WEED BILL ONE STEP CLOSER TO GETTING SMOKED BY LEGISLATORS Before your uninformed celeb-rag-reading co-worker tries to sell you an urban legend about how it's now legal to smoke blunts in public, here's what really happened on Beacon Hill last week regarding marijuana decriminalization in the Commonwealth. The Mental Health and Substance Abuse Committee advanced legislation that would lower the maximum penalty for anyone caught holding less than an ounce of trees from up to six months in prison to a shoulder-brushing $250 fine. The proposal (which must pass the House, Senate and maybe the corner office), passed through committee by a margin of 6-1, with the only nay coming from Rep. Brian Wallace (D-South Boston), who rejected the measure on the presumption that marijuana opens doors to more dangerous substances. Proponents of the bill claim that current penalties are too tough, and that juveniles who get caught with marijuana suffer unfair repercussions when applying for colleges and jobs. Marijuana Policy Project legislative analyst Jonas Singer released a statement, gloating, "This is a huge victory and a major step toward making Massachusetts the 13th state to remove criminal penalties for marijuana possession and embrace sensible marijuana policy." But while committee members and marijuana advocates cited research-including a 2002 Boston University economics department estimate that Massachusetts taxpayers would save more than $24 million a year by decriminalizing marijuana- both Governor Mitt Romney and embattled gubernatorial hopeful Attorney General Thomas Reilly released eerily similar statements criticizing the measure. "It is important that we continue to send a message to young people that drugs are bad for you," Romney's Director of Communications Eric Fehrnstrom wrote. And Reilly, in an almost ridiculous display of how unhip he is to marijuana culture, released a statement that evidenced his inability to do so much as accurately reproduce simple colloquialisms regarding substance abuse. "That's the wrong message to send to our kids," he said. "We have to keep them out of drugs."
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