The menu at a Quincy medical marijuana facility has more than just several strains of cannabis: There’s pot pizza on the menu.
Ermont Inc. at 216 Ricciuti Drive in Quincy has a robust menu full of treats to satisfy and medicate medical marijuana patients.
One of the newest menu items is a cheese pizza. Ermont calls it a doughy treat with high-strength THC.
The marijuana-infused cheese pizza was added to Ermont’s menu earlier this year. Other dishes laced with pot include chocolate bars, berry lime muffins, hot fudge and oatmeal raisin cookies.
Seth Yaffe, Ermont’s operations manager told The Patriot Ledger that the facility has already sold more than 200 pizzas.
Another trendy product to make the menu at Ermont is cold brew.
Yaffe told Boston Magazine it was a great way for medical marijuana patients to wake up and take their medicine.
There’s still a way to go before pot pizza can be available for everyone. Though recreational marijuana was legalized in Massachusetts last year, products won’t be available for retail sale until 2018.
LOS ANGELES — Roman Polanski’s sexual assault victim made an impassioned plea Friday to end the fugitive director’s four-decade legal saga, saying she felt more abused by the legal justice system than by the man who she said drugged, raped and sodomized her when she was 13.
“The trauma of the ordeal that followed was so great that, you know, the brief encounter with him that evening that was unpleasant just faded and paled,” Samantha Geimer said outside a courtroom in Los Angeles Superior Court. “It just wasn’t as traumatic for me as everybody would like to believe it was.”
On Friday, Geimer, 54, testified in the criminal case for the first time since that day, this time pleading with a judge to sentence Polanski, 83, to time served, so that her family can be released from the media spectacle that has haunted her life since that day.
“I implore you to consider taking action to finally bring this matter to a close as an act of mercy to myself and my family,” Geimer said.
Forty years ago, as a 13-year-old girl she clutched a heart charm her friend gave her as a prosecutor made her describe in explicit detail to a grand jury her alleged rape by Polanski.
On Friday, she called for an end to “a 40-year sentence which has been imposed on the victim of a crime as well as the perpetrator.”
She said she did not want her grandchildren exposed to what she and her sons have faced for decades now.
“I imagine that if Roman wins another Oscar or Roman eventually passes away, as we all must, I will not be able to go out my front door and my granddaughter will get an introduction to how horrible this can be,” she told reporters at a news conference outside court.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Scott Gordon, like previous judges in the case, had already ruled against sentencing Polanski until he turns himself in on U.S. soil, and he gave no sign that the legal odyssey was coming to an end.
Polanski pleaded guilty to unlawful intercourse with a minor in 1977 and was sent to the state prison in Chino for a 90-day psychiatric study that he believed was his sentence. He was released after 42 days after the prison psychiatrist deemed his crime “playful mutual eroticism.”
That finding starkly contrasted Geimer’s uncontested claims that she was drugged and repeatedly tried to ward off Polanski’s advances before he forced her to have anal sex to avoid a pregnancy. Judge Laurence J. Rittenband called the report a whitewash.
Under intense public scrutiny, the judge reneged on his promise, telling the attorneys in chambers that he would send Polanski back to prison for the remaining 48 days, after which the director would have to voluntarily deport himself or face a much lengthier sentence.
Polanski fled, getting the last seat on the next British Airways flight to London.
Ever since, his lawyers have alleged numerous acts of misconduct by the court, arguing he would not get a fair hearing if he returned.
In 2008, the documentary “Roman Polanksi: Wanted and Desired” explored the allegations and reignited interest in the case. The next year, he was arrested in Switzerland and spent nine months in prison and under house arrest before Swiss officials denied the United States’ extradition request.
On Friday, his attorney, Harland Braun, argued to unseal testimony from 2010 by the original prosecutor, Roger Gunson, who has said Rittenband acted in bad faith. Braun said he hoped he can use the affidavit to get the Interpol warrant lifted so that Polanski can travel freely outside the United States.
“His concern is that if he’s traveling with his family, he gets arrested,” Braun told reporters.
Gordon said he would issue a written ruling on the motion.
Since the beginning, Geimer has said she did not want Polanski to serve time, but simply admit his wrongdoing. At a news conference after the court hearing Friday, she said she was offended when she read his 1984 autobiography, in which he described their encounter as consensual.
In 1988, she sued him for sexual assault and battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent infliction of emotional distress and false imprisonment. The trial judge in the case found “substantial evidence of oppressive conduct by Polanski and a strong likelihood that a jury would find despicable conduct on the part of Polanski.”
He settled with Geimer in 1993. Documents in the file are missing, but on a record of the day’s proceedings were circled notations of “250,000 + 500,000 + maybe 500,000” and the words “settled” and “confidential.” In 1995, her attorneys were back in court trying to collect $500,000.
She said Friday that the settlement did not influence her decision to speak on Polanski’s behalf and was offended by the notion she “was bought and paid for.”
Geimer described the ordeal she faced from the moment the charges went public, when Polanski was the acclaimed director of “Chinatown” and “Rosemary’s Baby” whose wife and unborn child had been murdered by the Manson family. At the time, his attorney promised to dig into her sexual history and use of drugs.
“Judge Rittenband asked if my mother and I were a mother-daughter hooker team in court. … When this happened, my mother and I were lying gold diggers who were attacking poor, unfortunate Roman. It was a much different story. I was a drug-doing Lolita that had cornered him into this. And I was lying.
“Now he endures it. Now everyone calls him a pedophile and says terrible things about him, which aren’t true. The insults have switched, but I have empathy for the way he’s treated because I was treated the same way when this first happened.”
Asked why she didn’t consider Polanski a pedophile for the crime, Geimer said, “I was almost 14, I wasn’t 10. … I was a teenager.” She said she has felt that the media have wanted her to play the role of victim for the last 40 years, even though she had long ago gotten over it.
“I just wasn’t as traumatized as everybody thinks I should have been.” To other sex crime victims, she said: “Do your best to recover. Don’t let people tell you can’t recover.”
credit:masslive.com
