[photo] Bonnie Bruce is the mother of a Vermont woman, Tamara, who was found the day after Thanksgiving passed out from heroin in her car with her fiance and their two young children.

DORSET, Vt. - The midnight phone call woke them all up. As Bonnie Bruce struggled to understand what the police officer was saying, her 11-year-old grandson, Elias, appeared in her bedroom doorway and walked to her bedside, listening. He knew: It was about his mother.

"Wait a minute, what are you telling me?" Bonnie gasped into the phone. The coil of dread lodged hard in her gut for the past 11 years, since her daughter first shot heroin into the soft crook of her elbow, abruptly gave way. "Is she all right?"

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Massachusetts voters legalized the sale and recreational use of marijuana when they passed Question 4 in November. Folks who work in the cannabis industry, who authored that legislation, want to squeeze as much as they can out of the Bay State market even if it means exploiting minority communities.

Oh, they wouldn't describe it that way. The authors of the legislation instead called for regulators to encourage "full participation" in the new industry "by people from communities that have previously been disproportionately harmed by marijuana prohibition and enforcement and to positively impact those communities."

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City Hall, cops, pols spearhead informational campaign

Cops, City Hall and lawmakers are bracing for Thursday's onset of legalized "recreational" marijuana in Massachusetts, determined that if they can't dissuade tokers from lighting up they can at least provide information plus some vigilant law enforcement to try to keep people safe.

Bay Staters voted last month to permit adults 21 and older to possess up to an ounce of weed while out in public - 10 ounces at home - while cultivating up to 12 plants per household. Selling pot remains illegal while the Legislature works on regulations to license retailers.

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It was the night after Thanksgiving.

The little boy, not quite 3, wore no socks, despite the cold.

He sat on his unconscious mother's lap in the idling car, a spray of vomit dried on the window, according to the police. His father was slumped on the steering wheel, his seat belt wrapped around his arm like a tourniquet.

In the back seat, the toddler's baby brother slept under a blanket.

The parents, Tamara Bruce, 33, and Jacob Davis, 27, later told police that they had driven their children more than three hours from Manchester, Vt., to Lawrence to buy heroin and shoot up. When they passed out in a parking lot, another driver thought they were dead and summoned police.

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Granite State cops are bracing for a potential influx of doped-up drivers and pot-smoking teens - even without a marijuana legalization question on the New Hampshire ballot - as Massachusetts and Maine voters could legalize the herb in November.

"You're going to have more instances of drugged driving, and it's going to cost the state more money because of the increase in law enforcement and prosecution," said Dalton, N.H., police Chief John Tholl, who is also a state representative opposed to marijuana legalization. "It's just going to be a burden on the legal system."

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OK, so maybe the helicopter was a little excessive.

It's reasonable to criticize the lengths that authorities went to in an effort to confiscate a single pot plant from an elderly woman in Amherst - though it should be noted that the backyard raid at Peg Holcomb's home was just a small part of a larger marijuana eradication operation.

But before sympathizers anoint the 81-year-old Holcomb a great martyr for the marijuana cause, we would simply point out that in Massachusetts there are legal means by which she could obtain marijuana if she really does need it to keep her glaucoma at bay, as she told the Herald.

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BOSTON - The surge in deaths from drug overdoses has become an unexpected lifeline for people waiting for organ transplants, turning tragedy for some into salvation for others.

As more people die from overdoses than ever before, their organs - donated in advance by them or after the fact by their families - are saving lives of people who might otherwise die waiting for a transplant.

When Dave and Roxanne Maleham got the call in June that they had long dreaded - that their son, Matt, 38, was on life support after overdosing on heroin and fentanyl - they talked about donating his organs.

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Misleading the public and condescending to grieving parents is one approach to win supporters to your cause, but we can't imagine it's a winning one for the supporters of Question 4.

Organizers of the campaign to legalize the recreational use of marijuana sent out a fundraising email last week in which they blurred the lines between general pot use, which the ballot question would legalize, and use of marijuana for medical purposes, which of course is already legal.

"If you think people in our state deserve a safer alternative to prescription painkillers, please help end marijuana prohibition on November 8 by donating today," wrote campaign manager Will Luzier, who cites the opioid crisis and deaths from overdoses as an incentive to vote yes.

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It was with a mixture of dismay and amusement - at the absurdity of it - that I read the quote in the short item "Guns barred for marijuana card holders" (Daily Briefing, Sept. 1). In the ruling by the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, regarding the denial of gun purchases to medical marijuana card holders, Senior District Judge Jed Rakoff said that the use of marijuana "raises the risk of irrational or unpredictable behavior with which gun use should not be associated."

With this logic in place, I am assuming the federal government will also restrict sales of firearms to those who consider alcohol their drug of choice.

Robert Todd

Jamaica Plain

[end]

Most of the 13 members of the Boston City Council who voted in favor of an Allston medical marijuana dispensary were former consulting clients of a businessman lobbying for the company, raising questions about the influences on the city's oversight of its fledgling medical marijuana market.

