Massachusetts residents voted overwhelmingly in November to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana, leaving state officials to figure out how to set up a new system of civil penalties for formerly criminal offenses, the New York Times reported Dec. 18.

With the new law scheduled to go into effect on Jan. 2, officials are trying to answer such basic questions as who will collect the $100 fines for possession called for in the ballot initiative, and which part of government will be responsible for ensuring that violators under age 18 attend required drug-education classes -- and pay fines of up to $1,000 if they don't.

Enforcement also will be complicated by the fact that Massachusetts law bars police from demanding identification from offenders charged with a civil infraction, and that officers will have to prove that the substance in question is actually marijuana.

Wayne Sampson, executive director of the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association, said that if these issues aren't resolved then the state could end up with de-facto marijuana legalization, which he asserted is what backers of the measure wanted all along.

However, Dan Bernath, a spokesperson for the Marijuana Policy Project, said, "I can't help but think that the real difficulty in implementing it is they don't want to do it." Eleven other states have decriminalized marijuana possession, and although most other states consider possession a misdemeanor, not a civil infraction, there's plenty of past experience for Massachusetts policymakers to draw upon.

"I think the resistance has to do with dealing with something new," Bernath said. "We're pretty confident that once this gets going and the newness of it wears off, a lot of the apprehension will go away."