URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v16/n525/a07.html
Newshawk: http://www.drugsense.org/donate.htm
Votes: 0
Pubdate: Thu, 04 Aug 2016
Source: Boston Herald (MA)
Copyright: 2016 The Boston Herald, Inc
Contact:
Website: http://www.bostonherald.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/53
Note: Prints only very short LTEs.
MORE POLS FOR POT
This week Boston City Council President Michelle Wu suggested it ought to be legal for individuals to purchase and consume pot. But if Wu has her way it would be unacceptable for them to take their goodies home from the pot store in a plastic shopping bag.
Yes, in the same week that Wu and Councilor Tito Jackson announced their support for a November ballot question that would legalize the recreational use of marijuana, Wu ordered a study into how Boston might reduce the use of plastic shopping bags – including the possibility of an outright ban.
Call it the guiding philosophy of so many progressive policymakers – government unrestrained in its power to regulate individual choices, except, maybe, when those individuals want to get high.
Wu and Jackson this week joined a handful of other elected officials supporting Question 4, framing it as a social justice issue and citing racial disparities in the enforcement of drug laws. Wu, for example, wonders why blacks and Hispanics should be imprisoned on pot charges at higher rates than, say, her old Harvard classmates.
But surely she is aware that since 2008 possession of less than an ounce of marijuana in Massachusetts has been a civil offense. No adult will go to jail for that.
Are some criminals locked up for possessing much larger amounts? Maybe a handful. For trafficking? Yes, as many ought to be, and that would still be the case even if Question 4 passes.
And if this new marijuana industry decides to target low-income, minority neighborhoods to set up shop – as reports suggest it has in Colorado – where is the “social justice” in that?
Jackson, for his part, notes that legalizing and taxing pot sales will generate revenue that would help fund treatment for people addicted to opioids. Of course many if not most of those people get their start by .. smoking marijuana.
We’d respect some of these officials more if, instead of hiding behind contrived excuses, they’d just say they think pot should be legal because a lot of people like to get high. At least it would be credible.
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom