Norwood Police Chief Says No to Marijuana Ballot Question

The following was written by Norwood Police Chief Williams Brooks III and originally published on the Norwood Police Department Facebook page.

The passage of Question 4 would bring commercial sales, home-growers and high THC products that will have a devastating effect on generations to come. As a public official, I cannot use my title to campaign for or against a ballot question, but I can express my concerns about public safety impacts and the potential effects on the operations of the Norwood Police Department.

If passed, Question 4 would permit commercial marijuana shops in towns like Norwood. It would also allow people to grow up to 12 plants at home, which would yield marijuana worth about $12,000. Both Colorado and Washington State have legalized the commercial sale of marijuana, so we have a sense for how things would work out in Massachusetts. Colorado’s youth now rank number one in the nation for marijuana use and emergency department visits related to marijuana increased 49 percent in just two years. Marijuana-related traffic deaths there increased 48 percent in the two years following legalization (in Washington State they doubled) and marijuana is now involved in 20 percent of all of Colorado’s vehicle fatalities.

When we catch a drunk driver, we use standard field sobriety tests and a breathalyzer, but these tools don’t exist for marijuana; so it’s no wonder that legalized marijuana results in such high fatality rates. If the marijuana experiment has been such a disaster in Colorado and Washington, why would anyone consider making the same mistake here? The Yes on 4 website says “marijuana arrests ruin lives” and “courts are slammed with petty marijuana possession charges that clog the system.” They’re not telling you the truth; possession of one ounce or less of marijuana was decriminalized here in 2008. Police cannot arrest a person for using or possessing a small amount of weed, our authority to search a car because we can smell it has been taken away, and we cannot obtain a search warrant for weed unless we can show beforehand that the person is actually selling it. There are no marijuana possession cases “slamming” our courts.

The pro-marijuana movement argues that legalization of marijuana would cause a decrease in opiate use. But in Colorado, opiate abuse is actually up, and calls to poison control centers related to marijuana ingestion in Washington state increased 68 percent in the three years following legalization, likely due to the high potency of commercial grade marijuana. A recent TV ad features a female doctor who says that “patients and doctors agree” that legalizing marijuana would be a good thing, but again, this is not the truth. We already have medical marijuana here, and Question 4 doesn’t change that. The Massachusetts Medical Society and the Massachusetts Health and Hospitals Association have come out against Question 4, as have the school superintendents, the Governor, Attorney General, the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association and so many more. The argument that legalization would put a dent in the black market is another falsehood. According to Colorado’s Attorney General, drug cartels have moved into the state to traffic drugs under the protection of the new state law and legally- grown marijuana from Colorado has been illegally-transported and sold in other states.

People seem to believe that marijuana is a harmless drug, but that is not true. Today, 36 percent of the people in drug treatment in Colorado report that they are heavy marijuana users. The legalization of marijuana would not alleviate the strain on our substance abuse treatment system; it would add to it. Is this a good time to do that? I was in Colorado this summer and saw firsthand what Question 4 would bring us.

I saw shop after shop displaying marijuana signs – statistics show there are actually more marijuana shops in Denver than McDonald’s and Starbucks combined!

Finally, although I write as your Chief of Police, my strongest fears revolve around my two grandsons. I cannot imagine a future where they walk to the center of town to get an ice cream and have to pass marijuana shops along the way, navigate past the stoners hanging around them, or deal with the widespread availability of high-grade marijuana and high-THC products as their parents struggle to keep them away from drugs. The Yes on 4 campaign has already spent nearly $5 million trying to convince you that putting more drugs on the street is a good idea. Given the financial incentives that drive the commercial marijuana industry - like those that drove big tobacco to target young customers - do we really want to risk it?

In my view, the passage of Question 4 would have a devastating effect on public safety and on generations to come.