Possession of more than an ounce, growing, selling and trafficking would remain illegal, as would driving under the influence of the drug and smoking in public. Youthful offenders would have to complete community service and take substance abuse prevention classes.

The petition is more far-reaching in what it would prevent the state from doing: denying financial aid, public housing, unemployment or other public assistance programs to pot smokers. Violators also wouldn't have their names entered into the state's Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) database.

Whitney Taylor, the committee's campaign director, says that, with criminal penalties and CORIs, "There's collateral damage there-for the next 15 years, they won't be able to get financial aid, an apartment, a job. This would create a penalty system where the punishment happens, then it's over, versus a punishment that goes on and on."

Decriminalization bills have been floating around the legislature, in one form or another, for years. CSMP's petition is modeled closely after a bill filed two sessions ago by the late Senator Charles Shannon. Shannon was a longtime Lexington cop before his election to the legislature, and his conversion to the cause of decriminalization shocked many of his colleagues.

"He wasn't any bleeding heart liberal," says Pat Jehlen, the longtime Somerville politician who was Shannon's House co-sponsor, and who now holds his state senate seat. "He had actually enforced drug laws."

Jehlen has been the legislature's lead advocate for decriminalization since Shannon's passing. It was considered a major victory that, last session, the legislature's committee on mental health and substance abuse reported her decrim bill out of committee favorably; it was one of the few, if any, victories the pro-pot crowd has enjoyed on Beacon Hill. Then, logically enough, Jehlen's bill went to die a lonely, dusty death at the Ways and Means Committee.

"The bottom line is, relying on the legislature doesn't work," says Michael Cutler, a former Mass Cann activist who's now working on the initiative petition campaign with Taylor. "Bills have been bandied about up there for years and years, and they usually don't even make it out of committee."

At the same time, the public has become more overtly pro-marijuana reform. A series of local nonbinding public policy ballot questions, intended to prod the legislature into acting, saw spectacular success-so much so that reform-minded activists became convinced that they could win a statewide ballot campaign.

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