After Colorado trip, state Sen. Michael Moore opposes legalizing recreational marijuana

By Brian Lee

State Sen. Michael O. Moore, D-Millbury, says he embarked on a recent fact-finding trip to Colorado “leaning in opposition” to legalizing recreational marijuana, but not to the extent that he would consider being part of a group denouncing the effort.

But Tuesday, when the special Senate committee on which he served released a 118-page report on public safety and fiscal concerns about legalizing marijuana - including the potential for young people to gain greater access and become addicts - Mr. Moore said he now stands poised to help speak against a likely ballot question in November, as called for by the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana like Alcohol.

“I would be, and I am, part of a group that’s going to work to try to defeat this measure, a group of legislators and representatives from the DA's office,” Mr. Moore said. “There’s no official name put to it yet, but they are going to try to work together to get the facts out so people will realize this is not a yes or no question; there are severe ramifications to the passage of this.”

The Special Senate Committee on Marijuana was created 13 months ago to research and analyze policy ramifications if Massachusetts were to legalize adult recreational use and sale of marijuana. The panel then spent time in January visiting Colorado, one of four states that allow recreational marijuana use.

Charles J. Faris, president of Worcester-based Spectrum Health Services, said he agrees with everything in the Senate report, while the spokesman for the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana like Alcohol called it "a case of legislators abdicating their responsibility to legislate."

The report advised Massachusetts to take a cautious approach to considering marijuana legalization, and continue to learn from the other four states.

No well-accepted standard for determining driver impairment from marijuana intoxication, which the report says makes it difficult for law enforcement to identify and arrest offenders and gain convictions, and a black market that’s likely to persist because of significant profits to be gained from meeting demand across New England, are among public-safety concerns in the report.

Marijuana remaining illegal under federal law was cited as an economic concern. State agencies would have to assume the difficult and costly responsibilities for ensuring public health and safety, environmental protection, and agricultural safeguards that would ordinarily be undertaken by federal agencies, the report said.

Jim Borghesani, spokesman for the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana like Alcohol, said of the special committee:

“This was a one-person committee until late last year, when it was hastily expanded and within weeks was in Colorado for a short visit, and within weeks of that wrote a report.”

“Our initiative addresses all of the regulatory concerns raised in their report, and our drafting committee was light years ahead of the Senate committee in analyzing and learning from the Colorado experience,” Mr. Borghesani said. “This is a hastily-written report by a hastily-convened committee.”

On the eve of the Senate committee’s release of the report, the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana like Alcohol suggested that some committee members traveled to Colorado with a bias against regulating marijuana and sought information to buttress their positions.

Mr. Moore, vice chairman of the committee, called that suggestion an insult.

“Yes, I went in there feeling I was opposed to this,” he said. “Doesn’t everyone have a right as a citizen to have a position?”

But in what he said was illustrative of his ability to evolve on an issue, Mr. Moore said that he strongly opposed the 2008 ballot question to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana, which ultimately succeeded.

Now, Mr. Moore says of decriminalization: “That’s the direction we should be moving in, rather than legalization.” He said he considers marijuana a gateway drug, and like opioid and alcohol abuse, addiction should be countered with counseling rather than jail.

Mr. Faris, of Spectrum Health Systems, which wrote a paper against legalization of marijuana, echoed the notion of marijuana as a gateway substance.

“We know that not everybody that smokes marijuana is going to go and become an addict," he said. "But every addict that we know that’s come in here started out by smoking marijuana. Who’s going to take the chance that they’re not going to be the one to go on to other things?”

Asserting that the market around the marijuana issue is targeted at youth, Mr. Faris pointed to edible products such as pastries, candies and sodas, and the movement's adoption of a mascot.

“These all reflect back on all the tactics that the tobacco industry used years ago toward attracting youth, the kind of Joe Camel-type of mascot,” he said.

Mr. Faris also said the quality of marijuana that is presently produced has a higher intensity than marijuana sold on the street years ago, with THC levels approaching an intoxicating 30 percent.

Dr. Kevin P. Hill, director of substance abuse consultation service at the McLean Hospital in Belmont, and an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, called the report a good start and thorough explanation of a complex topic.

"They covered a lot of key areas that are not addressed in the current ballot initiative," said Dr. Hill, the author of "Marijuana: The Unbiased Truth about the World’s Most Popular Weed."

"But it is important to point out that we’re still going to have to rely upon the Legislature to correct a lot of the weaknesses (such as the proposed 12 percent tax rate on marijuana being too low to support research, prevention and treatment, compared to other states) of the ballot initiative, should voters vote for legalization."

Because the Legislature had an opportunity to craft its own bill and elected not to, it will be incumbent upon lawmakers to correct weaknesses afterward, and not everyone is confident they will, he said.