I’LL BE TURNING 80 soon, and with the Cannabis Control Commission in disarray, it’s time to come clean.  

For over 40 years, I was one of a small group of marijuana-reform activists in Massachusetts who advocated for the repeal of prohibition. We held rallies, made speeches, wrote articles and, of course, implored legislators to reform the marijuana laws, enforcement of which wrecked families, cost jobs and housing, and sometimes the custody of children. Yet the arrests continued.

What kept marijuana illegal for 50 years after the cultural revolution of the 1960s? Besides timid lawmakers, it was massive, decades-long disinformation campaigns led by federal and state agencies, law enforcement groups, and local anti-drug organizations, all awash in drug war money, aimed at countering the “demand” for weed. Who can forget “Your brain on drugs,” or DARE?

Disinformation about the danger of marijuana was necessary because there was scant evidence of any. Unless the taxpayers could be persuaded that marijuana was toxic to public and personal health, there would be no rationale for arresting people for it, a disproportionate number of whom just happened to be nonwhites, nor for armies of drug education/prevention and treatment “experts” who conveniently conflated “use” with “abuse.”  Prohibition, in other words, was a scam.

That immense wall of mendacity confronted us activists in 2016, when we sponsored the ballot initiative, Question 4, to create a legal market for adult consumers.

Many voters, we knew, were wary. We lacked the wherewithal to counter the propaganda, so we played to common fears, however unfounded, by pointedly including in the law ample authority for the proposed regulatory agency to enact rules addressing every jitter, however baseless, about marijuana. Surely legal pot would be safer than illegal pot. Drug dealers, after all, don’t maintain security cameras, test for pesticides, and certainly don’t check for IDs.

And enact they did. Today, Cannabis Control Commission minions stalwartly enforce a system driven by 200 pages of dense regulations, creating complex barriers to entry to all but the well-capitalized and well-lawyered, and producing long delays and complications in the licensing process. Some call it the “plutonium model” of regulation.

Our goal in 2016 was not to draft the best policy. It was to win. What we did not mention then, though is certainly out of the bag now, is marijuana’s best kept secret, namely, its benignity, i.e., its relative harmlessness.

The dense regulations owe their existence to a political strategy: to assuage fears driven by disinformation, not because of actual risks requiring tight regulation. (This is what happens when lawmakers cede lawmaking to activists and voters.)  

We knew marijuana was no hazard to the public health or public safety. The voters, it turned out, knew it too. Reports of any negative impact on the public health and safety have been scarce, while the benefits of legalization—from revenue to rheumatism — are widely heralded.

Now we read that the Cannabis Control Commission is in chaos. Its chair remains suspended, internal conflicts are erupting, and, mirabile dictu, Beacon Hill is threatening to exercise new oversight.

On a level beneath this fracas is the disappointment that despite the CCC’s conscientious efforts to address the historical injustices of prohibition through various social equity advantage programs, its injuries have hardly been redressed. To be fair, that is beyond the scope of the CCC.

Atoning for the sins of fathers is tough business. One thinks of South Africa’s post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, or Australia’s 2008 apology to all indigenous people for the removal of children from their families. Last year, Pope Francis came to Canada to issue a similar apology. But apologies are words. As for tangible steps, perhaps a first is to ensure that police do not act as occupying forces in minority communities. 

The solution to the turmoil at the CCC is simple: Abolish it and turn its necessary functions over to other agencies. The CCC exists to protect the public from hazards unique to marijuana that, we now know, simply aren’t there. Existing laws protecting against contaminants in food and drugs, unsafe working conditions, transportation hazards, unfair trade practices, and other problems that arise regularly in business and commerce are adequate to protect consumers and serve the public good.

Eliminating unnecessary barriers to participation in the industry opens it to all. Measures can be adopted to prevent big companies from gaining monopolies or otherwise exercising unfair advantages over startups.

At the end of the day, there are only two reasons to regulate marijuana: to prevent sales to children, and to collect the revenue. We accomplish both handily with lottery tickets.

The CCC is superfluous. Pot is not plutonium. Let’s drop the pretense.

Dick Evans, a Northampton lawyer, chaired the 2016 marijuana legalization initiative campaign committee.