The businessman, Frank Perullo, was president of Sage Systems from November 2002 until the company closed in April 2015. Eight current city councilors hired Sage to provide various types of political consulting work during that period.

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It may have taken a frightening surge in opioid abuse to speed action, but Massachusetts now has a user-friendly online system for keeping track of drug prescriptions. The state monitoring program went live last week, after a $6.2 million overhaul of an unwieldy system that many doctors avoided like a virus.

The new one is simple and fast. It pulls in real-time data from prescriptions written for controlled substances, including widely used opiates like oxycodone and hydrocodone. Doctors, nurse practitioners, and other prescribers have to consult the database before writing such a prescription for any new patient, as well as when they give existing patients their first prescription for a controlled substance.

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RECENTLY I MET a man in Phoenix who told me that being diagnosed with cancer had made him happy. "How could this be?" I asked him. He told me having cancer meant he would likely need surgery, which in turn meant more prescriptions for the pain pills to which he had become addicted. He had started using prescription painkillers when he was young. Over the years, addiction hijacked his brain, compromising his health, altering his reasoning, and leaving broken relationships and deferred dreams in its wake.

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Following the lead of Allston-Brighton's district councilor, Mark Ciommo, the Boston City Council opted to not endorse a locally run company's bid to open a medical marijuana dispensary in the Allston neighborhood.

The voice vote - which appeared to be unanimous - came Wednesday at the weekly City Council meeting, two days after Ciommo held a contentious public hearing with the local company, Compassionate Organics. Ciommo favors another medical marijuana group for Allston, an out-of-state company named Mayflower Medicinals.

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Boston City Councilor Mark Ciommo is again facing criticism this week for not backing a locally run company that wants to open a medical marijuana dispensary in his Allston neighborhood.

Instead of supporting Compassionate Organics, Ciommo is steadfast in his backing of rival Mayflower Medicinals, a company that has hired the councilor's political consultant and close friend Frank Perullo.

At a City Council hearing Monday, Geoffrey Reilinger, who founded Compassionate Organics, tried to convince councilors that he would bring a safe and professional dispensary to the neighborhood.

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This week Boston City Council President Michelle Wu suggested it ought to be legal for individuals to purchase and consume pot. But if Wu has her way it would be unacceptable for them to take their goodies home from the pot store in a plastic shopping bag.

Yes, in the same week that Wu and Councilor Tito Jackson announced their support for a November ballot question that would legalize the recreational use of marijuana, Wu ordered a study into how Boston might reduce the use of plastic shopping bags - including the possibility of an outright ban.

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More than ever, the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl is claiming lives in Massachusetts, fueling an overdose death toll that continues to rise, according to data released Wednesday by the state Department of Public Health.

During the first half of 2016, deaths from opioid overdoses were higher than in the same period last year.

That happened despite an apparent decline in the use of heroin and prescription drugs. Prescriptions for opioid painkillers were at their lowest level since early 2015, and heroin and prescription drugs were found less frequently in the bloodstreams of overdose victims than in the past.

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Boston City Council President Michelle Wu and Councilor Tito Jackson will formally endorse the state ballot push to legalize marijuana for recreational use. The move, to be announced at a State House event Wednesday morning, puts them directly at odds with Mayor Martin J. Walsh, who is helping to lead the charge against the referendum.

A 2007 graduate of Harvard College, Wu said she never used the drug but recalled some classmates did during their years in Cambridge.

"It just seems ridiculous that kids at Harvard can smoke pot and have incredibly successful careers while blacks and Latinos, particularly men and boys, who are using the same substance are sent to jail," she said, voice rising.

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Young women in pink and powder blue princess costumes handed out cards advertising birthday parties to wide-eyed little girls, while commuters rushed past on bustling Washington Street to catch the Downtown Crossing subway.

Around the corner in a gray building with no signs other than a green awning listing 21 Milk St., executives at Patriot Care were preparing Tuesday night for a milestone. It's been a long road with more than a few bumps, but Boston's first medical marijuana dispensary is finally ready for its expected grand opening Wednesday.

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'Rush' Not Expected at City's First Facility

Today's opening of the city's first pot shop in Downtown Crossing could be a mellow affair, with the owners predicting the dispensary will draw a few dozen customers with medical marijuana cards per day in its initial weeks, before slowly increasing to 90 to 100 daily customers.

"We don't expect a rush the way you think about for recreational facilities," said Columbia Care CEO Nicholas Vita, whose nationwide company oversees the Massachusetts facility Patriot Care, at 21 Milk St.

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Companies that want to open medical marijuana dispensaries in Massachusetts are being pressured into paying an unnecessarily high price to follow the letter of the law. The licensing process for dispensaries established under the state Department of Public Health is rightfully rigorous. But the vetting procedures also must be fair. That's not the case with a provision that requires applicants to submit de facto letters of consent from communities where they want to set up shop - the provision is being used by some local officials to elicit unreasonable payments from businesses applying for dispensary licenses.

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