9 July 2016
The Boston Globe reports
In an unusual show of bipartisan political muscle, three of the Massachusetts’ most powerful elected officials, along with voices from Boston’s health care, law enforcement, and nonprofit sectors issued a passionate cry Friday in opposition to a November ballot question that would legalize marijuana. They framed their objection to the measure through the lens of the deadly opioid overdose scourge in the state.
“You’ll hear the other side say that marijuana is not a gateway drug,” said Mayor Martin J. Walsh of Boston at a news conference. “If you know anyone in the recovery community, talk to them. … You’ll hear that most of them, many of them started with marijuana.”
Walsh, a recovering alcoholic and longtime advocate for people struggling with addiction, said when he mulls the ballot question, he thinks about the many wakes and funerals he has attended for people who died of overdoses and how their addictions started.
House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo said he felt he would have been a hypocrite to support marijuana legalization as he…
