[420 Girl]

The Daily News Tribune - A threshold was quietly crossed last week on Beacon Hill: Marijuana legalization was discussed with barely a giggle.

Thirty years after a trend toward liberalizing marijuana laws was reversed by Nixon's "war on drugs," we're seeing a shift in attitudes and laws. In California, a medical marijuana initiative approved by voters has changed the facts on the ground. Pot shops are everywhere, operating on the tissue of legality provided by medical professionals with the broadest possible interpretation of the ills cannabis may be presumed to treat. But there are no signs of great damage done by making the drug more openly available, and no sign of a serious movement to recriminalize it.

Instead, California is moving toward the next obvious step: legalizing, regulating and taxing cannabis. Two referendum questions are being proposed for the 2010 ballot.

The opponents of medical marijuana were right when they predicted it was a slippery slope to legalization. If they had just taken it off the drug schedule, let it be legally produced and sold only with a prescription, things might have been different. But Californians are now being forced to admit the people purchasing pot from licensed distributors aren't all that sick.

The alternative to the medical model of marijuana regulation is the alcohol model. That's what the Joint Committee on Revenue of the Massachusetts Legislature heard testimony on last Wednesday. House 2929, submitted at the request of a Northampton attorney, is modeled on the state's alcohol law. It wouldn't just legalize marijuana, it would provide for the regulation of its potency, set rules for its distribution and - of particular note to a Legislature struggling with enormous revenue shortfalls - heavily tax it.

No one is predicting this bill will make it to the floor for a vote any time soon. California will likely lead the way on this issue, and no state can effectively legalize a controlled substance until Congress changes federal law. But the Revenue Committee gave a respectful hearing to about 20 supporters and one opponent who testified on the bill. Neither the lawmakers nor the media tried to turn a serious topic into a joke. That itself is progress


http://www.420magazine.com/forums/in...x-revenue.html