This session, a bill to regulate marijuana in a manner similar to alcohol has been introduced by Rep. Rogers and Sen. Jehlen. Dubbed the Cannabis Regulation and Taxation Act of 2016, it resembles legalization initiatives passed in Colorado and other states, with a few major differences that fix many of the problems those states have seen. As there will inevitably be a question on legalizing marijuana on the ballot in 2016, this bill is an opportunity for the legislature to get the specifics right and for advocates to avoid a costly campaign.
Like the laws in Colorado, Washington, Oregon, and Alaska, the bill would legalize the possession and home cultivation of marijuana for adults over 21. It would also create a system of licensing and regulation for commercial sales that mimics regulations for alcohol and tobacco, with the bill specifically saying so in many provisions. For example, the introduction notes “the success of education and treatment instead of arrest and incarceration to reduce adult and adolescent use of tobacco and alcohol, two substances with far greater documented harm to public health than marijuana.” Also, the Department of Public Health is tasked with creating rules for the industry, with orders that “no regulation concerning the sale of cannabis and cannabis products shall require stricter provisions… than existing regulations for the sale of alcohol or tobacco products.”
However, the bill itself regulates marijuana much more strictly than alcohol in a few key ways. It forbids marijuana businesses from placing any ads “to promote or encourage the consumption of cannabis.” It’s unclear whether this would prohibit all advertising for dispensaries, or just ads that try to make marijuana use itself seem appealing. The bill also only allows marijuana to be sold in very specific units — one ounce, a half ounce, and a quarter ounce — and limits the number of retail permits to a maximum of 20% the number of liquor licenses.
Another quirk about the bill is that it taxes edible marijuana products significantly more than raw marijuana intended for smoking. With taxes set at $10 per serving of edibles and $50 per ounce of marijuana, which comes out to about 89 cents per joint, this tax structure will steer people away from edibles and toward smoking, which is more dangerous. If the bill does move forward, taxes on edibles should be lowered to fix these warped incentives.
Despite that shortcoming, the bill is actually much better than other states’ laws in some big ways. First of all, it creates a special license for establishments that allow customers to consume marijuana on the premises. This fixes the problem seen in Colorado, where visitors to the state can buy legal marijuana but, without private residences and with smoking banned in public spaces, have few places to legally consume it. This has led to a large increase in tickets for public consumption even as other drug-related charges have dropped.
Most importantly, the Cannabis Regulation and Taxation Act of 2016 would also expunge the criminal records of everyone convicted of marijuana offenses that would become legalized under the new law. Those currently imprisoned solely for a marijuana offense can also apply to be released. This is an incredibly important mechanism, as it helps alleviate the long-term injustices of prohibition, which has disproportionately impacted low-income people and communities of color.
Between this bill and Senate President Rosenberg’s Special Senate Committee on Marijuana, legalization is going to be a major debate this session. The General Court has two choices: lead the nation as the first state to legalize marijuana through the legislative process, or sit on their hands and let advocacy groups craft a ballot initiative that will most likely become law next year.
I don’t want to go 20 rounds on this, but for reasons previously stated I’m still very likely to vote no.
The initial referendum last year had 72% favoring this form of legalization. It was non binding but impressive.
http://www.masslive.com/politics/index.ssf/2014/11/marijuana_legalization_advocat.html
Mine wasn’t one of them (and I don’t recall discussion on BMG) and I have no way of knowing without further analysis how representative those districts are of the whole state.
http://www.dpfmass.org/home/
I wasn’t involved in getting those questions on the ballot or campaigning for them, so I can’t say this with certainty, but I assume they were put in districts with a higher probability of approving them, rather than more conservative ones that might shoot them down. But 14 districts averaging 72% approval is still significant, especially since some of them were asking about treating marijuana like vegetables rather than alcohol, which I assume would have less support in general.
…one to decriminalize it and the other for medical use, certainly backs up that statement.
Do you have any data that refutes that statement?
…and there may well be the data. I’m not saying the diarist is wrong; I just wanted the evidence he is right since he made the claim.
I’ve seen two statewide polls that show support for adult use legalization: a WBUR poll from May 2014 had 49% yes, 42% no, with 9% undecided; a Suffolk University/Boston Herald poll from February 2014 found 53% support, 37% opposition, and 10% undecided. More recent but less representative are the November 2014 local questions I’ve previously written about on BMG, which had 14 state representative districts vote in favor of legalization (importantly, while 8 of those asked about regulating marijuana like alcohol, 6 proposed regulating it like fruits and vegetables and were still approved).
My confidence for the 2016 question is partly based on all those polling results, but I recognize there isn’t enough data to be very sure. I also think that with Colorado and Washington’s markets maturing, and with Alaska and Oregon coming online soon, that once November 2016 comes around we’ll have a wealth of experience from other states to point to as evidence that regulation can work quite well.
