I’m starting to squirrel away my tiny little 7/8 ounce baggies full of marijuana in various desk drawers at Banker & Tradesman, confident in the understanding that the laws of God, Man and Massachusetts won’t really care.
What tipped me toward the illegal and illicit, of course, was the ballot initiative in November that decriminalized the proud ownership of tiny amounts of grass. With the threat of a criminal charge replaced by a civil fine of $100, I figure I can risk 50 weeks of columnist reimbursement for the pleasure of smoking a little weed.
The real problem for me at B&T isn’t the drug use; it’s the smoking thing. The Boston/Northeastern hostility to smoking translates into Human Resources memos that read like this: “Smoking is not permitted in the office, in the elevator, in the cafeteria, in the company parking lot, in your car — and especially not in your dreams, which would suggest a subconscious longing for tobacco that would render you unemployable. And, by the way, no loaded shotguns in the hallways, unless they are aimed at a smoker.”
So, if I’m in the bathroom stall, puffing on a little marijuana, and the publisher’s tobacco-sniffing patrol dog starts barking and acting confused, what should be the institutional/societal response? Am I a cool, sensitive, artiste doing a bit of creative brain-altering mischief, for which I will be slapped on the wrist? Or, am I, well, you know, SMOKING???!!! The shame. The shame.
In Framingham, for instance, the Board of Health is all atwitter and smoking nervously because the local smoking code deals only with evil-demon tobacco and not, well, you know, marijuana. The fear is, if a hardened criminal is smoking a joint in some City Hall bathroom or something, you could nail him for the anti-drug civil fine, but not for the brazen act of simply smoking.
As near as anyone can tell, no jurisdiction less grand than the state can sneak around imposing its own punishment for sneaking a bit of weed, but the anti-smoking stuff still remains in local hands.
For criminals under the age of 18, a marijuana bust of even the tiny variety will send you off to the Gulag for a “drug awareness” class, which I would really like to teach, since the kids are probably pretty aware before they get there.
Border Patrol
Complicating the Massachusetts marijuana morass, what do you do with someone who comes into Massachusetts with a note from his doctor, from a state that allows the use of “medical marijuana?” Will the Commonwealth of Massachusetts arrest and harass some poor guy with cancer who is smoking 7/8 of an ounce of grass to relieve his symptoms? In Hawaii, for instance, the number of medical marijuana patients has jumped to almost 4,200 people, from about 1,200 in 2006. If Massachusetts is sort of decriminalizing marijuana use for the butcher, baker and low-level corner drug dealer, will the commonwealth crack down on out-of-state sick people with a bag of grass?
Marijuana does confuse people, even the people who aren’t taking it and are presumably less likely to be confused. In November, the Swiss legalized a giant, government-sponsored heroin program that provides the goodies at government centers. At the same time, the Swiss voted down legalization of marijuana for personal use.
Oddly enough, the U.S. Supreme Court staggered into session in 2006 to unanimously confirm that a Brazilian-based cult in New Mexico was free to use its hallucinogenic tea in religious rituals, even if federal drug laws might prohibit such tea parties, if God wasn’t invited in for a sip.
Imagine if members of the cult moved to Switzerland, vacationed in Massachusetts and opened a new church in Hawaii? They would need a special Bible just to keep track of all the various sins they may or may not have committed.
U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, who when he comes home to Newton is now relatively free to smoke a little weed, has introduced a federal bill to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana.
I’m going to sit down at my B&T desk, suck on a Marlboro and ponder the complexities of this stuff. Oops. Never mind. I’ll stick to civil penalty– sized marijuana.
