... for most of our history almost nobody smoked marijuana, young or old. There was a time in my life when I read widely in the memoirs and autobiographies of the turn-of-the century avant-garde and nobody mentioned marijuana. They mentioned opium; they mentioned mushrooms. Nobody seems to have done pot. Even within my own lifetime, I can remember when the only people associated with smoking grass were jazz musicians and Beat poets.

It wasn't until the drug war turned pot use into a symbol of defiance and dissent that kids began picking up on it. Today, according to the government's own figures, more than 15 million people smoke pot regularly. This massive expansion of the market didn't happen because pot growers were buying TV time. It happened because the drug war made smoking marijuana cool.

I don't know for sure if this history can be run in reverse -- that making marijuana invisible again, the way it used to be, would return usage rates to where they were seventy five years ago -- but it seems plausible. Last year Britain downgraded marijuana to a status in which individuals found in possession of personal use amounts of marijuana are cautioned by police, but not arrested. In a recent survey the United Kingdom's Department of Health found that the number of young people who admitted having consumed cannabis in the past year fell from 13 percent to 11 percent. Granted that is just one data point, but clearly a total ban is not working as intended.

Anyway, I hope you are willing to entertain this line of thought. Bills currently in the legislature addressing these issues include:

-- An Act Relative to the Arrest and Prosecution for the Possession of Marihuana for Medical Purposes: S.B. 998

-- An Act Amending the Commonwealth’s Current Law Regulating the Physician- Approved Use of Marijuana for Medical Purposes by DPH- Certified Patients: H.B. 2742 (Previously H.B. 2965).

-- An Act to Impose a Civil Fine for the Possession of Marijuana: H.B. 862 & S.B. 1151

If there is anything I can do to help you help this cause, I hope you will let me know.

Regards