I write to express my opposition to Northampton’s recently passed ordinance that establishes a cap on the number of legal cannabis retailers. If the ordinance is vetoed, then City Council members will have another chance to vote on it, and I hope that they and their constituents will consider the following points.
First, I would like to acknowledge that I am a shareholder in a cannabis testing lab in Northampton with a provisional CCC license. To be clear, the customers of testing labs are cultivators and manufacturers around the state, not retailers, so increasing versus capping the number of retailers in Northampton would not affect the lab’s business in any way. So the issue presents no financial conflict of interest for the lab or for me.
However, as a Northampton native and one of a small number of working cannabis economists in the country, I will say that my motivation for sharing my professional opinion on this issue are aligned with my reasons for being involved with a testing lab, and with the mission of labs in general: to help increase health and safety and decrease harms from accidental drug ingestion and drug overdoses in our community.
This same mission, I believe, motivates most people on both sides of the debate over this ordinance, including the City Council members who proposed it; public health officials and members of the sober community who have shared their perspectives; and board members of the SPIFFY Collaborative for Educational Services (a source frequently relied upon by proponents of the ordinance) and the organizations they work for, such as drug-prevention programs, law enforcement, and Cooley Dickinson Hospital.
We all agree on the outcomes we want: less danger to kids, less addiction, less crime on our streets. The only disagreement is over whether this ordinance would help achieve those outcomes.
For the past seven years, I have worked full-time as a (remote) research economist at UC Davis, studying and publishing peer-reviewed research on the outcomes of legal cannabis policy around the U.S., and advising the California Department of Cannabis Control on the economic and social impacts of their proposed regulations. Last year, I published a book on the topic. Everything I have learned about cannabis regulations in those seven years, applied to factors specific to the Northampton market — including its large existing number of retailers (11) — points to the conclusion that this ordinance would not achieve its desired goals of limiting cannabis exposure, use, or abuse. Instead, it would make the city’s cannabis supply less safe over time by shifting more business to the illegal market, thus increasing the risks, especially to children, of accidental ingestion or overdose.
In my evaluation of the data, I reviewed all the studies referenced by proponents of the ordinance. I found that none of them shows, or even claims to show, that an increase legal retail density in an area causes an increase in cannabis use. To my knowledge, no peer-reviewed study has ever shown such an effect, and this is not because, as some have claimed, “the jury is still out”: many studies have already shown no effect of legal retail density on use or abuse by adults or minors.
The reason for this is simple: where there are fewer legal sellers, illegal dealers provide all the rest of the cannabis that’s already demanded— and they generally do it more conveniently, with wider coverage, longer hours, lower prices, and no taxes. Although levels of cannabis use will always vary between areas, data consistently show that in any given area, adults and kids will consume about the same amount of cannabis, regardless of whether it’s legal or illegal, and regardless of how many legal dispensaries there are.
Similarly, if Saskatchewan capped the number of legal retail storefronts that could sell winter coats, people wouldn’t wear fewer coats. They’d just get a lot of their coats from places other than legal retail storefronts. They’d order online or buy from unlicensed coat dealers on the street. And if those unlicensed dealers sold inferior-quality coats, then more people might die from hypothermia.
Legal cannabis is labeled with precise potency and verified to be free from toxic contaminants. Legal flower must be packaged in child-proof containers, and edibles must be blended and portioned into small, safe doses. So legal cannabis is much safer than illegal cannabis—especially if it ends up in the hands of children. The result of more of our local cannabis supply being legal is fewer emergencies from accidental ingestion or overdose. SPIFFY data support this, showing a dramatic 38% decrease in cannabis-related hospital admissions in Northampton since legal cannabis retail sales began in 2018.
In spite of this great progress we have made, there is still no local access to legal cannabis in neighborhoods like Leeds and Florence. This affects the health of community members like the senior couple who told the legislative subcommittee that they could not access their doctor-prescribed medicine without a car. Legal cannabis is disproportionately available in rich white areas of the city like downtown, but unavailable in other areas. This raises deep equity concerns over the effects of the ordinance, which has the practical effect of freezing retailers in their current locations.
Northampton is already a success story, with data to show it — we’re a lesson in how legal cannabis can make a community safer and reduce harms. But we’re only halfway there. Today, at least half of the cannabis consumed in Northampton is still illegal, unregulated, and unsafe. A cap on legal retailers will help keep it that way.
Robin Goldstein is a research economist and director of the Cannabis Economics Group at the University of California, Davis. He is also a minority shareholder of Northampton Labs, a cannabis testing lab, and writes food columns for the Gazette.