weekly political column. Tim Newcomb A new industry is waiting to be born in Vermont, but our pro-business governor seems strangely reluctant to ease it into life. Two dozen Vermont communities voted last week to allow retail cannabis sales within their borders. Only three municipalities that considered the question on their Town Meeting Day ballots rejected it. There's clearly widespread public support for allowing legal retail sales for recreational use of marijuana in Vermont. After years of fits and starts, lawmakers sent Gov. Phil Scott a 102-page bill legalizing the sale of cannabis products starting in 2022. They made the handoff in September 2020, at the end of the pandemic-fractured legislative session. Scott apparently didn't want to veto the popular measure with an election just weeks away, so he let it become law without his signature.