Voters go against the grain on pot

Posted Thursday, June 18, 2009 7:23 am

"The Board of Selectmen found a criminal penalty contrary to how the voters in Massachusetts felt last November," Selectmen Chairman Donald Sommer said as he motioned to approve the article during the annual town meeting Tuesday night.

"This gives us the ability to go after the wise guy who sits down on a bench on Park Street and lights up a joint. We can soak him with a $300 fine. This isn't about the guy in his backyard. This is like the open container law."

Last November, some 65 percent of voters in Massachusetts decided "yes" on Question 2, which reduced the minor marijuana possession to a fine-only offense. The law makes possession of an ounce or less of pot a civil offense punishable by a $100 fine with minors required to attend a drug awareness program. Previously, possession of similar amounts of the drug was a criminal offense with a possible fine of $500 and a maximum six-month jail term.

The new Massachusetts law, however, specifically allows communities to draft their own public consumption ordinances.

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Town meeting member Marshall Taylor argued that any public ordinance should strive to criminalize the public consumption of marijuana.

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"My understanding of the law was that it protected the guy whose kid smokes pot and leaves the roach in the car ashtray," Taylor said.

"If he gets pulled over for a tail light being out and gets caught with the roach, he isn't going to go to jail for six months. We need something that gets the guy who sits in the McDonald's parking lot smoking a joint."

He asked for clarification on whether there would be harsher penalties for subsequent offenses, using the example of a man being caught smoking a joint in the McDonald's parking lot eight times.

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"It's $300 each time," Town Counsel Edmund St. John III said. "So if someone wants to smoke a joint in public eight times and is caught each time, the fine would total $2,400 -- that would be the most expensive ounce or less of pot."

The fine increase was approved with a standing vote of 67 to 40 of the 113 meeting members in attendance.

Meeting members approved a majority of the warrant articles without discussion, including a $7.6 million town budget, an appropriation of $3.1 million for the Adams-Cheshire Regional School District and an additional appropriation of $548,329 for the school district in anticipation of a shortfall in state aid.