Sensible bill to pass. Let’s see if DeLeo is consensus leader willing to advance contentious issues his backers have said he is. Let’s get this passed! Let’s put
all the revenue towards the T.
but I do not support earmarking all revenue from weed to the MBTA. Earmarking revenues is really clumsy, does not reflect a thoughtful consideration of public needs and will piss of voters from non-MBTA districts. Let the money flow to the general fund.
Some states that have legalized marijuana earmarked a portion of the revenue for school construction & drug education, which I think are both admirable goals. But I wouldn’t want to earmark tax revenues from a class of businesses all over the state for something that only helps one region. I think that would both be problematic in practice, and as TheBestDefense says, could lower support for the ballot question among voters who live in the rest of MA (or even ones who live in the Greater Boston area but don’t use public transit much).
And they’ve been significantly underfunded. As important as the MBTA is, we also need our bridges not to fall down, our roads not to crumble, and our hill towns to be able to get broadband. Just for a start, you know?
Plus, one was to guarantee that neither the Western Massachusetts delegation nor its voters support legislation or the referendum is to tell people that they’re going to be paying taxes here that, once again, will all be going to Boston. Even if there were no material dispute that putting all the revenues toward the MBTA would contribute as much to the local economy out here as spending on our immediate needs would, it would be a hard sell to make to voters; and it’s harder when you remember that it’s unlikely that there would be such undisputed and indisputable figures.
But that aside, if we’re going to continue to rely on sin taxes to raise revenue, this seems like a good way to go. It’s likely to raise money, it creates legitimate jobs, and it gets rid of a whole lot of victimless crime, to the benefit of all of us.
We’ve heard all the arguments. I live in Cambridge. But something in me deeply objects to writing off the rest of a basically majestic little state with an economy equal to Thailand.
I don’t understand why the T isn’t under some regional authority rubric like MWRA that pulls supplementary funding from areas served. TBD probably knows the pros and cons.
It’s problems are in part due to strange financial engineering schemes by a related gaggle of idiots in that bleak alliance of GOP fixers and Deleocrats. Back then it was probably Finnecrats. It’s always been some kind of ward heeler.
As best as I can tell, the whole state got hosed during the lengthy festival of abject selfishness that marked the past few decades.
And some things like hill town broad band are just ridiculous. That could have been handled by setting up municipal charters for clusters of towns like Hawley and Ashfield to just set up their own systems or horse trading for license approvals. I was in Hawley a few years ago and you couldn’t even get a flip phone signal worth a damn..
That’s where the corporate mentality, (probably with some graft), of the leadership went supine for the big carriers. In FDRs time the equivalent phone companies were compelled to provide universal service.
This is mostly just gutless laziness. “Oh RCN.. you want those juicy parts of Allston…. and you… Verizon… you want to move fiber to Cambridge… go wire Ashfield and Franklin County and we can do business”.
It’s the friggin replacement equivalent replacement for the now archaic land line world… jeeze. This is why I laugh when Boton does it’s tech gloating.
I do not actually favor dedicating it to just the T, I do think we can easily eliminate the $40 million cut and plug some more infrastructure holes with the revenue. If it generated half a billion to a billion in additional revenue for Colorado, imagine what it could do in Massachusetts. Particularly if we are the Northeastern monopoly for quite sometime.
As you mention, MA could end up having a really outsized market for some time if we beat other Northeastern states to legalization. Colorado has seen some marijuana-related tourism, but there aren’t densely populated neighboring states a short drive away. If we pass this soon, people from the rest of New England and New York will be driving over to Massachusetts for little trips, in addition to the huge amount of national/international tourism it would bring. Allowing cafes, where people can consume on premises, will be huge for tourism since it would both be a bigger draw (since Colorado doesn’t allow it) and it would give tourists a safe place to consume without doing it in public or picking it up here and illegally driving it home across state lines.
This big boost won’t last, as the surrounding states will legalize soon enough, but we could get a few really great years out of it before things settle back down to still-pretty-great levels.
Bearing in mind the “marijuana munchies”, I suspect that legalized weed would help our already-thriving restaurant industry.
I don’t think it’s ethical for for profit entities to profit off of marijuana. For-profit dispensaries should be banned, but non profit growers or cooperatives should still be allowed, and state revenue should go to treat substance abuse in the community.
Think of it as being like tomatoes. Tobacco doesn’t grow easily here. Booze takes lots of work and land if wine is involved.
With tomatoes, you can grow your Big Boys or you can buy many versions in supermarkets, roadside stands or farmers markets.
And then there are endless value added food products that use tomatoes.
So there would be layers of economic activity and worrying about whether its for profit or not is like worrying if tomato starters will be banned from garden shops. If anything, that’ll be another layer, Indica and Sativa starters at Home Depot and Mahoneys.
All in all this will turn out to be a lot smarter than building friggin casinos as a revenue stream and it will happen.
I don’t have a problem with allowing people to engage in business around marijuana. It’s objectively safer than alcohol and tobacco, which are both left to private industry. Or do you think it’s unethical to profit off of any drug, and would support making alcohol and tobacco into nonprofit systems as well?
