Councilor Wants To Give Voters Voice On Peabody Pot Ban

PEABODY, MA -- Ward 5 Councilor Joel Saslaw is proposing a ballot question to override City Council's vote last week to ban recreational marijuana sales. Saslaw was the lone vote against the ban and has been a proponent of recreational marijuana sales as a way to bolster the city's tax revenue. Separately last week, City Council approved special permits for Phytotherapy Inc. and Chara Development to run medical marijuana dispensaries.

Some councilors want to wait and see how recreational marijuana sales play out in other nearby municipalities, including Salem, before moving ahead with legalized pot in Peabody. Saslaw acknowledged those concerns, but also said voters should be given the last word with a ballot question in November's election. "The sky wouldn't fall if Peabody legalized marijuana," Saslaw told the Salem News, which first reported this story.

In Peabody, 14,973 voters, or 54%, opposed Question 4 in the 2016 election while 12,770 voters, or 46%, supported it. Statewide, the measure passed by a margin of 1,745,394 to 1,511,747. Last year the state legislature passed a "compromise bill" that reworked the law to address concerns in the original language of the law. One of the biggest changes in the compromise bill was giving towns where the measure failed more leeway to ban recreational marijuana sales.

By banning recreational pot sales, Peabody loses its chance to collect a three percent, local sales tax on recreational marijuana sales. And it may prove even more costly: backers of recreational marijuana want to penalize towns and cities and town that ban retail marijuana sales. If the group's proposal works, municipalities with retail marijuana bans would be unable to tap into the pool of money that will come from the state's 17% sales tax on marijuana sales.

For more on this story, see the Salem News. Subscribe to Peabody Patch for more local news and real-time alerts.

Patch file photo by Shutterstock.