Maine Legislature to consider legalizing pot
Munjoy Hill rep says “we’re ready to talk about it”

Diane Russell, a Democratic state legislator who represents Portland’s Munjoy Hill and Bayside neighborhoods, has submitted a bill to legalize marijuana in Maine.

“I’m not overly optimistic about the outcome, but I think Maine people have sent the signal that we’re ready to talk about it,” said Russell, an ice cream shop manager who was re-elected to serve a second term in the House this fall.

Some key details have yet to be written into the legislation — such as the minimum age to purchase pot and how much buds would be taxed — and the federal government’s opposition to legalization looms as a huge challenge. But Russell said the economic benefits of her bill should convince state lawmakers to at least give it a fair hearing.

Russell said she will advocate to have the bill sent to the Legislature’s Taxation committee for initial consideration, rather than the Criminal Justice and Public Safety committee, where “it probably won’t stand a chance.”

The bill would allow Mainers to legally possess up to six marijuana plants. Only licensed medical marijuana dispensaries would be allowed to sell pot for recreational use, and those license holders would be allowed to grow more than six plants.

State Rep. Diane Russell.

Russell said she personally favors making marijuana more broadly available, but felt that would be unfair to those who’ve made the effort to get a license to sell the drug to the sick. Russell served on the board of an organization that applied for a dispensary license earlier this year, but was not granted one by state officials.

When Russell revealed her intention to submit the bill during an informal gathering of Portland state legislators last month, she got an enthusiastic response. “All these people were like, ‘Sweet!’” she said. “People are stoked. It’ll be the fun bill of the year.”

The reaction of Republicans, who control both the Legislature and the Blaine House, probably won’t be as positive. “There is some Republican support for legalizing pot,” Russell said, but she acknowledged the bill’s chances dimmed when conservatives took over state government on Election Day.

Rep. Bob Nutting, the Republican tapped to be the next House Speaker, did not return a call seeking comment. State Rep. Emily Cain of Orono, whom Democrats chose to be House minority leader, also failed to respond to a request for comment about legalization.

Russell hopes two factors will work in her bill’s favor: the fact that an increasing number of citizens support legalization, and the state’s huge budget shortfall.

A Gallup poll released last fall found that 44 percent of people who live in this part of the country favor legalizing pot, the highest level of support ever recorded. “It’s not just a drug for 420 people with tie-dyed shirts and patchouli oil,” said Russell, who does not claim to be a marijuana user herself. “Some people have a glass of wine, some people have a hit off a bong or a pipe. It’s not some taboo thing.”

The state’s enormous budget deficit — estimated at around $1 billion — may also make the bill appealing. Russell said she doesn’t know how much new tax revenue legalization would generate, and doubts that anyone can come up with an accurate figure, but believes state officials’ previous estimates of black-market marijuana sales are way too low.

Don Christen, founder of the pro-pot group Maine Vocals, said legalization would erase the state’s budget deficit, and then some. If the state put a $20 tax on every ounce of weed sold in Maine, Christen said his group estimates that would generate “around $1.4 billion a year” in tax revenue.

Christen’s estimate is more than a little high. He based the $1.4 billion figure on 100,000 people smoking an ounce of weed a week. Even if there were that many heavy tokers in Maine, that would yield $104 million, not $1.4 billion.

Still, $100 million is nothing to sneeze at, and if revenue from new business associated with the pot trade (tourism, paraphernalia) is added in, the total could easily double or triple.

The ballot measure to legalize pot in California, which was defeated by a few percentage points, followed a failed attempt to get a legalization bill through that state’s Assembly. A similar scenario could play out in Maine, potentially with different results, if Russell’s bill helps build momentum for a citizen initiative in 2012.

Christen has been trying to get a legalization measure on the ballot for years. His current effort is being stymied by the same two factors that have hobbled it in the past: a lack of motivation and money to collect the 55,000 petition signatures necessary to put the issue before voters.

Christen estimates his group would need at least $80,000 to pay people to gather enough signatures. The Hempstock music festivals Maine Vocals has organized in central Maine for the past two decades are its primary fundraisers, and they’ve fallen far short of the total needed to fund a statewide petition drive.

“There’s so many people who want this to happen, yet even they don’t want to come out and do the work,” said Christen. “I don’t really understand why. It’s so easy to bring 80,000, 100,000 people to a football game, and we can’t get people to do the right thing and come out to end this madness.”

Maine Vocals’ ballot measure would limit pot sales to people 19 and older, but would not limit where reefer could be sold. Christen’s group has a petition on file with the Secretary of State’s office, but he doesn’t think it’ll make the ballot next year. He said 2012 is a more realistic goal.

At the Mid-Coast Forum on Foreign Relations in Camden earlier this year, former ACLU director Ira Glasser got an unprecedented standing ovation for his lecture, “The War on the War on Drugs,” broadcast on MPBN’s Speaking in Maine series.

Glasser, now head of the Drug Policy Alliance, a national group that advocates for drug law reform, said the historic ballot measure in California “is part of a pattern that was unthinkable as recently as five years ago.”

“Precisely because most of the drug prohibition is focused on marijuana,” Glasser continued, “it is beginning to gain traction in the larger society for the same reason that the end of alcohol prohibition came, which is, too many people used it.”

— Chris Busby