Drug Warrior gets one of the first marijuana dispensary licenses in Massachusetts
The recipients of the first medical marijuana dispensary licenses in Massachusetts were announced last week by the Department of Public Health, but even before the news came out, critics were crying foul play. Former U.S. Congressman and longtime Norfolk County District Attorney William Delahunt—now president of a company called Medical Marijuana of Massachusetts—had applied for three of just 35 licenses that can be awarded by the state. No stranger to accusations of underhanded deals, Delahunt was accused by the Massachusetts Republican Party of leveraging his relationship with DPH Commissioner Cheryl Bartlett—who once donated money to his PAC.
Then, when the first group of 20 licensees was announced and Delahunt’s group was awarded all three of the licenses it sought, Massachusetts Republicans lashed out again. “The public cannot have faith in the decisions made by the Department of Public Health because of the apparent conflict of interest for Commissioner Bartlett and the secrecy surrounding the awarding of licenses,” wrote MassGOP executive director Rob Cunningham. (A full list of the licensees and an explanation behind the application process can be read here.)
Whether or not you think Cunningham has a point, you don’t need to look that deep into the licensing process to come away with a bad taste in your mouth. Let’s begin with the very idea that Delahunt, the District Attorney for Norfolk County from 1976 to 1996—a man whose job it was, for decades, to arrest and prosecute citizens for the possession and sale of marijuana—now has three state-issued licenses to deal weed. On its face, this is a perversion so absurd it’s practically comical. It’s so unprecedentedly offensive, it’s hard to find a comparison. It’s as if a local MADD chapter scooped up a suddenly vacated liquor license. Or PETA availed itself of loosened food truck restrictions to operate a sausage stand, maybe. How opportunistic is it? It’s like, well, spending years opposing the Cape Wind project, then earmarking 1.7 million in federal money to support a wind-energy project in Hull, and then—after leaving office—conspiring to have your lobbying firm reap heavy consulting fees from the same project you formerly opposed but just earmarked federal funds for. That’s exactly what Delahunt did—or at least planned to do, until the New York Times pointed out the brazenness of the scheme, and the Globe quoted experts calling the deal a “self-made golden parachute.” Only then did the former Congressman have a sudden change of heart, announcing that he was declining to take the town’s money.
You can tell this is not Delahunt’s first rodeo. According to a Herald story from earlier this year, Delahunt, who once pledged to ‘hit marijuana dealers where it hurts’ in the ‘90s, now says the difference is that, “They weren’t using it then for medicinal purposes” back then.
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2014/02/06/william-delahunts-big-bad-marijuana-flip-flop/
= new reply since forum marked as read
