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.