legalization of drugs argumentative essay

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Argumentative Essay On Debate Over Legalization Of Drugs

Type of paper: Argumentative Essay

Topic: Law , Drugs , Taxes , Criminal Justice , Marijuana , Marketing , Medicine , Health

Words: 1100

Published: 12/10/2019

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The legalization of drugs has been a very controversial case for decades, with strong arguments on either side. While there has been few who argue that harder drugs like cocaine and heroin should remain illegal, the same is not true with marijuana. For most of the 20th century and beyond, it has been illegal in the United States and other countries, turning its sale and usage into a vast underground market that has gone untapped by any professional outlet. Some say that it is a harmful, addictive drug that leads to health detriments down the line for those who use it. However, there are others who claim that it is perfectly safe, not addictive, and could be an incredible source of income for a legitimate economy. The legalization of marijuana has the potential to create an incredible revenue stream of a highly demanded product that is safe to use. In this argumentative essay, the pros and cons of drug legalization, focusing on marijuana will be explored and discussed.

First, marijuana has not been shown or verified to have any detrimental effects on the human body. Also, marijuana has a substantial history of medical and clinical applications for people with certain conditions. Medical marijuana is often used as an anesthetic in a large number of countries all around the world (Koch, 2006). Glaucoma is another condition in which medical marijuana is distributed to patients, as it helps alleviate the symptoms and increase comfort in the person suffering, including lowering eye pressure (Southall, 2010). Fifteen states, as well as the District of Columbia, currently allow medical marijuana to be sold and prescribed to its citizens to this day (New York Times, 2011). Ostensibly, medical marijuana’s purpose is to relieve pain, nausea, and loss of appetite in those patients who have debilitating conditions, such as cancer or AIDS.

Marijuana, if legalized, could bring in substantial tax revenue for state and federal governments, a blessing in today’s economically charged climate. If the recently downturned Proposition 19 had passed in California, nearly $1.4 billion in tax revenue would have been earned by the state (New York Times, 2011). This could have been used for prison and law enforcement budget enhancements, which is very important in a time when many police departments are understaffed, and prisons are overcrowded. There is a substantial demand for marijuana, mostly due to its illegal nature; the tapping of this untouched market is rife with possibility, as the demand would remain, but government could tax the purchase of marijuana purchasing, particularly for medical purposes (Nadelman, 2006).

This could help budget deficits immensely; Berkeley’s major, Tom Bates, requested a tax increase on marijuana dispensaries that would add a substantial amount of revenue to the city budget, closing a $16.2 million gap in funding that is in desperate need of filling (Palmeri and Marois, 2010). Other cities are experiencing similar benefits by taxing its medical marijuana; Denver generates approximately $2 million a year from marijuana taxes on its 256 dispensaries, and California is seeking to increase taxes in order to have the same results in its large medical marijuana market.

There are many opponents to marijuana legalization, their reasoning being primarily health-based. First, they claim that marijuana is addictive, and that it can also act as a gateway drug to harder drugs, such as cocaine or heroin. It is implied that marijuana usage blocks neurons and replaces neurotransmitter chemicals, potentially causing permanent brain damage (Koch, 2006). Also, opponents state that marijuana use is not medically sound, and that there are no real measurable results found in people who take it to address medical conditions (Dixie and Bensinger, 2010). Another opponent believes that the case for medical marijuana is merely a smokescreen for allowing recreational use to run rampant, and to make an easier case for the total legalization of the drug. They claim that gang use and crime would increase as a result of the legalization of marijuana, and that youth would abuse it to a debilitating degree (New York Times, 2011). There are even concerns among many pro-marijuana advocates that legalization would drive up prices, despite their desires for greater legitimacy for cannabis – the loss of romanticism related to pot smoking might make the number of people who smoke decrease if it is legalized. (Palmeri and Marois, 2010).

These opinions could not be further from the truth. Experiments performed on the use of marijuana have found only positive results, and in some cases has helped people immensely with a variety of symptoms, including nausea from cancer treatments (Koch, 2006). Also, the demand for marijuana is much greater than anticipated by many; nearly 46% of people in a 2010 Gallup poll stated that they would like marijuana to be legal. In a sample of 20 respondents, when asked about their opinion on marijuana legalization, 40% said they would prefer legalization, while 60% desired varying degrees of restriction in its legality. According to this study, males are far more likely to pull for marijuana legalization than women, regardless of actual experience with the drug.

The debate regarding marijuana legalization is an impassioned and multifaceted one; both sides carry their own unique points, which are backed by logic and some degree of research. However, when the evidence is examined fully, and the advantages and disadvantages are weighed, the clear frontrunner is the case for legalization of marijuana. Any perceived negative health effects are so inconsequential as to be unimportant, and the sheer amount of revenue that could be earned from taxed, legal marijuana is sufficient to allow its legalization. Also, the positive health effects that marijuana provides people from a medical context (anesthesia and the like) are far too widespread to be ignored. With this in mind, legalizing medical marijuana would be a prudent, profitable and prescient choice.

