The coming year (2011) marks the one hundredth anniversary of Massachusetts’ first law (see below) interfering with free commerce in Cannabis intended for human consumption by requiring a prescription from a physician.
Is it a medicine or an herb?
Dr. Lester Grinspoon speaks on the importance of marijuana legalization following October 2009 hearing on Taxation and Regulation Bill before the Joint Revenue Committee. Lester is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry (Emeritus) at Harvard Medical School and author of “Marijuana Reconsidered” and “Marijuana: The Forbidden Medicine.”
In 2011, please JOIN US and Help End Marijuana Prohibition (HEMP).
Acts, 1911, Chap. 373
An Act relative to the issuance of search warrants
Be it enacted, etc. as follows:
Section 1. If a person makes complaint under oath to a police, district, or municipal court, or to a trial justice or justice of the peace authorized to issue warrants in criminal cases, that he has reason to believe that opium, morphine, heroin, codeine, cannabis indica, cannabis sativa or any other hypnotic drug or any salt, compound or preparation of said substances is kept or deposited by a person named therein in a store, shop, warehouse, building, vehicle, steamboat, vessel or place other than by a manufacturer or jobber, wholesale druggist, registered pharmacist, registered physician, registered veterinarian, registered dentist, registered nurse, employees of incorporated hospitals, or those who are entitled by law to have possession of any of the above mentioned articles, such court or justice, if it appears that there is probable cause to believe that said complaint is true, shall issue a search warrant to a sheriff, deputy sheriff, city marshal, chief of police, deputy marshal, police officer or constable commanding him to search the premises in which it is alleged that such opium, morphine, heroin, codeine, cannabis indica, cannabis sativa or any other hypnotic drug or any salt, compound or preparation of said substances is kept or deposited, and to seize and securely keep the same until final action, and to arrest the person or persons in whose possession it is found, together with all persons present if any of the aforesaid substances is found, and to return the warrant with his doings thereon, as soon as may be, to a court or trial justice having jurisdiction in the place in which such substance is alleged to be kept or deposited.
Section 2. Whoever is present where any of the aforesaid drugs is found shall be punished by a fine of not more than fifty dollars or by imprisonment in the house of correction for three months.
Section 3. Whoever, not being a manufacturer or jobber of drugs, wholesale druggist, registered pharmacist, registered physician, registered veterinarian, registered dentist, registered nurse, or an employee of an incorporated hospital, or otherwise entitled by law to have possession of any of the above mentioned drugs, is found in possession thereof, except by reason of a physician’s prescription, shall be punished by a fine of not more than one hundred dollars or by imprisonment for six month in the house of correction
Approved April 29, 1911