E-Mail This Article to a Friend HIGHER AND HIGHER Reefer sanity BY KRTISTEN LOMBARDI

Here’s a telling piece of drug-law-reform trivia: in every election cycle since 2000, Massachusetts voters have strongly favored ballot questions calling for marijuana decriminalization. To date, residents in 58 cities and towns across the state, including in Boston, have supported — by an average of 61 percent — referendums that instruct legislators to make possession of an ounce of pot a civil violation, as well as to legalize medical-marijuana use for patients with diseases such as cancer.

"We’ve never lost yet," says Jon Holmes, an Allston activist who has worked on these ballot questions with members of the Massachusetts Cannabis Reform Coalition (MASS CANN) and the Drug Policy Forum. The state’s voters, he adds, "have decided it’s a bad idea to arrest and prosecute people for pot."

The ballot questions are non-binding, which means that state lawmakers can choose to ignore voters’ wishes. And, evidently, they do. In legislative session after legislative session, drug-reform groups have filed bills on Beacon Hill that would decriminalize minor pot offenses and enable sick people to grow small amounts of pot for medicinal purposes. And just as routinely, House and Senate members succeed in stymieing the bills. This year, for example, a measure that would have made possession of an ounce or less of marijuana the equivalent of a civil violation, "like a traffic ticket," has been languishing in the Joint Committee on Criminal Justice because, as Holmes puts it, "no one has the political courage to do anything."

So this election year, activists are at it again. They’ve collected signatures from 5500-plus voters throughout the state to put marijuana-regulation referendums on the ballot come November. This time, the questions will appear in the districts of both chairs of the criminal-justice committee — Senator Thomas McGee, a Lynn Democrat; and Representative James Vallee, a Franklin Democrat. In addition, the referendums — which ask voters whether possession of marijuana should be punished as nothing more than "a civil violation," and whether "seriously ill patients, with their doctor’s written prescription" should be able to grow small amounts of pot for medicinal use — will appear in 46 other communities, including Cambridge and Arlington.

Activists hope the ballot questions will encourage lawmakers — in particular, McGee and Vallee — in these districts to get behind the pending pot-reform legislation. "We want to deliver the hard evidence to legislators," says Bill Downing, who heads Mass Cann. "We want to put them on notice and say, ‘This issue is not going to go away. Do your job and represent your people.’"

Some legislators actually do respond to non-binding voter initiatives. Case in point: Senator Charles Shannon, the main sponsor of the pending decriminalization bill, who used to be a just-say-no-to-drugs politician. In 1991, when activists were pushing a medical-marijuana bill in the legislature, recalls Holmes, "Shannon said, ‘Whoa! Wait a minute. We can’t have this.’" In 2000, activists put a referendum on the ballot in Shannon’s district, which comprises Woburn, Somerville, Medford, and Winchester. As many as 66 percent of his constituents voted in favor of decriminalization. The results caused Shannon, a veteran Lexington police officer, to change his tune. Now, he’s one of the drug reformers’ biggest allies on Beacon Hill.

Whether McGee and Vallee will follow Shannon’s lead remains to be seen. But if nothing else, drug reformers will find out just where the voters stand on the issue. Then again, given past results, they’re pretty confident about how things will turn out.

"A lot of these guys [legislators] don’t think their people support these efforts," says Downing. "But they do, so we’re forcing legislators to listen."