We have to hand it to the district attorneys – they’re certainly not lacking in boldness.

Three of them – DAs Conley, Leone, and O’Keefe – admitted to the Boston Globe recently that they, like countless other Bay Staters, have used marijuana at some point in their life.

So what distinguishes them from the 7,500 Massachusetts residents arrested every year for low-level possession offenses? Nothing except that they didn’t get caught. Conley’s story is particularly galling:

"As a student at Stonehill College, Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley found himself in a room with guys passing around a bong. "When it came to me, I inhaled so hard that it burned my lungs," he says. "I don't want to sound Clintonesque; I inhaled, but I couldn't handle it."

We’d emphasize exactly how outrageous this truly is, but Amy Derjue already beat us to it:

"So let’s get this straight. Because Conley was lucky enough not to get caught with that bong in his hand, he didn’t have that on his record. This allowed him to become the DA, and now he wants to prosecute kids who are experimenting the way he did in his youth?"

The real question is: Do these DAs think the commonwealth would have been better off if they’d been arrested in their youth, saddled with a CORI, denied school loans, and disqualified from attaining their current positions? This is, after all, the policy they now advocate.

According to the Globe, the prosecutors “insist they have learned from their mistakes.” It seems to us they’ve only learned that the law, and the brunt of its consequences, is for other people.