Works Cited

Bensinger, Peter and Dixie, Dora (1992). Marijuana is Bad Medicine, Bad Policy. USA Today. Koch, Kathy. (2006). “Medical Marijuana. Should doctors be able to prescribe the drug?” The Researcher, 9, (31), CQ Press, 2006. Nadelmann, Ethan (2004). "An End To Marijuana Prohibition" National Review. New York Times. (2011). "Marijuana and Medical Marijuana - The New York Times." Times Topics. Retrieved from http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/m/marijuana/index.html?sc p=1&sq=legalize%20marijuana&st=cse. Palmieri, Christopher, and Michael Marois. (2010). "The Latest Fiscal Buzz? Medical Marijuana - BusinessWeek." Businessweek. Retrieved from http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_30/b4188035394752.htm. Southall, Ashley. (2011). “Washington D.C. Approves Medical Use of Marijuana.” The New York Times 17.

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The World’s View on Drugs Is Changing. Which Side Are You On?

Should we decriminalize drugs, or legalize.

Today on “The Argument,” is it time to legalize all drugs?

Last November, an overwhelming majority of Oregonians voted to decriminalize most drugs via referendum. Medical marijuana is now legal in Alabama. And in a matter of months, cannabis products could be available to those who qualify.

Truth of the matter is, there’s not nearly been enough evidence that has been acquired as to whether or not it is a gateway drug. And I want a lot more before I legalize it nationally.

President Biden may not be ready for legalized, recreational marijuana, but many states are way ahead of him. Connecticut just became the 18th state to legalize recreational marijuana. And it’s not just weed. Several cities have recently decriminalized magic mushrooms, and Oregon just decriminalized possession of small amounts of all drugs, including heroin, methamphetamines, and cocaine. It seems like the War on Drugs is over and drugs won big. I’m Jane Coaston, and there seems to be more and more consensus that jailing our way out of the addiction crisis in the United States is not working. But even hardcore drug policy reformers have vastly different takes on how we get to a better place with drugs, like our guests today. Ismail Ali is the Policy and Advocacy Director at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, and Jonathan P. Caulkins is the H. Guyford Stever University Professor of Operations, Research, and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. I started out by asking Ismail to define the difference between drug decriminalization and legalization.

So when people think of decriminalization, they’re usually thinking of the reduction or elimination of criminal penalties, sometimes including civil penalties. And legalization tends to be when the law actually is fully recognizing, regulating activity from point A to point Z. So you can decriminalize, for example, personal use and possession. But if every behavior up to that point is still illegal, you have an island of maybe legal or decriminalized behavior in a sea of illegal behavior. So they get through all this illegal behavior to get to the legal behavior. And I think legalization implies a full spectrum, regulated approach to the whole piece.

Ismail, you do think that ultimately the goal would be to legalize all drugs. Why?

I do think that legal, regulated access is likely the best environment for a number of drugs, but I think it’s going to depend very much on the substance itself, and factors that have to do with the supply and demand questions with respect to where and how it’s produced. Not having a legally regulated system puts us in a position where the very, very large and lucrative drug trade, which exists, whether or not there’s a regulated industry, entirely is captured by underground actors with various levels of ethics and morals. And I think that that whole conversation around legal access must also look at — and has looked at, historically — the uptake of all substances in illegal markets, and then the effects of those behaviors. My mother’s family is Colombian, and they left Colombia in the 1980s as a result in part of the massive increase in cocaine violence and cartel use. And that continued underground. Engagement has not really ceased — not just with cocaine, but with a number of other drugs. And even Colombia now is having a very serious conversation at the governmental level about what it would look like to legally regulate cocaine, because — despite pressure from the U.S. and other actors, they have realized that, actually, having some sort of legally regulated system could be the way to reduce the violence in the country. So while I do think that legalizing drugs, which sounds like such a scary thing to a lot of people, really means bringing them under more regulatory control. It’s hard, I think, to really think through what an effective addiction response strategy at the social level would be while we’re under an environment of prohibition, because prohibition does exacerbate some of those secondary effects of drugs, like, for example, addiction independence.

I’m curious as to your thoughts, Jonathan, on decriminalization versus legalization.

These have to be decided drug by drug. Drugs are different. For a long time, we’ve had caffeine be legal. That was probably fine. I don’t think that it’s — one should be cavalier about other substances. Opioids make the point. The prescription opioid crisis was a crisis that killed tens of thousands of people every year for a drug that was highly regulated, much more so than the typical recreational drug. Opioids are intrinsically dangerous, much more so than caffeine or cannabis. It has to be decided on a case by case basis.

I think that that’s something that’s also important to note here, is that, for instance, in Oregon — Oregon just passed Measure 110, which makes possession of small amounts of LSD, methamphetamines, cocaine, and heroin punishable by a civil citation. That is not legalization. That is decriminalization. So I’m interested, Jonathan, can you talk about — when we’re talking about decriminalization, it sounds to me that it is still a civil penalty in Oregon to possess these — crimes. It’s like a traffic ticket, but that’s still a crime-ish.

