NORTHAMPTON — If marijuana is legalized on Nov. 8, proponents say it will eventually eradicate the existing black markets where the drug is currently dealt, freeing up valuable law enforcement resources to tackle more serious crime.
But local law enforcement officials see different pressures on the horizon if a legal marijuana industry sets up shop in Massachusetts. They say it will lead to more drugged driving, illegal home cultivation, and diversion to underage smokers whose developing brains are more susceptible to possibly permanent ill effects of pot’s active chemicals.
For Northwestern District Attorney David E. Sullivan, marijuana’s decriminalized status and the state’s medical marijuana law means low-level drug possession crimes aren’t taking up the court’s time or giving offenders criminal records, and people who need the drug to treat medical conditions can already get it. That’s far enough, he said.
Sullivan and all the state’s other district attorneys oppose the ballot question, as does the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association. Sullivan has said he supported both decriminalization in 2008 and medical marijuana legalization in 2012.
Sullivan said increasing the availability of marijuana could lead to more drugged driving and potentially fatal crashes.
He said both Colorado and Washington have measured upticks in those cases, and his office would need to train officers as special drug recognition experts to screen drivers for intoxication, because there’s no reliable scientific test to measure that.
That technology is expected to be available within a few years, proponents of legalization say. Without it, marijuana OUI cases are typically tough to prove in court, which legalization foes argue encourages drugged driving.
Until that changes, “there’d be tremendous pressure on law enforcement around operating under the influence,” Sullivan said. “It’s going to be a difficult situation to show impairment.”
Sullivan is also concerned about the delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, content of the products that would be sold, including marijuana-infused edibles and concentrates. THC is the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana.
“The level of tetrahydrocannabinol that’s now in marijuana and hashish, people are going to be smoking and ingesting stuff that has five to 30 times more THC than it did 10 years ago,” he said. “It’s a dangerous drug with that level of THC.”
Producing those concentrates or oils usually involves butane distillation, he said, which can create fire hazards.
Home cultivation, which would be allowed to some extent under the proposed law, presents its own issues, Sullivan said. In Denver, where marijuana has been legal since 2012, police have found themselves running out of space to store marijuana seized from people growing it improperly or in much larger quantities than allowed, according to reports from The Denver Post.
Sullivan said his office doesn’t have the resources to police those types of operations or conduct regular inspections, and he fears much of that product could end up diverted to black markets despite the existence of a legal industry.
“I see it proliferating, and more available to teens. It’s not good from a public health aspect,” he said.
That’s Sullivan’s chief concern about marijuana legalization, he said — the potential for increased use among youth, resulting in higher school dropout rates. That could snowball into an increased risk of those students becoming entangled in the court system later on.
“One of our biggest concerns related to crime is dropouts,” he said. “The chance of being involved in crime and courts goes up dramatically due to chronic marijuana use, and we don’t want to see these kids get derailed in school, get bad grades or drop out.”
Sullivan said marijuana-infused edibles also present a risk for youth, since they’re harder to tell apart from normal snacks. He’s concerned they’ll be designed to appeal to young people, in much the same way that the tobacco industry has portrayed cigarettes as attractive. In Colorado, edibles represent the fastest growing segment of the market.
“Why else would you put it in candy form? There’s no other reason,” he said.
He’s also worried about students fizzling out academically amid a global economic environment that requires high levels of education for the United States to remain competitive against other countries.
Daniel Rowland, a spokesman for the Office of Marijuana Policy in Denver said legalization has brought its own challenges for law enforcement in the city, including policing of home growing and marijuana-infused edibles.
Home growing was a problem during prohibition and since 2000 when medical marijuana was legalized in Colorado, but legalization has seen it become more common, he said.
“It’s an issue, home growing,” Rowland said. Colorado allows six plants to be grown at home, in enclosed, locked spaces. “We’ve got people who are uneducated about the law, or don’t care, or are actively exporting it to the black markets in other states.”
The local police have a team that polices home-grow operations, especially around harvest time, he said. Those operations are funded by special city taxes.
Edibles, Rowland said, proved surprisingly popular, and regulators have worked to put the right controls in place, including outlawing certain candies, requiring a universal THC label on all packaging and setting the serving size at 5 milligrams.
Local black markets, Rowland said, haven’t completely gone away, but there’s certainly less underground activity.
“It’s not going to disappear overnight, and could thrive in the short run, but (legalization) has addressed a need,” he said. “The need for your friendly, neighborhood pot dealer has gone away for residents and visitors. They don’t need to break the law to obtain their products.”