Marijuana Policy Project

On Nov. 4, 2008, a law was passed in Massachusetts calling for the decriminalization of marijuana. However, the Mount Holyoke College Public Safety policy did not change.

Under the new law, an adult (age eighteen or older) in possession of up to one ounce of marijuana will receive only a $100 ticket and forfeiture of the contraband marijuana. Nothing will be recorded to the offender's permanent record. The new law regulates possession of marijuana to a civil offense, making the new punishment more like a parking ticket than a drug offense.

Despite the changes in Massachusetts, Public Safety has decided to stick with the current drug policy. "For our students we're going to do pretty much what we've always done, which is, if we find marijuana, we'll take it away, and do a referral to the dean's office," said Barbara Arigghi, the Associate Director of Public Safety

Despite the misleading notion attached to "decriminalized," marijuana is still illegal. "I think people get confused by that; you can go around, puffing away at a marijuana cigarette," Arrighi said. Possession of over an ounce will still remain a criminal offense in the state of Massachusetts.

Public Safety has chosen to stick with their current policy because of how it provides education, not just discipline, to the offenders. "The idea is to get people help. If someone is just doing recreational drugs, we want to get them help, because if they're doing a lot of smoking, they're probably not doing well in school."

The biggest problem facing the integration of the law into public safety policy is how to handle offenders who are not Mount Holyoke students.

The law is still new, however, and many cities and towns are still figuring out to enforce it, Mount Holyoke being no exception. Part of the problem is that the law is so new, many cities and towns are not enforcing the law. so there is no model for Public Safety to follow. Mount Holyoke doesn't even have the civil citation books needed to correctly ticket those in possession. "Once we get [the ticket books] sorted out, we'll probably give citations to non-student offenders," predicted Arrighi.