THE GLOBE editorial staff seems to feel that they know better than the voters when it comes to drugs (“Ruling on marijuana searches leaves behind a strange odor,’’ Editorial, April 25).
Then, reaching for the last refuge of the illogical, the editorial points out that one person searched under the pretext of pot smell was carrying cocaine — a fact, not a correlation.
Along with the majority of voters, I voted to decriminalize marijuana after careful consideration, and it was an easy decision.
Criminalizing drugs has filled our prisons with nonviolent offenders; cost hundreds of millions of dollars a year in Massachusetts for police, prosecutors, courts, and prisons; ruined neighborhoods, and generally set law enforcement against our communities.
Better to let people smoke and deal with the health consequences, than enforce a failed prohibition or use it to enforce other equally illogical drug laws.
Jonathan A. Bower
Wayland
PUBLISHED: Mass. voters got it right on 2008 ballot question
Boston Globe, April 27, 2011