Auditor sees tricky future for pot in legislature
Beacon Hill has been sort of paralyzed on the issue of marijuana legalization in the six week since voters passed the landmark law, which is now known as Chapter 334.
The possession, use and home-growing aspects of the law took effect Dec. 15 but the machinery of government has been slow to start working toward creation of what's expected to become a significant regulatory apparatus.
To Auditor Suzanne Bump, that signifies a fair amount of work to be accomplished sooner rather than later. During an interview on Boston Herald Radio on Wednesday, Bump took a dim view of the law and suggested that its supporters might not have voted for it if they had paused to read its details.
"This is a very thorny issue and there are lots of questions that still have to be resolved," Bump said. "I continue to maintain that a very small percentage of people who voted for this question actually read the question. They voted for the idea of legalizing pot. I don't think they really spent any time thinking about whether the structure that would allow that to happen was effectively designed in this ballot initiative. I think if they did then they might not have voted for it."
Bump continued: "They voted for an idea when really they were voting for a law that has a lot of holes. It doesn't reconcile all of the moving parts on this around law enforcement and the like. And so the Legislature does have an obligation to look at this and make a rational system. As they say, the genie's out of the bottle and how you try to figure out how to impose some system on that is going to be a really tricky thing and I think they're going to have to do it quickly."
The coming debate should be especially interesting since so few lawmakers publicly supported the ballot law. Many openly opposed Chapter 334 and now they have an opportunity to reshape it.
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