BOURNE – A community group that is seeking to ban recreational pot sales in Bourne is sponsoring a public forum Wednesday evening to discuss the adverse impacts of the drug.
Bourne Opt Out, along with Bourne Cares, will bring together law enforcement, medical and recovery professionals to provide details on how commercial pot can effect public health, addiction and public safety.
Bourne Opt Out member George Seaver says marijuana is a gateway drug.
“Not everyone who uses marijuana goes on to other drugs,” Seaver said. “But of those who get in trouble with harder drugs more than two-thirds of them started with marijuana.”
Seaver said those statistics were from surveys of Barnstable County inmates.
Bourne Opt Out also believes recreational marijuana would also impact the General MacArthur Blvd area.
The forum is Wednesday, September 12 at 7 p.m. in the library of Bourne High School.
The panel for the forum will include Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O’Keefe; Heroin and Opiate Crime Reduction Clinician, representing the Barnstable County Sheriff’s Office, Thomas Hostetter; Emergency Medicine Physician at Cape Cod Hospital, Peter Bosco; Amy KJ Turncliff, PhD, a Neuroscientist and Managing Director for Rockfern Scientific Consulting LLC; the Director of Public Relations & Organizational Advancement of Gosnold Patricia Mitrokostas; Kevin Rosario, the director of Community Outreach for Gosnold; and Prevention Advocate Chris Greeley.
A moratorium on recreational pot sales in the town expires at the end of November. Opt Out is seeking a permanent ban at Town Meeting next month after a similar attempt failed in the spring.
Seaver helped form the Opt Out group after the contentious Town Meeting in March. He wants the tone of the forum Wednesday to be more civil.
“We don’t want it to be a shouting session. We don’t want it to be like Town Meeting was,” Seaver said.
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