridge while the two sides fight it out in court.
The Cambridge City Council last fall approved a two-year moratorium during which only “economic empowerment candidates” as designated by the Cannabis Control Commission can operate retail pot shops in the city. The empowerment program was designed to help businesses in communities disproportionately and negatively affected by the prior criminalization of weed.
“Cambridge is not above the law, nor does it get to re-write marijuana laws to its liking,” wrote Jeffrey Robbins, attorney for Revolutionary Clinics. “Cambridge should be held in civil contempt and sanctioned for its action.”
Robbins, with the law firm Boston law firm Saul, Ewing, Arnstein and Lehr, said not only does his client suffer, but so too do other establishments looking to open up pot shops in Cambridge.
Lee Gianetti, a spokesman for the City of Cambridge, said last week the City Solicitor’s Office is seeking both an appeals decision and a stay of the order to allow Revolutionary Clinics to proceed with gaining a license to sell pot to adults.
Revolutionary Clinics claimed in October that it would cost the company $700,000 a month in lost profits by not being allowed to sell recreational weed in the city. The company has medical pot shops in Cambridge and Somerville and plans to open another store in Cambridge this year.
from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/39MvGRD
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