When I hear my colleagues pushing for legalization “in the name of social justice,” I can’t apologize for my instinct to suspect that it’s really about helping political friends profit from an industry that should not be allowed a foothold in our state.
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Stop the "green rush"→
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What I learned is that just because prohibition failed, it does not mean legalization is succeeding. Few of the most significant benefits legalization advocates promised were materializing. The thirst for profit and the interests of powerful corporations were swiftly sidelining small-scale producers and retailers, even as we filmed. The need to provide justice to the victims of the war on drugs has been lost in the “green rush.” It was the same old story: powerful corporate interests coopt a nominally progressive social movement and warp it to their own benefit.
Read MoreFor sale in the pot industry: political influence→
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This should be no surprise; it would be a surprise, in fact, if the influence business had taken a pass on the lucrative potential of pot. But the flood of former government officials coming into the pot business — including former governor and current presidential candidate William F. Weld, former state House speaker Thomas M. Finneran, former state senator Andrea F. Nuciforo Jr., former Boston city councilor Michael P. Ross and even former Boston police superintendent-in-chief Daniel Linskey — is striking.
Read MoreWhy America will regret legalizing marijuana→
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Chuck Schumer is trotting out old canards about how cannabis "doesn't hurt anybody else." Hearing him tout the virtues of legalization in Colorado and Washington ("lots of good and no harm!"), one is reminded of Purdue Pharma, the pharmaceutical company that spent years (and millions) telling doctors that opioids weren't seriously addictive when prescribed to pain patients. It's stunning that educated people ever believed this, but many did. Today, many are equally anxious to believe that legal pot probably has little to do with Colorado's sharp increase in auto accidents. And there are homeless people everywhere, right? Correlation doesn't equal causation.
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