Newton Democrat and U.S. Rep. Barney Frank is reportedly working with Texas Republican Rep. Ron Paul to introduce a bill in congress that would end the federal ban on marijuana. 

According to reports from the Huffington Post, the legislation would end the ban on pot and allow individual states to decide whether to legalize it. 

The Marijuana Policy Project, an organization sourced in the Huffington Post story, says the legislation "is the first bill ever introduced in Congress to end federal marijuana prohibition."

“The legislation would limit the federal government’s role in marijuana enforcement to cross-border or inter-state smuggling, allowing people to legally grow, use or sell marijuana in states where it is legal,” according to the Marijuana Policy Project.

In November 2010, voters in Newton, Brookline and and parts of Wellesley voted "yes" on a non-binding ballot question that asked them whether State Sen. Cynthia Creem (D-Newton) should vote in support of legislation that would allow for the taxation, cultivation and sale of marijuana to adults.

Massachusetts State Rep. Ellen Storey (D-Amherst) filed a bill early this year calling for that legislation, otherwise known as The Cannabis Regulation and Taxation Act. 

Another bill filed in January by State Rep. Frank I. Smizik (D-Brookline) calls for regulation of medical use of marijuana in Massachusetts as approved by a physician and the Department of Public Health. A similar bill has been introduced in the Massachusetts Senate by Sen. Stanley Rosenberg (D-Amherst), the Marijuana Policy Project reports. 

The sale of medical marijuana is allowed in more than a dozen states across the country, the Huffington Post reports, but the practice is not legal under federal law.