DV Journal

(For an alternate viewpoint, see: “Point: Shapiro’s Pot-Friendly Budget Puts Cash Over Kids’ Health”)

I wrote my first editorial calling for the liberalization of marijuana laws in 2010. Since then, 40 states have allowed medical marijuana and 24 states, red and blue, have fully legalized the adult use of recreational marijuana. Currently, a clear majority of Americans, 54 percent, live in a state where they can buy and use cannabis as they wish.

Pennsylvania did pass my medical bill in 2016, but has not yet legalized recreational marijuana. However, 13 of Pennsylvania’s largest cities have decriminalized the use and possession of small amounts and no longer enforce prohibition, which amounts to a de facto legalization.

Further, every single state bordering Pennsylvania except West Virginia allows the sale of recreational marijuana. So, the large majority of people in Pennsylvania who don’t already qualify for medical marijuana live a short drive from a state where they can buy it freely and then bring it home to a city where they can use it without fear of punishment

All of this makes it clear that the structure of prohibition is shattered, and it will soon be a quaint and curious relic of the past. This is a profoundly good development. Using the criminal justice system to punish people who smoke a plant which makes them feel giddy has always been an insane policy.

Cannabis prohibition is not only irrational, but also cruel, heartless, destructive, and expensive. The decades of illegality saw tens of millions of people (over 300,000 per year on average) arrested and made criminals for using marijuana. Their lives were disrupted and, in many cases, permanently destroyed as they lost their jobs, their academic careers, and in some cases their freedom over a lifestyle choice.

The irony is that many of the anti-marijuana laws were passed by lawmakers who went out after the vote to drink whiskey and smoke cigarettes. But alcohol directly (not counting things like drunk driving or domestic violence) kills an average of 178,000 Americans per year. Cigarettes kill an average of 480,000 Americans per year, mostly in very gruesome ways. Cannabis? There is no lethal dose of cannabis. You cannot die from using it. The number of direct cannabis fatalities per year is zero. Yet, people are free to drink and puff the night away, while marijuana users are arrested and prosecuted.

The devastation prohibition has caused to individuals is not the only cost involved. As a nation, we’ve spent an average of about $3.6 billion per year enforcing marijuana laws. And such enforcement is not only expensive, it’s also racist. Black and White Americans use cannabis at about the same rate. Yet if you are Black, you are four times as likely to be arrested for it, and if arrested, five times as likely to be incarcerated.

Perhaps most tragic is the utter waste this policy has been. It simply doesn’t work. When I went to high school, it was easier to get marijuana than it was to get beer. That’s because beer was sold by legal, licensed businesses that didn’t want to lose that license for selling to those underage. The guy selling weed behind the bowling alley didn’t worry about that so much.

The rates of marijuana use tic up marginally and temporarily after legalization. Within two years, those rates usually revert to what they were prior to legalization. In other words, prohibition means spending billions and destroying lives with no actual reduction in use to show for it. It’s hard to imagine a more sad and wasteful policy.

Some argue that cannabis today is much stronger than it was in the 70s, so it’s more dangerous. Let’s put aside the fact that almost no cannabis was tested back then and thus we don’t actually know that. Stronger cannabis is an argument for legalization, not against it. If you drink alcohol, you drink differently depending on whether you are drinking beer or grain alcohol. Knowing the strength of what you are using, which is information the consumer is given in legal states, is important in controlling your intake.

Others argue that cannabis is a “gateway drug.” The data, however, shows that is simply not true. Only 4 percent of cannabis users go on to use harder drugs, a lower percentage than alcohol users. If you want to ban a substance for leading to addiction, death, and further substance abuse, then you really need to go back to the 1930s and bring back alcohol prohibition. Yet somehow, none of those who want to keep cannabis illegal are calling for that.

Marijuana is an intoxicant. That must be respected. There should be strict regulations regarding the age at which it may be used as well as things like driving, operating heavy machinery, etc. But the days when we enact irrational and pernicious policies after watching “Reefer Madness” are, and should be, over.