Globe: Vote no on everything

Also my concern with semi-legalization is that you're basically just ceding ground to criminals.

It's only criminal because we arbitrarily made it so in the first place. If we were to allow people to smoke cigarettes in restaurants again, would that be considered ceding ground to criminals? This isn't murder, it's marijuana. Even smoking cigarettes in restaurants has sound public health logic underlying its illegality. In contrast, marijuana use can be shown to be less problematic than the chemistry they legally allow cigarette producers to put into their products.

That having been said, I've never used in my life and don't plan on it even if it's legalized. I just don't see it serving to speak intelligently about the issue by phrasing the question as "ceding to criminals".

I suspect that MA has to keep marajuana illegal in some measure, because the federal laws still classify it in a way that takes that power away from the state. That remaining illegality does set the stage for more criminal activity, because the demand won't go away, but it isn't something the state has control over.

I'd like to see weed fully legal, controlled, kept away from kids, and taxed just like alcohol, too. Funny how the arguments about keeping weed illegal are very similar to historic arguments made about alcohol.

Except that one could say that prohibitionistic arguments are far less valid with marajuana than with alcohol or tobacco, given that the rankings of drug dangerousness by medical and law enforcement professionals place weed much farther down the list than alcohol. In any case, we know how well it works.

Having children entering their teen years leaves me hoping that marajuana will be regulated like alcohol, too. It is far to easy for kids to get under current circumstances, and the penalties for young users are vastly out of proportion to the hazard weed poses to society.