Retired Police Leaders Warn Massachusetts Voters Against Restoring Cannabis Prohibition

Retired Officers Speak Out

Two retired law enforcement leaders are urging Massachusetts voters to reject Question 8, a ballot measure that would repeal the state’s adult-use cannabis retail system and move policy back toward prohibition. Diane Goldstein and Karen Hawkes of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership made their case in an op-ed published by CommonWealth Beacon.

They wrote that legalization provided an alternative to prohibition, allowing adults to obtain cannabis through lawful businesses while reducing the need for criminal enforcement. With fewer resources devoted to low-level cannabis offenses, they said, police could concentrate on more serious threats to public safety.

“Police already face considerable demands on their time and resources, and renewed cannabis enforcement would add to that burden,” Goldstein and Hawkes wrote in the CommonWealth Beacon op-ed.

They said there appears to be little appetite among many in law enforcement for returning to the enforcement practices of the past.

The Regulated Market

In the decade since legalization, the authors wrote, Massachusetts has established a regulated market that provides adults with legal access to cannabis, subject to testing and consumer safeguards.

They also had to consider, they wrote, the consequences of criminalizing conduct involving consenting adults, and said a hard look at the evidence and their own experience pointed toward a different approach.

The Question Before Voters

Question 8 would ask voters to revisit their 2016 decision ten years after they legalized adult-use sales.

The authors wrote that the question was not simply whether marijuana carried risks, but whether prohibition was an effective or appropriate response to those risks.

They urged voters to consider the questions of enforcement priorities and effective use of public resources as they approach Question 8.

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