Marijuana reform activists in Massachusetts are hopeful that 2012 will finally bring a long anticipated medical marijuana law to the Bay State, but which bill will become law is yet to be determined.

There are presently four separate medical marijuana proposals pending on Beacon Hill for legislators to consider in 2012. There is also a campaign underway to place a medical marijuana referendum on the November ballot for Bay State voters, similar to the initiative “Question 2″, which decriminalization possession of marijuana in November 2008, passing with a overwhelming 65% approval.

One of the bills in consideration by Bay State legislators isSenate Bill No. 818, ”An Act Relative to the Arrest and Prosecution for the Possession of Marihuana for Medical Purposes.”  The bill, which has been introduced to the State Legislature every year since 2002, would make Massachusetts’ non-implemented medical law,  Chapter 94D, effective by allowing patients and caregivers the ability to grow marijuana.

Chapter 94D, which protects medical marijuana patients from prosecution,  passed in December 1991 and was signed into law by then Governor William Weld in 1992, four years before California voters passed Proposition 215. But in the twenty years since its passing, the law has never been implemented because it calls for a federally authorized supply of marijuana, which does not exist in the United States.

Senate Bill 818 has been referred to the Joint Committee on the Judiciary, but has yet to be scheduled for a hearing and is unlikely to pass.

More recently, two bills were introduced last year, Senate  Bill No. 1161 and the identical  House Bill No. 625. These two bills have the most sponsors among legislators in the House and Senate, and support from marijuana reform organizations and hopeful future patients. The bills, if passed, would create the “Massachusetts Medical Marijuana Act”, and set up an entirely new medical marijuana system in Massachusetts, rendering Chapter 94D obsolete.  Both bills call for a patient registration system, and allow for home cultivation, as well as state-supervised “Medical Treatment Centers.”

READ MORE:  Massachusetts: Medical Marijuana Likely in 2012… But Which Bill Will Pass First?
The Daily Chronic, Jan. 16, 2012