Category Archives: Massachusetts

Starting this Friday (May 23) the summertime weekend CapeFLYER train service between Boston and Cape Cod will begin.  This year the CapeFLYER will add an additional stop at Wareham Village in addition to the Buzzards Bay Station and Hyannis Transportation Center.

The trains include bike racks, concessions and free Wi-Fi Internet. They will also continue to coordinate stops with ferry operators to run shuttle service for customers traveling to Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard.

For more details, including to see complete schedules and ticket information, visit www.capeflyer.com.

Governor Deval Patrick is shaking things up with the economic bill he shared last week that aims to make doing business in Massachusetts easier.

The big headlines include his desire to eliminate noncompetes and creating a “global Entrepreneur in Residence” program to allow foreign students to work at Massachusetts start ups as a way to work around the restrictions associated with H-1B visa program.

However, I was more excited to read that Deval Patrick’s plan also give cities and towns greater control over the number liquor licenses in their communities by ending existing statutory limits.  This is long overdue and I hope it is successful. Now we just need the MA Sate legislature to pass these initiatives so Patrick may sign them into law.

Although it will likely be summertime before any medical marijuana dispensaries in MA open their doors for business, twenty licenses were granted by the State today.

The State’s Department of Public Health approved marijuana dispensaries in: Ayer, Boston, Brockton, Brookline, Cambridge, Dennis, Fairhaven, Haverhill, Holyoke, Lowell, Mashpee, Milford, Newton, Northampton, Plymouth, Quincy, Salem, Taunton and Worcester.  I couldn’t find the addresses of where these will be in those communities, but I’m sure there’ll be a lot more about this forthcoming.

Today is the deadline for 158  qualified applicants seeking to open medical marijuana dispensaries in the state to submit their proposals.

Under the law, each county will have at least one and a maximum of five dispensaries; a total of 35 locations for the state have been approved. Cities and towns are not allowed to permanently ban dispensaries, but they can zone where they can be located.  This second phase of the application process will now go before a committee that will score applicants on such factors as ability to meet the health needs of registered patients, appropriateness of the site, geographic distribution of dispensaries, 
local support, and plans to ensure public safety.

The chosen applicants will be notified early in 2014.

Website priceofweed.com is a self-described crowd sourcing site to help determine the street value of marijuana by receiving feedback from consumers. HuffingtonPost was so taken by the data that they created this interesting infographic in last week’s article, Here’s Where To Find The Cheapest Weed In The US.

Makes me wonder what sort of tax revenue this could generate?

Last week the state’s Department of Public Health released a list of nearly 200 applications for marijuana dispensaries around the state; including 21 applications for Suffolk County here in Boston.

The public health department is conducting a two-phase application process. Qualified applicants will be eligible to proceed where a selection committee will conduct an in-depth review and select dispensaries through a competitive process.  The department is expected to approve up to 35 dispensaries by the end of the year, including at least one, but not more than five, in each county.