SMOKING, GUNS

Massachusetts decriminalized the possession of an ounce or less of
marijuana two years ago.

How's that working out?

Cops say they've never seen more people smoking marijuana. It's
ubiquitous, not just in the inner city, but in tony suburbs, where
high school kids are more worried about getting busted with -- or
thrown off a team for being seen in the proximity of -- a six-pack of beer.

With business booming, the sort of violence we associate with
Colombian cartels and suitcases full of cocaine is now as likely to
be used against some small-timer selling grass out of his house.

Everybody knows about the four people shot dead, including a young
mother and her 2-year-old son, in Mattapan a couple of weeks ago.
Homicide detectives think a marijuana rip-off was at the heart of
that massacre. Fewer know the story of Michelle Diaz.

Diaz, 21, was in her fourth year at Worcester State University, in
the nursing program. She held down two jobs working her way through
school. She was, by all accounts, a good kid. But seven weeks ago,
some people who knew she had marijuana decided to rob her.

The cops found her on a tree-lined street in Worcester, in the middle
of the afternoon, slumped in the driver's side of her Lexus, shot in
the neck. She spent a week on life support before she died.

Michelle Diaz was hardly a drug kingpin, but she died like one, at
the end of a pointed gun.

More recently, a kid from New York who was going to college in Boston
was sitting in the $700,000 condo his father bought him when some
local guys broke down the door. They weren't students. They pointed a
gun and said they wanted his money and the grass he was selling. He
gave them both and moved back to New York.

Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis, who was a drug cop in his days
in Lowell, points to that college student as evidence that
decriminalization has, among other things, attracted a more naive,
and vulnerable, supply side.

"I'm concerned about it," Davis said. "With the change in the law,
and almost tacit approval, there are more people using and there's
more money at stake. People selling grass don't seem to take the same
precautions as those selling other drugs. There seems to have been an
increase in violence associated with marijuana."

While police and prosecutors worry about the violence, others say the
violence would go away if the state legalized grass.

A few weeks ago, a bunch of well-meaning people spilled over Boston
Common, advocating the legalization of marijuana. One guy collecting
donations for MassCann, which works for the reform of marijuana laws,
said the state's budget problems would disappear overnight if the
state legalized and taxed grass.

Jill Stein, the only person running for governor who is in favor of
legalization, says legalization would end the illicit side of the
business and its attending violence.

She might be right, but in this, the busiest of recent election
seasons, we're not having that conversation. It's taboo.

Like most people in law enforcement, Ed Davis thinks legalization
would be a disaster. The stuff being sold now is much stronger than
what baby boomers smoked in their dorm rooms, listening to the
Grateful Dead. Davis says people who wouldn't dream of smoking
marijuana while it's illegal would try it if that stigma was removed.

"We have enough trouble with alcohol," he said.

There is little doubt that if marijuana were legalized, more people
would use it and abuse it.

There is also little doubt that as long as selling marijuana carries
with it obscene profits, we can't lock up everybody willing to use
guns to protect businesses or steal proceeds.

And they will continue to use those guns.

Even if that means shooting women, children, and college students.