> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.newbostonpost.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Massachusetts Has Gone To Pot - URL: https://www.newbostonpost.com/massachusetts-has-gone-to-pot/ - Published: 2025-08-15T16:52:36.000Z - Updated: 2026-06-28T19:17:22.000Z - Description: Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint. - Author: NBP Editorial Board - Tags: Massachusetts, corruption, marijuana, Politics, drugs *“Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint.”* \-- Alexander Hamilton, [Federalist number 15](https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th%5Fcentury/fed15.asp?ref=newbostonpost.com), December 1787 *“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”* \-- James Madison, [Federalist number 51](https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th%5Fcentury/fed51.asp?ref=newbostonpost.com), February 1788 The typical liberal reaction to corruption charges against public officials in Massachusetts is to feign shock, dump the fallen statesman overboard, and resolve to find higher-caliber public officials in the future. This approach solves nothing, because we don’t have many high-caliber public officials in Massachusetts, and even if we did, human beings are weak and susceptible to letting power go to their head. The Founding Fathers understood those weaknesses – Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, who were allies before they were opponents, argued for the federal constitution in the late 1780s by touting its checks and balances, with no source of power likely to become too powerful because it would be limited by other sources of power. Then there’s Massachusetts, where the only checks in government are the ones that fatten the balances of connected people. Last week, a federal grand jury indicted Steve Tompkins, 67, the sheriff of Suffolk County, on corruption charges, accusing him of using his office to pressure a business owner to sell him stock not available to others and to buy it back again at the original price when the share price fell. Many will say that Tompkins, if guilty, misused his power and betrayed a public trust. But who will say that the whole system stinks? Consider the state’s marijuana law, which enabled the scheme the indictment claims occurred. The main problem is that current state law takes a dangerous and harmful chemical and makes it legal, available, and profitable for both the seller and the state government – to the detriment of recreational marijuana users and to the public at large. But the details of the law are also problematic. Here’s an example: [State marijuana regulations](https://www.mass.gov/doc/935-cmr-500-adult-use-of-marijuana/download?ref=newbostonpost.com) provide that a potential drug dealer (meaning in this case, a legal marijuana business) can improve its “leadership rating” from the state’s Cannabis Control Commission by, among other things, ensuring that “66% or more of the Licensee’s employees are people of color, women, Veterans, persons with disabilities, and LGBTQ+ people.” Whatever happened to equal opportunity debasement? Here’s another way to earn brownie points (so to speak) with the Cannabis Control Commission: Showing that “The Licensee has developed” something called a “Positive Impact Plan.” What’s a “Positive Impact Plan”? Well, one way to fulfill it is if “The Licensee can demonstrate that a majority of employees have a conviction or continuance without a finding for an offense under” the state’s drug statute “or an equivalent conviction in Other Jurisdictions.” You see a problem? How’s an upstanding marijuana business owner supposed to identify the potheads to work for his business who are least likely to wreck it? No mean feat. Enter the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department, which deals with drug users every day in the jail and house of correction it runs, and which according to federal prosecutors was only too happy under Tompkins’s leadership to supply drug users to work for the marijuana business. According to the [federal indictment](https://www.justice.gov/d9/2025-08/usa%5Fv.%5Fsteven%5Ftompkins%5F-%5Findictment.pdf?ref=newbostonpost.com) of Tompkins, the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department under his leadership “entered into a partnership” with a marijuana business in 2019 “whereby” the sheriff’s office “would help screen and refer graduates of its re-entry program to apply for work” at the marijuana business’s “retail store.” To say this arrangement became important to the marijuana business is an understatement. “In each of the renewal applications” since getting original approval from the state Cannabis Control Commission in 2021, the indictment says, the marijuana business “included its ongoing partnership” with the sheriff’s office “as part of its fulfillment” of the “Positive Impact Plan.” Thus, the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department effectively had a public-private partnership with the marijuana business. According to the indictment, the sheriff leveraged that partnership into a sweetheart-deal purchase of $50,000 worth of stock in the company before its Initial Public Offering, which by mid-2021 ballooned in value to $138,403. When the stock price tumbled so that Tompkins’s stock was worth less than the $50,000 he paid for it, Tompkins demanded that the marijuana business refund him his $50,000, despite no prior agreement that it would do so, according to the indictment. The marijuana business owner did so, according to the indictment, because if he didn’t he feared that Tompkins “could use his official authority as Sheriff to terminate” the sheriff’s department’s “ongoing partnership” with the marijuana business. Talk about power – the marijuana business’s license depended on staying within the good graces of the state’s Cannabis Control Commission, which depended on staying within the good graces of the Suffolk County sheriff. Wasn’t it just a matter of time before someone in power realized he could use that power to make money? Of course, aside from this unwise potential linking of law enforcement and private enterprise, the state’s [Cannabis Control Act](https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleXV/Chapter94G/Section4?ref=newbostonpost.com) is built on lies. One is that there is such a thing as (in the statute’s words) “people from communities that have previously been disproportionately harmed by marijuana prohibition and enforcement.” Banning marijuana wasn’t harmful; it was helpful. Another lie is that it is possible to create a “Positive Impact Plan” for a recreational marijuana business. Recreational marijuana has no positive impact. There’s no point in forcing marijuana businesses to try to find some. Marijuana has exactly one beneficial use – for certain people with chronic pain who are unable to swallow painkilling pills, smoking marijuana helps them; they should continue to have access to it, under those limited circumstances. But recreational marijuana is a blight on our state and in our communities. This harmful drug, which causes memory loss, depression, and indolence in many, and which triggers psychosis in some, ought never be used just to get high. If the [proposed ban on recreational marijuana](https://www.newbostonpost.com/potential-massachusetts-ballot-question-would-end-recreational-marijuana/) makes the November 2026 state ballot, vote for it.