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Back in 2015, when Patriot Care got the okay from Boston's Zoning Board of Appeals to open the city's first medical marijuana dispensary, Spokesman Dennis Kunian struck a reassuring note.
"We will be good neighbors," Kunian told New England Cable News. "We’ll have a multitude of security that you have to go through. ... We’ll have a police detail."
Patriot Care also made a promise, which became the first item on the company's host-city agreement with Boston: even if state or federal law changed, Patriot Care would never sell recreational pot at this location.
But now Patriot Care is seeking to do exactly that, by adding an adult-use marijuana establishment at its Milk Street site.
Boston City Councilor Michael Flaherty is skeptical of the company's push.
"If you look someone in the eye and tell them what you are going to be, and what you’re not going to be, and then six months or a year later you switch gears, you've got some problems," Flaherty said.
Before Patriot Care first opened its medicinal doors, Flaherty notes, the company had to convince skeptical neighbors that it wouldn’t be a disruptive force.
"Once it was reported they were looking to shift to recreational, the phone lit up again from those very same people, who felt a little bit snookered," Flaherty said.
Kunian, Patriot Care's spokesman, declined WGBH News' request for an on-camera interview. But in a phone conversation, he said Patriot Care has been a good corporate citizen; that adding an adult-use or recreational component would let the company serve patients who opt out of the medical marijuana system; and that Patriot Care never expected full legalization to come this quickly.
"We made that commitment three years ago, and never in our wildest imagination did we think that within any period of time, certainly in 10 years or so, that would this have happened — that the state would vote in favor of adult-use marijuana," Kunian said. "There were no indications three years ago."
The latter argument doesn't sit well with Will Luzier, political director of the Marijuana Policy Project of Massachusetts , which led the successful push for full legalization. He says recreational use was widely anticipated when Patriot Care made its original commitment.
"The writing was on the wall that adult-use legalization was going to happen," Luzier said.
Luzier also notes, pointedly, that the Marijuana Policy Project tried and failed to enlist Patriot Care's support in the battle to legalize recreational pot.
"In 2015, 2016, when we first started the legalization effort...we sought support from all of the dispensaries that were in existence, and some of them were forthcoming with resources," he said. "And certainly Patriot Care was not."
In the end, though, Patriot Care’s push for recreational sales will probably hinge more on its ability to build local support than on any lingering bad blood with Luzier and others.
Rishi Shukla is a co-founder of the Downtown Boston Residents' Association , which opposed Patriot Care's original plan for a medical-only dispensary. So far, he said, the company has been a “great” neighbor.
But Shukla also has concerns about how the addition of recreational sales could impact the neighborhood.
"Reputation matters, and I think having a clean sort of history and a beginning is important," Shukla said.
So, Shukla adds, is that unequivocal promise that Patriot Care made just a few years ago.
"We expect folks to be held accountable and to keep their word," he said. "We don’t appreciate it when businesses renege on their commitments."
A spokeswoman for Boston Mayor Marty Walsh said Patriot Care has donated space to the ALS Foundation and supported food pantries, youth activities and drug prevention. She also said the mayor hasn't yet decided whether to back or oppose Patriot Care's proposed change, but is deferring instead to an "ongoing community process."
Patriot Care will make its case for recreational pot sales at a meeting downtown on
Wednesday night
.