I could see that being more logically consistent, but I think forcing any of them into being nonprofits would cause a lot of issues without fixing many problems. Better to allow businesses, regulate them so they don’t market to children or mislead adult consumers, and tax them enough to support effective drug abuse prevention & treatment programs.
$82 million a year projected for Massachusetts according to one economist, I would argue that it would be higher in the short run since we would be the first in the Northeast to do it and would get some of the tourism Colorado and Washington are, along with folks talking day trips to come into the state. I for one relish making money off of Granite Staters who would pay the privilege to live more freely in Massachusetts.
Colorado got $53 million in tax revenue. Nothing to sneeze at, but below projections.
Much turns on how a cannabis economy forms as much is still in its infancy.
I imagine a fairly elaborate array of biz forms from those Indica starter sets. I mentioned to value added stoner snacks. THC oil extracts to serve many functions. There would probably be an array of Pre roll things that would emulate cigarette biz. The Vietnamese actually had a brand during the war called “Park Lanes”.
Then you have the serving establishment angle where a whole other tier forms in the same way taverns exist now.
All in all, it could have an interesting growth curve.
The nicotine pariahs and the lottery chumps kick in the most revenue while the alkies only do about 77 million in excise taxes.
The role of beverage sales in hospitality venues isn’t as easy to tease out but given it’s usual menu price and the fact that a pouring license is generally considered to be a must to make a restaurant work, it probably accounts for a the major share of the income pie.
It’s funny to see the boozers contrived to make it exempt from sales taxes. Gotta coddle the alcoholics but the cigarette bums and gamble dupes are open to be fleeced for all their worth.
It smacks of more yuppie class warfare as yuppies do love their status booze but look down on smokes and scratchies.
I’d argue that booze is the bigger public hazard and we should tax the crap out of it.
It left me limping along with modest liver impairment and I don’t miss it. Cigarettes were not a great time for my lungs but at least you don’t hear about cigarette impaired driving accidents.
Here’s a Bloomberg chart for a sense of it.
http://www.bloomberg.com/visual-data/best-and-worst//most-tax-revenue-from-alcohol-tobacco-betting-states
Would weed yield like booze or like cigarettes or somewhere between?
Just a few clarifications about the bill are appropriate, given its excellent summary posted above.
DPH is not primarily “tasked with creating rules for the industry.” Under the bill DPH will enforce laws regarding “the preparation, packaging and sale of cannabis and cannabis products to the extent same constitute food, drugs or articles under chapter 94,” and may adopt regulations to integrate marijuana into the existing food and drug laws, including labeling requirements. Primary industry oversight, however, — “general supervision of the conduct of the business of cultivation, processing, distribution, sale at wholesale and retail and importing cannabis, both marijuana and hemp” — is vested in a Cannabis Commission. The Commission shall consult with DPH in developing “health and safety regulations and standards for the cultivation and processing of cannabis, and manufacture of cannabis products,” but otherwise the Commission is creating the new industry’s rules rather than DPH.
The post’s assertion that the heavier taxation of edibles steers consumers “toward smoking, which is more dangerous” appears inconsistent with the facts about edibles and non-edible post-combustion consumption. First, edibles as a class are far more potently psychoactive than raw unprocessed flowers which often are “smoked,” motivating greater concern for consumption in food; second, a growing body of research shows marijuana smoking is significantly less harmful than tobacco smoking, and lacks cancer-causing potential unlike tobacco; also, flowers can be vaporized, enabling psychoactivity without creating the carbon products that can be harmful to lungs.
The civil rights issues arising from the racially-discriminatory enforcement of drug laws have not been solved by decriminalization (no detention for adult possession of an ounce or less, only a speeding ticket like fine), and require a nonmedical legal market to enable adult access, and to control nonadult access far greater than current prohibition law. Since decrim’s enactment six years ago, the state’s african-american community has been prosecuted for marijuana distribution and cultivation offenses at four times its rate in the state’s population, with no claim that these citizens commit marijuana offenses or consume marijuana at rates greater than the general population. Legalization is the only remedy to the social and public health harms of the black market, as marijuana prohibition — having demonstrably failed to deter access or use after four decades of rigid enforcement, while contributing to the violence of the black market — is causing far more public health and safety harm than marijuana use.
Bay State voters are ready for reform. Decrim passed in all but two of the state’s 351 cities and towns in 2008, and medical reform (legal patient access with a doctor’s certification) carried all but one town, both votes producing 60% support and outpolling Pres. Obama. The sky hasn’t fallen in CO and WA which fully legalized in 2012; OR enacted nonmedical legalization last fall, as did Alaska where personal home cultivation has been legal for 40 years. As the post concludes, the legislature can lead the people on this issue; or the people will enact this reform by initiative, the funders of which were successful in 2008 and 2012, and already have registered an initiative fund with the state campaign finance office for next year.