On January 1, 2013, our new medical marijuana law goes into effect, but only as to doctors and patients. Dispensaries await licensing by the Department of Public Health after rules have been issued and the worthiest non-profit entities have been selected for licenses to cultivate and distribute medical marijuana to patients whose doctors approve. Initially, there will be a minimum of 14 dispensaries and a maximum of 35, statewide, with at least one, but no more than five, in each county. [continues 635 words]
As President Obama and Gov. Romney scramble for support, both candidates shrink from reaching out to an emerging body of voters whose support could spell the difference between victory and defeat in November. Call it anything but the stoner vote. Consider: * In 2008, Massachusetts voters faced a decriminalization ballot question and Michigan voters had the opportunity to enact medical marijuana. Both passed handily, with pot getting more votes than Barrack Obama. * In California's 2010 contest for attorney general, voters had a choice between Kamela Harris, who supported the state's medical marijuana laws, and Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley, who vigorously opposed them. Harris won. [continues 566 words]
NORTHAMPTON - In 1928, the eighth year of Prohibition and five years before Repeal, Massachusetts activists collected signatures to put a Public Policy Question on the ballot in 36 of 40 senate districts, giving voters an opportunity to "instruct" their senator to support a resolution to Congress and the President for repeal of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution. PPQs are non-binding questions that give voters, in the words of former Attorney General and Governor Paul A. Dever, an opportunity "to apprise their senators and representatives of their sentiments upon important public questions." With correct paperwork and sufficient signatures, PPQs can appear on general election ballots to reveal where voters really stand on important public questions, like whether to repeal prohibition or perpetuate it. [continues 658 words]
It was a curious coincidence last month that, as PBS was broadcasting the Ken Burns/Lynn Novick documentary called "Prohibition" -- describing the Hoover Justice Department's last-gasp crackdown on alcoholic beverages in the late 1920s -- prosecutors in the Obama Justice Department were announcing a crackdown on medical marijuana in California, threatening to confiscate the property of people "involved in drug trafficking activity," which is fed-speak for providing pot for sick people. After nearly a decade under the Volstead Act, the utter futility of enforcing public abstinence from alcohol was evident to all but prohibition's stakeholders -- chiefly, police, prosecutors and bootleggers. Despite the draconian penalties imposed by the 1926 Jones Act, which turned Volstead violations into felonies, booze remained generally available. Similarly, despite the draconian penalties of the Nixon-era Controlled Substances Act, and nearly a million arrests annually, marijuana has proven itself ineradicable, and, indeed, has become a part of our culture. The warnings from U.S. Attorneys in California come on the heels of similar threats from their counterparts in Rhode Island, Vermont, Colorado and other states whose medical marijuana laws authorize secure, large-scale cultivation facilities. [continues 453 words]
One hundred years ago today, Massachusetts Governor Eugene Foss signed into law Chapter 372 of the Acts of 1911, "An act relative to the issuance of search warrants for hypnotic drugs and the arrest of those present." Since then, marijuana has been illegal in Massachusetts, although the voters reduced possession of a small amount to a civil infraction in 2008. Remarkably, the 1911 law was the first state prohibition of marijuana in the United States. Despite a century of ever-zealous enforcement and thunderous propaganda at taxpayer expense, marijuana inextricably permeates our culture. [continues 511 words]
One hundred years ago today, Massachusetts Governor Eugene Foss signed into law Chapter 372 of the Acts of 1911, "An act relative to the issuance of search warrants for hypnotic drugs and the arrest of those present." Since then, marijuana has been illegal in Massachusetts, although the voters reduced possession of a small amount to a civil infraction in 2008. Remarkably, the 1911 law was the first state prohibition of marijuana in the United States. Despite a century of ever-zealous enforcement and thunderous propaganda at taxpayer expense, marijuana inextricably permeates our culture. Its cultivation, commerce and use have proven ineradicable. We have tried mightily and we have failed to extirpate it. If anyone, anywhere, believes that spending more money on marijuana enforcement will drive out pot, let that person come forward and tell us plainly what it will take to make that happen, how much it will cost, and where the money will come from. [continues 448 words]
Re "The feds say no way," Editorial, Oct. 20 The Times appears to be unfamiliar with the strong legal and historical precedents to Proposition 19. While national prohibition was the law of the land (1920-33), New York, Massachusetts, California and 10 other states repealed or modified their alcohol prohibition laws, thus ceding the burden and expense of enforcement to federal authorities. Californians are entirely within their rights to repeal their marijuana prohibition laws, and the feds are entirely within their rights to enforce theirs. That's the nature of federalism. Richard M. Evans Northampton, Mass. The writer is a member of the Proposition 19 legal subcommittee. [end]
As a Main Street lawyer, I rise in defense of Martha Coakley, who is not to blame for her inglorious defeat. Instead, blame belongs to Mike Capuano, the progressive and likeable congressman from Somerville who lost to her in the Democratic primary. But for a gross political miscalculation, he might well have been the Democratic nominee, with dramatically different results for Massachusetts and the nation. Consider: . In November of 2008, slightly over a year ago, Massachusetts voters elected Barrack Obama by 62%, and passed an initiative to decriminalize marijuana by 65%. (Yes, 65%! [continues 558 words]
