Massachusetts voters approved recreational marijuana in 2016, and the narcotic has been available medicinally since 2012—twin realities that have sparked a real estate side effect, so to speak: Neighbors complaining about neighbors smoking the stuff; and condo and tenant associations trying to crack down internally on the use.
Now, with retail marijuana sales expected to start in July, such complaints and crackdowns are only expected to intensify as cannabis becomes exponentially easier to score.
The opposition can run from the pedestrian—condo associations enacting amendments prohibiting pot-smoking, residents retaining lawyers to fight even medical marijuana use—to the relatively high-tech.
Some management companies have installed in-unit detectors in Boston-area apartment buildings that set off real-time alerts when they sense marijuana. And the Globe’s Beth Teitell reports that a Wrentham-based company is routinely providing the drug-sniffing services of a Belgian Malinois named Ben to root out pot-smoking neighbors.
“I get a call from someone who owns a three-family house and units two and three are complaining that unit number one is smoking dope or something,” the company’s owner told Teitell.
What’re you seeing—or smelling—in your own building?
