Pubdate: Fri, 29 Apr 2011
Source: Milford Daily News, The (MA)
Copyright: 2011 The Milford Daily News
Contact:  http://www.milforddailynews.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2990
Author: Richard Evans
Note: Richard M. Evans is a Northampton lawyer and the author of 
H1371, the Cannabis Regulation and Taxation Act. He blogs at www.cantaxreg.com.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)

100 YEARS OF MARIJUANA PROHIBITION

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.

The futility of enforcement, however, is not the urgent reason to 
legalize it. The reason is that prohibition has become a destructive 
force in our society.

Most perniciously, marijuana prohibition provides the tools and the 
excuses for the oppression of minorities. No historian denies that 
the early drug laws were conceived for that purpose, and today's 
grotesquely disproportionate incarceration rate of African-Americans 
proves that the drug laws have shamefully accomplished that purpose.

Prohibition divides us. Getting caught with pot, or the fear of 
getting caught, divides parents and teens, employers and employees, 
friends, neighbors, colleagues, doctors and patients, and citizens 
and the police. That divisiveness weakens us as we face colossal 
challenges like a sick economy, the insolvency of states and 
municipalities, climate change and our addiction to imported oil. As 
long as cannabis remains illegal, it cannot be a part of the solution 
to those colossal challenges.

Take the economy. Montana, a state with a population one-sixth of 
ours, has seen medical marijuana alone create 1,400 new jobs. 
Extrapolate for Massachusetts. Legalization - meaning a regulated and 
taxed market for medical and non-medical consumers - will create new 
jobs and business opportunities in agriculture, horticulture, 
equipment manufacture and supply, construction, real estate, finance, 
and retail, once we no longer have to be afraid.

Consider the insolvency of states and municipalities. Last year, the 
California Board of Equalization estimated that taxing the commercial 
cannabis industry, at a rate of $50 per ounce, would raise between 
$990 million and $1.4 billion. Proportionally, that's around $200 
million in new revenue for the Bay State.

To overcome our addiction to oil, can we ignore the amazing promise 
and versatility of hemp as a clean, renewable energy source, and as 
the raw material for thousands of products, reducing deforestation 
while replacing chemical-intensive cotton and environmentally 
destructive petroleum?

In 1930, 10 years into national Prohibition, Massachusetts voters 
legalized alcohol, ceding to the feds the cost of liquor enforcement. 
History proved them prescient, as with repeal in 1933, bootleggers 
quit or went legit, violent crime plummeted, and a significant new 
source of revenue presented itself to the legislature.

Our immediate challenge is not to legalize cannabis, but to legalize 
serious talk about it, without smirks and snickers. How legalization 
can best protect public health and safety, and discourage abuse, and 
how to tax the substance, are issues not just for politicians, but 
for everyone. Legalization is no longer for stoners; it's for 
taxpayers, entrepreneurs and grandparents, horrified at the likely 
state of the planet on which their grandchildren will grow up.

Let the debate begin now, lest another hundred years go by.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom