A NECSEMA Transparency Project
Public records obtained under G.L. c. 66, § 10
Belchertown's Board of Health adopted a Nicotine-Free Generation regulation on December 11, 2024, with a rule confining oral nicotine pouches to adult-only stores. The cutoff is January 1, 2004. Belchertown was the eleventh Massachusetts municipality to adopt the policy.
The town released more than 1,200 records — one of the fullest accounts here of how such a regulation moves from proposal to adoption. The correspondence begins a week before the Board first discussed the matter in public and runs past the hearing.
Two things in it recur elsewhere here: a state-funded organization helping draft the regulation before the public saw it, and a sitting Board member working with outside advocates while holding a vote on the question.
A walk through Belchertown’s substantive documents in order — what each one is, what it says, and a link to the file.
The complete public-records production, as released by the custodian.
Every document opens as a PDF. Files produced in other formats — Word, Excel, Outlook messages — were converted for readability, with the original one click away behind a grey tag (.DOCX). Nothing has been withheld, compressed or edited: the count above is every file the custodian released. A few archives and calendar files cannot be rendered as PDF and appear in their original format.