Last November, 74 percent of the state’s cities and towns voted to end marijuana prohibition.
They recognized the failure of prohibition to serve public health or safety. Like alcohol prohibition, voters know, marijuana prohibition causes more harm to health and safety than the adolescent use or adult abuse of this nontoxic substance.
A statewide consensus — including 69 percent of Northampton voters — recognized that adult marijuana use is irreparably ingrained in our society; its prohibition failed to reduce use, particularly among minors; and prohibition enforcement consistently discriminates against minority groups.
Question 4 supporters — knowing that the harms of prohibition dwarf the health risks of marijuana use — voted to regulate marijuana like alcohol.
The Senate and House bills passed last week to amend Question 4 now are pending before a joint legislative conference committee, seeking agreement on a single bill. The Senate bill, by tweaking Question 4 but leaving intact most of its alcohol-modeled regulation, respects the people’s will.
The House decided to ignore the people’s will, however, by replacing Question 4 with a bill to regulate marijuana more like plutonium than alcohol. Designed by opponents of Question 4, the House bill would obstruct the legalization of marijuana. The House bill delivers a prohibitionist wish list of reasons for denying licensed facilities for production and distribution. The House version embraces the thoroughly disproven “gateway” connection between marijuana and other drug use, ignoring prohibition’s demonstrable role in connecting users to other drugs.
The House bill exchanges Question 4’s presumption of licensure – if objective licensing concerns are satisfied – with a series of ambiguous demands that go far beyond alcohol licensing requirements, and which applicants can only meet by showing authorities their worthiness “by clear and convincing evidence.” Does an applicant — his or her “antecedents” or “close associates,” whatever those terms mean — have a prior drug offense on their record? If you are a minority group member, compared to Caucasians, the chances are far greater that you do.
Have you engaged in noncriminal behavior which the House licensing rules deem harmful to the state’s “interests” (with no standards for defining disqualifying behavior, harm or “interests”)? The House bill allows the denial of nontoxic marijuana licensure for these and other reasons, which licensees of toxic alcohol are not asked to confront.
The Senate bill is far closer to the people’s primary objective in enacting Question 4: reducing the harm to public safety and public health (including unrestrained adolescent access) caused by the black market. The Senate bill simply tweaks Question 4, leaving intact its regulation of marijuana like alcohol and adding protections for farmers and access to licenses for minority group members and applicants with middle-class assets.
The Senate bill also sets a lower tax rate, learning the lessons of Western states. Several states started with high tax rates like the House bill’s rates, only to find that such white-market cost increases kept the black market competitive, motivating them to cut marijuana taxation.
More important than the conference committee negotiations — over the tax rate, or how easily towns can opt-out of accepting the placement of marijuana licensees (and access to local marijuana tax income) — is whether the Senate’s respect for the will of the Question 4 voters will prevail, or whether the House’s version of marijuana regulation will be allowed to hobble a functioning white market, defeating Question 4’s victory for regulating marijuana like alcohol.
We urge Question 4 supporters — who voted to improve public health, safety and state revenues by regulating marijuana like alcohol — to contact their state representatives and senators, and urge them to tell the conference committee to defeat the House bill and enact the Senate bill, or to refuse to concur, thus leaving Question 4 intact.
Michael Cutler is a Northampton resident and attorney who helped draft Question 4.