[420 Girl]

Any day now, Massachusetts officially will welcome casinos. Within months, bulldozers will clear open space for private parking lots, buildings, highways and infrastructure. The commonwealth will take its place among states balancing their budgets with licensing fees and taxes from gaming. The legislative logic and addiction to revenue that drives the gaming proposal is equally applicable to other "vices." So why is the legislature not proposing regulating prostitution and the production and commerce in the most popular substance current law prohibits: marijuana?

While there is no proposal on Beacon Hill to regulate prostitution, there is pending S. 1801, "An Act to Regulate and Tax the Cannabis Industry." It proposes a system of regulatory control over cannabis cultivation and commerce that it is estimated would be at least as great as legalized gaming and that would take a half billion-dollar bite out of criminal enterprises!

Before voters in 2008, overwhelmingly approved decriminalization of possession of an ounce or less, Massachusetts ranked at the top of all states in adult per capita consumption, since passage Massachusetts retains this high rank. The opponents of the ballot question prophesied that the sky would fall, but they were wrong. Now it is time to take the next step and legalize it.

As Harvard Professor of Economics Jeffrey Miron observed in the graduation issue of the Harvard Crimson in May:

Legalization will move the marijuana industry above ground, just as the repeal of alcohol prohibition restored the legal alcohol industry. A small component of the marijuana market might remain illicit - moonshine marijuana rather than moonshine whiskey - but if regulation and taxation are moderate, most producers and consumers will choose the legal sector, as they did with alcohol.

If only the legislature had the imagination and fortitude of the Provincial Congress of 1774-1775.


NewsHawk: Ganjarden: 420 MAGAZINE
Source: The MetroWest Daily News
Author: STEVEN S. EPSTEIN
Contact: The MetroWest Daily News
Copyright: 2010 GateHouse Media, Inc
Website: Casinos and pot legalization


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