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."