In Part I of her article (see May issue of POV), the author makes the point that traffic has increased in residential areas where cannabis shops have opened and “cars zooming by up and down her street are posing dangers to school children and families with young children.” Yet she also understands that “systemically and historically, the Latinx and Black communities of cities like Springfield were disproportionally affect by the War on Drugs” and cannabis laws were designed to help the communities most affected by the war on drugs by returning profits earned back into those less developed neighborhoods.”
Former city councilor Justin Hurst, who has lived in Springfield all his life, has frustrations with how the cannabis network functions.
“If we are not putting the folks who have been hurt the most in positions to be successful, we are failing and the system is doing the exact same thing that it did years ago when it sought to isolate and incarcerate certain folks,” he says.
Hurst goes on to explain how even though cannabis shops are opening, it’s not benefitting the intended people who were supposed to be the targets of this provided aid.
“My biggest frustration with cannabis shops in the city of Springfield—and throughout Massachusetts as a whole—is that the people that were hurt by cannabis the most are benefiting the least from a financial and ownership perspective as it relates to marijuana,” says Hurst.
“It takes an inordinate amount of money to fund these particular facilities, to build them out,” Hurst continues. “It also takes a lot of money to get the licenses and I feel like the state did not structure it in a way so that those individuals who were hurt the most by selling these products when they were illegal, had an actual avenue to take advantage of them now that they’re legal.”
The state levies taxes of 17 percent on marijuana sales, with most of the proceeds ending up in the city or state’s general funding. Some of that state money in turn goes to the Cannabis Social Equity Grant Program, which aims to support entrepreneurs from communities that have been disproportionately affected by marijuana offenses.
In 2022, a total of 278 applications were requesting over 50 million dollars in grant funding. Out of the 180 recipients that won the grant, only two were originally located in Springfield—Primus LLC and 876 Grow Inc.—which is now located in Holyoke.
If the city of Springfield, which also collects a 3 percent levy on sales, keeps continuing to open dispensaries near residential neighborhoods, officials at the state and local level need to make sure the money that is actually supposed to be distributed to certain areas actually helps municipalities as promised. The city and state should also be transparent about the amount of money yearly going to those affected communities and take the public’s input into how the money should be used.
Even though traffic reports are done to determine whether or not placing these shops in residential areas is feasible, they can never be fully relied on. In my neighborhood, implementing time restrictions and speed bumps would help calm the out-of-control traffic. However, if shops are going to be placed in these underserved communities, those communities need to be heard; otherwise, one injustice is simply replacing a prior one and, as usual, those affected most pay the price.
Laiyla Arroyo is 18-years-old and a senior at Springfield Honors Academy. She plans to major in journalism in college and pursue a career as an investigative journalist. ■