VOTERS SEND A MESSAGE ON MARIJUANA

California voters shot down Proposition 19 last week, but the
campaign put full marijuana legalization on the table.

Its supporters plan to come back to the voters in 2012.

Massachusetts voters sent a quieter message on the same
topic.

Ballots in 18 legislative districts included non-binding questions on
marijuana.

Half of the questions asked legislators to support legalizing use of
marijuana for medical purposes, the other half supporting the
regulation, cultivation, sale and taxation of marijuana.

The results were consistent across the state: Voters said "yes," by
margins ranging from 54 percent to 70 percent, the Associated Press
reports. Locally, voters in Hudson, Maynard, Stow, Sudbury, Wayland,
Lincoln and Dover supported full legalization. Voters in Bellingham,
Medfield, Blackstone and Uxbridge supported legalization for medical
use. In every local district, at least 60 percent of voters supported
the propositions. Drug policy reform advocates in Massachusetts have
been putting marijuana-related questions on the ballot since 2000.
Each time, the question has asked state legislators to help write the
reforms into law. Out of 63 ballot questions, voters have approved all
63, but the Legislature has yet to bring any reform bill to the floor
for a vote.

In 2008, reformers went around the Legislature, with a ballot measure
reducing possession of small amounts of marijuana to a civil
violation, punishable by a fine of no more than $100. It passed by a
wide majority, and the commonwealth has survived.

A few weeks ago, California legislators passed a law doing the same
thing, partly in reaction to Proposition 19. While timid lawmakers in
Washington and state capitals avoided the subject, marijuana has been
moving haphazardly toward legalization through dozens of ballot
initiatives. Medical marijuana referenda have resulted in de facto
legalization in California, Colorado and other states.

It is now legal in Rhode Island, which is trying to avoid the loose
standards and party atmosphere found in medical marijuana dispensaries
in some western states. California's Proposition 19 fell short for
many reasons.

It had opposition, financed in part by alcohol distributors, that
ranged from the political establishment to some leaders in the medical
marijuana industry.

Even the leaders of Latin American countries that export marijuana
criticized the initiative. The proposition failed to address the
conflict between state law and federal law, as well as international
treaties regulating marijuana. Even many who supported the goal of
full legalization, regulation and taxation of marijuana saw problems
in the regulatory structure the proposal would have established. Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, who signed the decriminalization bill, told Jay
Leno this week that "propositions don't die because the idea is bad.
It just dies because it's written wrong." That's why it's a mistake
for state legislators to leave it up to activists to write drug laws.
A bill that makes it through hearings, expert testimony, and public
debate is less likely to be prone to unintended consequences than one
that goes straight to the voters.

A legislative committee on Beacon Hill earlier this year held a
respectful hearing on a bill that would legalize, tax and regulate
marijuana.

A similar bill will no doubt be filed for the next
session.

The message voters sent last week was that elected officials should
take the issue seriously and do their jobs.

Either the Legislature sorts through the policy options and writes a
law, or the activists will write one for them and let the voters decide.