North Adams, Massachusetts is working to formalize its marijuana ordinances by the end of the month.

State licensing for marijuana businesses begins April 1st in Massachusetts, leaving communities around the commonwealth with less than three weeks to answer some big questions on the newly legalized substance. North Adams is no exception. The city council has a draft of its legal marijuana ordinance, which, having emerged from hearings and debate, will now be subject to public readings before a vote on adoption March 27th.

“The community has given us feedback on this. For the most part, we’ve heard positive feedback. A lot of the voices that have been in the room have been in favor of moving forward as we would expect because we were a community that had a little over 60 percent approval of legalization when it was on the ballot,” said City Councilor Benjamin Lamb, who chairs the public safetey committee.

“But at the same time there is a little bit of discourse there and folks that have provided some really useful critical feedback that has informed a lot of the decision-making as far as the retail cannabis working group, specifically, because there folks on there that are both pro and others that are more on the conservative side in terms of how do we frame this out to protect our youth and other members of our community in the process,” said Lamb.