Senate President Stanley Rosenberg said while he thinks adults should be able to choose whether to use marijuana, he won’t campaign for the November ballot question on legalization, which he says has “big policy gaps.”
In an interview Tuesday, Rosenberg declined to endorse the ballot question, which aims to tax and regulate recreational marijuana, saying voters will decide whether or not cannabis should be legal.
“Adults should be able to decide if they want to smoke,” the Amherst Democrat said.
Other state political leaders, including Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, Gov. Charlie Baker and Attorney General Maura Healey, oppose legalizing recreational marijuana.
Rosenberg indicated his problem isn’t with legalization, but with this way of doing it.
Rosenberg said the bill fails to account for some of the concerns that have arisen out of Colorado’s and Washington’s legalization of marijuana — the regulation and control of edible products, a reliable way to deal with driving under the influence and the proper tax rate. He said there are questions about whether it would be enough to pay for regulatory costs, let alone possible law enforcement and substance abuse treatment costs. Lawmakers identified these concerns and others during a legal weed junket to Colorado in January.
Before that, Rosenberg last year pushed for the Legislature to draft its own ballot question on legal marijuana in order to ensure that concerns like those were addressed. But the proposal was shot down by Baker and House Speaker Robert DeLeo, he said.
Now, Rosenberg said, some lawmakers are working on a bill that would address concerns about the ballot question, which the senator said he expects to pass.