(Editor’s note:  For years, this website has scrupulously avoided the subject of medical marijuana, for the principal reasons that it doesn’t go far enough, other activists are far more knowledgeable on the subject, and as a notorious legalizer, my support would only bolster the claim of critics that medical marijuana is a mere “stepping stone” to legalization. However, now that a medical marijuana initiative is in the works for the November, 2012, ballot in my home state of Massachusetts, I cannot sit on the sidelines any longer. Accordingly, I shall devote this page to the subject immediately, and add to it as developments occurs.)

A proposed medical marijuana initiative has been filed with state officials  in Boston for the November, 2012, ballot. Here is the text, prefaced by an Information Sheet from the AG’s office, and here is a description of the measure in a nutshell, prepared with my colleague Mike Cutler.

Some initial views:

The measure rolls back existing criminal (state) laws to accommodate the use of medical marijuana by qualified patients, meaning people who have been diagnosed by their physicians with a “debilitating medical condition,” a diagnosis for which doctors are given wide latitude. With the doctor’s “written certification,” the patient can obtain a registration card from the Department of Public Health, authorizing them to obtain a 60-day supply from one of up to up to 35 “medical treatment centers,” facilities where medical marijuana may be cultivated, processed and dispensed to qualifying and properly credentialed patients. Cultivation and storage of medical marijuana may only occur in “enclosed, locked facilities.” Cardholders without access to a treatment center can grow their own supply, in similarly enclosed and locked space. The centers may be owned and operated only by non-profit entities.

Like all medical marijuana laws, this one expressly changes no laws relating to driving under the influence of marijuana, and leaves many gaps to be filled in, and the details worked out, in regulations to be adopted by the Department.

The text is silent about matters of taxation, zoning, public health and other laws that regulate business, leaving them up to existing laws and rules.

The law braces itself against federal attack by boldly pronouncing, in Section 7 (F), “Nothing in this law requires the violation of federal law or purports to give immunity under federal law.” That sentence is artful in form and content. A less elegant way to put it might have been: “If the feds want to arrest and prosecute sick people and those who help them, that’s their call, but the state will no longer be involved in that sordid business.”

This law legalizes nothing, as federal prohibition remains intact. What changes is that the burden of enforcing it against medical marijuana users and their helpers shifts to the federal authorities. This is reminiscent  of 1923, when New York repealed its state (alcohol) prohibition laws and left it to the feds to chase bootleggers, or when the voters of Massachusetts did the same thing by initiative in 1930, and the voters of 11 other states in 1932, all while the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act were the law of the land. The analogy isn’t perfect because medical repeal is only partial repeal.

The measure’s solid legal craftsmanship is matched by its solid rhetorical craftsmanship, introducing new terms to the debate and discarding old ones. For example, the full title is “An Initiative Petition for a Law for the Humanitarian Medical Use of Marijuana.” Humanitarian, not “compassionate,” a word that has become stale, and is less apt. What could less humane than arresting people for medical marijuana? The text artfully avoids the term “license,” instead authorizing the Department to “register” qualifying patients, giving them a card that lets them purchase their supply at a “medical marijuana treatment center” (not, similarly, a “dispensary”). My favorite gem is the term “non-medical,” a vast improvement over the “recreational,” as non-medical use can also include vocational use as by artists, writers, and manual laborers.

As of April 30, 2012, it appears that the legislature will not act, hence the measure’s appearance on the November ballot is nearly certain.