New Year's Day marked the first anniversary of marijuana decriminalization in the Commonwealth. The statistics aren't in yet, and when they emerge different spins will be put on the impact of the new law. However, a glance out the window assures us that the sky hasn't fallen, despite the warnings of the 2008 initiative's shrillest critics, mostly self-serving career "public servants." To their great credit, 65 percent of our fellow citizens saw through the old bromides and found the courage to declare that we gain nothing by wrecking people's lives for small amounts of pot, and we can't afford to waste scarce law enforcement resources that ought to be focused on real, predatory, crime. [continues 512 words]
Odd, isn't it, that all the U.S. Senate candidates, and the people who ask them questions trying to elicit their positions on issues people care about, seem to have forgotten that in the last election, a whopping 65 percent of the voters went for marijuana decriminalization? If that many voters care about the marijuana laws, why do these candidates, who claim to have their fingers on the public pulse, ignore the subject? What happened in November of 2008 was decriminalization, meaning that now, thanks to the voters, a small amount of pot can't get you arrested and sucked into the criminal justice cybergulag. Decrim curbed the excesses of enforcement, but didn't get at the underlying situation. [continues 544 words]
It's time to take a good, hard look at marijuana prohibition. Despite society's most assiduous efforts over nearly a century to extirpate marijuana, and the consumption of untold billions of the taxpayers' dollars to wage a war against it, marijuana is ubiquitous in our culture, and ineradicable from it. That's not a 900-pound gorilla in the corner; it's a naked emperor. So what do we do? We can ignore the economic crisis and keep throwing good money after bad, passing this war along to the next generation to wage and pay for, or we can look for a better way to curb drug abuse, protect the public health and safety and eliminate the crime and violence associated with illicit trafficking. And, while we're at it, we can save a lot of money currently being squandered in the earnest but futile attempt to eradicate marijuana from our culture, and, oh, by the way, raise copious amounts of new revenue. Rough estimates suggest that the prospective revenue is at least what casinos are expected to produce, without the need to destroy any forests and pave them into parking lots. [continues 503 words]
It's time to take a good, hard look at marijuana prohibition. Despite society's most assiduous efforts over nearly a century to extirpate marijuana, and the consumption of untold billions of the taxpayers' dollars to wage a war against it, marijuana is ubiquitous in our culture, and ineradicable from it. That's not a 900-pound gorilla in the corner; it's a naked emperor. So what do we do? We can ignore the economic crisis and keep throwing good money after bad, passing this war along to the next generation to wage and pay for, or we can look for a better way to curb drug abuse, protect the public health and safety and eliminate the crime and violence associated with illicit trafficking. [continues 541 words]
IS IT TIME -- yet -- to tax marijuana? California dodged a budget bullet, and now Massachusetts, New York and other states are under the same gun. As governors and state legislatures scrape for new sources of revenue, has the time come to talk seriously -- really seriously, without winks, puns and smirks -- about regulating and taxing marijuana? It's hard to avoid the brutal truths, and even harder to admit them. The marijuana market is immense, barely restrained by prohibition laws, while the harm it causes society is minuscule compared with alcohol and tobacco. [continues 573 words]
The dad of a schoolboy who had to be tested for HIV after he picked up a syringe in a playground has called for stricter needle exchange controls. William Feeney's dad Liam spoke out as the Daily Post today reveals nearly 20,000 hypodermic needles handed to drug addicts went missing in north west Wales last year. Between April 2007 and March 2008 North West Wales NHS Trust gave out 28,020 syringes but only 8,966, just 32%, were given back under exchange programmes designed to prevent the spread of blood-borne viruses. [continues 331 words]
Many observers have compared the Obama transition to FDR's in 1932-33, but the important P-word has not come up. By the summer of 1932, alcohol prohibition had been enshrined in the Constitution for 12 years, as the 18th Amendment. Alcohol-related crime, violence and poisonings were rampant. Speakeasies flourished in large cities. Annual liquor imports from Canada alone soared from the pre-Prohibition level of around 30,000 imperial gallons to more than a million after 1926, mostly smuggled from offshore mother ships frequented by an armada of smaller vessels making regular distributions to their customers. [continues 577 words]
Don't look now, but the resounding two-to-one victory of Question 2, the marijuana decriminalization initiative, may well turn out to be a blessing to Gov. Deval Patrick and the legislature as they face the current fiscal reckoning. It's not that the new law will save a lot of money - the proponents claimed around $30 million, but even that will not make a big difference. What makes a big difference is that for the first time, voters statewide have gone on record as supporting drug policy reform, providing the first opportunity in decades to rethink the laws that have flooded our courts, packed our prisons and strained our treasuries. [continues 509 words]
CANNABIS is now openly sold by Dutch chemists for medicinal use but the laws in the UK are not quite as lax. Reporter RICHARD EVANS talks to a Tulse Hill resident who is forced to buy the drug illegally to alleviate the symptoms of his debilitating condition. He tells us why it's time for Britain to follow the Dutch example . . . "YOU see - they don't work properly." David is trying to tense the muscles in his left leg and the movement is so slight that the skin barely ripples. They look as if they have wasted away. [continues 519 words]
