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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Massachusetts cities and towns are exacting increasingly hefty payments from medical marijuana dispensaries in exchange for letters the companies need to win state licenses, a Globe review of recent compacts shows.

In Worcester, a dispensary promised to pay the city $450,000 over three years - and $200,000 a year after that - if officials gave their blessing to the business.

In Springfield, the city is negotiating a deal that would ultimately take 7 percent of a dispensary's revenue, plus a $50,000 annual donation to the Police Department - a pact that could amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

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As someone who was raised in Massachusetts and moved to Colorado three years ago, partly for the benefits of marijuana legalization, I'm perplexed that recent polls show a divided electorate on the question of legalization in my home state. We're talking about a plant drug that has never killed anyone in recorded history and has many medical benefits. Why should people be allowed to drink alcohol, objectively a much more dangerous substance, while the 10 to 15 percent of the population that uses pot gets hassled by law enforcement? Why not simply bring it within the law and reap the benefits of the tax dollars?

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The argument against using drugs like methadone and Suboxone to kick heroin usually gets whittled to a cliched, and inaccurate, phrase: It's trading one addiction for another.

But ask Dr. Jessie Gaeta about some of the clients she treats in the heart of Boston's so-called Methadone Mile and she'll describe regimens that are about trading despair for hope. Gaeta, who is chief medical officer at Boston Health Care for the Homeless, knows all about the doomsday scenarios that often play out on the grimy blocks around Massachusetts Avenue and Albany Street, where a mix of shelters, treatment centers, and methadone clinics years ago created a subculture of people desperate to get help or get high. Sometimes both.

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As a 29 year-old bi-racial male raised in both the inner-city and suburbs of Worcester, having Black, White, and Latino family members and friends who responsibly consume marijuana, I repeatedly experienced and witnessed the disproportionate enforcement of marijuana laws in a racially biased manner.

Despite virtually identical usage rates among whites and non-whites, research has consistently found that punitive marijuana laws disproportionately target non-white citizens. A recent study from the ACLU found that in 2010 - even after Massachusetts had decriminalized possession of small amounts of marijuana - black citizens in Massachusetts were four times more likely to be charged for marijuana possession than whites.

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In "Life and loss on Methadone Mile" Nestor Ramos and Evan Allen describe the chaos and power of active addiction. The article focuses on the very visible individuals who continue to struggle with active heroin addiction or with misuse of prescription medications. What is missing is a narrative of hope for a disease that is as treatable as hypertension or asthma.

Most people will get better, and the life-saving medications methadone and buprenorphine are the most effective pathway to recovery, not detoxification. Those doing well on medication are often invisible. The intense stigma surrounding methadone and buprenorphine, evidenced by the derogatory term "Methadone Mile," leads many not to disclose their treatment as they quietly go on to live meaningful lives in recovery.

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The state's highest court said Wednesday that people convicted on drug charges in cases that involved a disgraced state chemist, Annie Dookhan, can seek new trials.

Last year, the Supreme Judicial Court gave special permission to people to undo their pleas if they had pleaded guilty to drug charges in Dookhan-related cases. On Wednesday, it ruled that the same protection must be extended to some defendants who went to trial.

"Regardless whether a defendant pleads guilty to a drug offense or is found guilty at trial . . . the evidence is still potentially tainted by Dookhan's misconduct," Chief Justice Ralph D. Gants wrote for the court. "The taint is still attributable to the government [because] it may be impossible for the defendant to prove [their] case . . . was actually tainted by Dookhan's misconduct."

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It would be foolish to expect an addict - straight out of jail, treatment, or both - to find a sober night's sleep under a bridge, said Jared Owen, a man in recovery.

With not enough housing options in the state, Owens said recovering addicts are frequently left with the forlorn question, "What now?"

On Tuesday, public and private sector leaders from across New England and upstate New York convened in Boston to talk about substance abuse in their states, and how comprehensive housing programs could help curb the crisis.

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Last night's needles line the sidewalks at dawn along the blighted blocks where Massachusetts Avenue and Southampton Street meet. People emerge from shelters and halfway houses and trudge toward the methadone clinics that lend this place its ugly nickname.

An open-air drug market is in full swing on the corner outside a convenience store, where offers of drugs trill like music. "Clonidines-Clonidines-Clonidines-Clonidines!" "Does anybody need Xani Bars?" Phenergans, Pins, Johnnies? A man grimaces one chilly morning, unsteady on his feet. He opens his mouth to reveal a knotted bag of heroin, double-wrapped and ready to be swallowed should police wade into the crowd. "This is all I have left," he says.

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State campaign finance officials have dismissed a complaint against the police chief of Walpole, but supporters of a ballot question to legalize marijuana now say they will take their case to the state Ethics Commission.

The pro-marijuana group, Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, has accused the chief of improper political advocacy on the job.

Last month, Chief John Carmichael, who has been outspoken on the dangers of substance abuse, participated in an event in Framingham organized by opponents of the November ballot measure to describe what he said were public safety hazards posed by edible products with marijuana in them. The pro-legalization group said Carmichael should not have come to the event in uniform during work hours, and should not have used his departmental car to get there.

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As a former journalist at the Globe, and as a nurse who works in addiction treatment, I was disappointed in the July 9 article "Mass. leaders join against marijuana legalization." It gave politicians space for their swift-boating campaign against legalizing marijuana, casting it as a gateway drug and tying it to the opioid crisis. I found it one-sided.

Of 21 paragraphs, five offered pro-legalization statements. The opponents "issued a passionate cry," while the lone proponent "brushed off" their arguments. The article did not offer expertise, cite evidence, or challenge statements. There is some evidence, in fact, that marijuana not only is not a gateway to addiction, but may help recovering addicts maintain their sobriety. Teen use is not up in Colorado. Massachusetts would be able to control the shape, color, and marketing of edibles.

The Globe should not enable a fear-mongering smear campaign against a legitimate ballot issue that would likely solve many more problems than it creates.

Steve Hatch, Malden

[end]

I am deeply concerned about both Joan Vennochi's column ("Like Bill Clinton, I didn't inhale," July 12) and the political coalition that opposes the marijuana legalization initiative ("Mass. leaders join against marijuana legislation"). While decriminalization in Massachusetts has been a worthwhile and successful step in reducing the number of arrests for marijuana possession, it has not gone far enough.

I have worked with the Committee for Public Counsel Services for many years, and found that police officers routinely charge people not only with possession, but with intent to distribute marijuana, which almost automatically adds in the school zone provision. Virtually everywhere in any urban area is within 1,000 feet of what is defined as a school zone. This brings felony conviction, mandatory minimum sentences, and the potential for total unemployability in the future, not to mention the harm that comes from prison time. It does so with no evidence that it accomplishes any positive purpose in the vast majority of those incarcerated, nor for society.

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