It’s time for a new approach to marijuana that acknowledges the failure of prohibition, frees up police to go after crimes that have real victims and recognizes the health benefits to Mainers seeking to use marijuana to treat a variety of illnesses. For these reasons, I support legalizing, regulating and taxing marijuana for adult use — Question 1 on the November ballot.
A “yes” vote will transfer marijuana from an underground market into a legal economy that will test their products for safety and potency, ID their customers, comply with state regulations and pay taxes.
A legalized marijuana market will generate millions in tax revenue that can be used — as states such as Colorado and Washington have — to fund drug prevention and treatment programs, improve our schools, address homelessness, enhance law enforcement capacity to enforce drug impaired driving laws and tackle other serious issues facing our state.
I did not come to this decision lightly. In my 32 years in Maine law enforcement, I saw the criminal justice approach to marijuana prohibition accomplish little. And it did nothing to reduce or eliminate the availability of marijuana.
What the current system did accomplish, beyond assigning civil and criminal penalties to otherwise law-abiding adults, was create opportunities for unnecessary public stigma, setting the stage for the loss or suspension of federal student loans and creating fear and negative backlash when applying for a job or apartment.
Over the last four decades, I’ve been a police officer, a sheriff and a practicing attorney. I’ve witnessed the reality of marijuana use. I can tell you that the present criminal justice approach has failed to control availability or use of this nonlethal plant.
Marijuana has and will continue to be present in Maine. Despite widespread use and availability of this plant and acknowledgment by many others in law enforcement that we have far more pressing issues facing our communities, we continue to prop up laws that make criminals of Mainers for their personal choice to use it.
Voting yes on Question 1 provides a better path.
It calls for the adoption of reasonable oversight mechanisms for secure marijuana cultivation as well as the implementation of procedures for controlled sale to adults, age 21 and over, modeled on our successful decade-long experience in the medicinal marijuana market.
A vote in favor of Question 1 will realize the economic potential presented by legal cannabis to create jobs and generate tax revenue while ending our continued reliance on the false promise of marijuana prohibition to keep our communities safe. And it will allow marijuana to be used by any patient who needs it, not just those who have one of the few qualifying conditions or can find and afford a doctor’s recommendation.
And the federal government has stepped aside to allow states, such as Maine, to pursue legalization. The U.S. Department of Justice’s current policy is not to interfere with states that elect to legalize marijuana for adult use as long as they adopt clear regulatory and enforcement policies aimed at preventing the distribution of marijuana to minors, inhibiting the diversion of sales revenue to criminal enterprises, preventing illicit transfers of marijuana across state borders and preventing drug-impaired driving.
The language and intent of Question 1 is consistent with the expectations expressed by the federal government. A legal marijuana market in Maine will block advertising to minors, impose ID requirements and product testing, mandate child-proof packaging and impose strict limits on the scope of marijuana cultivation outside of the confines of the current medicinal program.
Maine’s marijuana tax revenues will be assigned to increase police training to identify and enforce drug impaired driving, expand evidence-based drug prevention and education programs for our young people and provide needed dollars to sustain our efforts in responding to the ongoing opioid crisis.
Recently, the Maine attorney general declared that Question 1 could throw open the door to unenforceable marijuana use by our kids. Despite her claim, it remains a straightforward proposal to allow only adult use of marijuana
Voters should consider the attorney general’s poison-pill view against an equally careful and considered review of ballot language by the Maine secretary of state’s office that did not identify any discernible risk to our children from Question 1.
But errors are not unfamiliar. When a drafting error is discovered that promotes an outcome contrary to the intent of a legislation, it becomes incumbent on the Legislature to correct that conflict.
This common-sense reform is long overdue. It’s time to create a responsible, sensible and regulated business environment for marijuana in our state that lets adults make adult decisions. Vote yes on 1.
Mark Dion is a former sheriff for Cumberland County. He is a Democrat who represents Portland in the Maine House of Representatives.