[420 Girl]

A 23-year-old Medway man who was one of the few Bay State stoners to pay a $100 fine for breaking the commonwealth’s new marijuana law says he feels like a real dope for doing the right thing.

“I wish I didn’t pay,” Patrick Cove told the Herald. “I do actually feel like a dope.”

The Herald reported yesterday that most local potheads are blowing off the $100 citation issued by cops for marijuana possession.

In Boston, more than 80 percent of 415 citations handed out through the July 9 have not been paid. In Brookline, 78 percent of tickets went unpaid, while in Braintree 52 percent were ignored.

A spokesman for Gov. Deval Patrick said the governor will work with lawmakers already seeking to toughen the law to force tokers to pay up.

“The bottom line is the governor believes that if people are fined they should pay the fines,” spokesman Kyle Sullivan said.

Mayor Thomas M. Menino, whose cops are being openly dissed by scofflaws, is considering ways to toughen the law beyond just going after unpaid fines, said spokeswoman Dot Joyce.

Patrick Cove, cited in January, was one of the first people who Boston police ticketed under the state lax new pot law.

As he tells it, police stopped a car he, his girlfriend and brother were traveling in as they left the Bromley Heath Projects in Jamaica Plain. Cove said his brother, who clears drains, was showing the couple where he works. Police thought they were buying he*roin, Cove said, and he was caught with a fully packed pot pipe.

Cove said he paid up promptly because he didn’t want to get in any more trouble. But after learning of the Herald’s findings, he called the lack of enforcement “ridiculous” and said he won’t be a sap if he’s nabbed again.

“I’m not gonna pay again since you told me all this,” Cove said.

Drivers who don’t pay their parking tickets can lose their license but there are no repercussions for potheads who defy the law, critics say. The toothless law allows cops to levy a $100 fine but prevents them from hauling tokers into court to force them to pony up the dough.

Some communities have all but given up enforcing the law. Somerville police say they are writing few if any citations, in part because enforcing the law costs the city more money than it’s worth.


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