Yeah, with the ish. The other thing it’s important to say is that, usually, when people talk decriminalization, they’re talking about decriminalizing or changing the consequences for people possessing amounts suitable for personal use. Whereas if you just say legalize, without any qualification, the presumption is you’re legalizing supply. So there is a big difference there. And sometimes it helps to keep them straight by remembering a third term, which is legalizing use. So decriminalization is usually reducing penalties for use so that you don’t have people getting a criminal record for use. Then you can go a step farther, as Ismail was saying, and legalize use, meaning you don’t even get the equivalent of a fine or a traffic ticket. Both of those are very different than legalizing supply.

Jonathan, you made a really fascinating argument in a piece called “The Drug Policy Roulette,” and I’d like you to explain more about this, because it actually was counterintuitive for me, which is — my view was that legalizing drugs would do what the end of Prohibition did for alcohol, which is when you aren’t legally allowed to drink, you can drink all the time. But with the end of Prohibition and with a regulated alcohol market, you have places — you have counties that are dry. You have a liquor store that can only be open from this time to this time. There are prohibitions on drunk driving, and societal prohibitions against when you can — like, drinking in the morning, drinking by yourself, this is looked down on. And I think societal prohibitions play into how we think about using drugs and alcohol anyway. But in the case of drugs, you made the point in this piece that one of the issues that would be unexpected from this is that prohibition makes drugs expensive, and that drugs like heroin and cocaine would actually be pretty cheap to obtain if they were legalized, because a part of what makes them expensive is what’s called compensating wage differentials. Namely, it’s really hard to bring cocaine into the United States. You are paying for the cost of how hard it is to bring cocaine into the United States. But with that price collapse, the taxes required to make it so that you weren’t just having cheap cocaine everywhere would be incredibly high, which would then contribute to the kind of gray market smuggling that we see with cigarette smuggling in the United States and in other countries. This is a financial issue I had never thought about.

Sure. The first point is that prohibition prevents one from producing these things in straightforward ways. None of the drugs are hard to produce. If it was legal and you could allow a regular company to do it, then they become very cheap. You can see that, for instance, just in the price of cocaine in Colombia is about 1 percent or 2 percent what it is in the streets in the United States. And the illegal distribution system effectively charges $15,000 to move a kilogram from Bogota to New York City that would cost $70 on FedEx. So prohibition makes things far more expensive than it would be if they were legal. As a practical matter, there’s no way that we will have taxes high enough to prevent prices from declining substantially. And that is in part because there probably wouldn’t be the political will, but also in part because of practicalities. Drugs are very potent in the sense that it doesn’t take very much material. A daily cannabis user using one and a half grams a day consumes only a little more than a pound over a year, about the same weight as one 20 ounce can of beer. So we just can’t effectively collect very high taxes on these easy to smuggle commodities.

Yeah, and many people have talked now for some years about this concept, the Iron Law of Prohibition, which maybe it would be good to bring in here, which is essentially the idea that because smuggling is such a lucrative activity, and because smuggling smaller things, more concentrated substances is easier, it actually incentivizes higher concentrations of substances to be taken across borders. So for example, if you want to take enough heroin for 500 people, you need a trunk of a car. If you want to take enough fentanyl for 500 people, you need something about the size of your phone or maybe much, much, much smaller. So there might be the case where as smuggling gets more difficult, it’s actually incentivizing higher concentrations of drugs, because it’s easier to smuggle those drugs as opposed to ones that take up more physical space.

Well, we should unpack this, though. I mean, the movement from heroin to fentanyl is not a response to a change in the legal status of either substance. But the Iron Law of Prohibition has been completely refuted by the experience with cannabis legalization. It’s the iron law that holds no water. Cannabis did not exceed average potency of 5 percent until 2000, and now it’s — typical flower potency in a legal stores is over 20 percent. And we now have common use of vapes and dabs, which are much more potent than that. So the Iron Law of Prohibition has just been disproved by experience with cannabis legalization.

I’d probably push back on that a bit, because cannabis is also produced in state. We’re not talking as much about taking things across borders, but the big difference is that with a lot of cannabis products, they’re being produced at the place or near the place they’re being used, which is different from things that are crossing international borders.

The weight of drugs doesn’t matter much at all after they are legal, because the weight is so small. Again, I make reference this —

Yeah, no. I agree after they are legal, for sure.

So it doesn’t matter that at the moment we’re in this weird situation where we have a bunch of state specific markets. That’s a temporary artifact of the fact that there’s not yet national legalization. Once there’s national legalization, we can no longer have these state specific markets because of the Interstate Commerce Clause in the Constitution.

Jonathan, you brought up the opioid crisis. And I think that there have been a host of people who’ve written on how they used to support drug legalization. And the opioid epidemic and how it took place changed their minds. And I want to point to a great piece — my former colleague at Vox, German Lopez, wrote about this, where he said that essentially with opioids, you had companies that got a hold of a product. They marketed it irresponsibly and lobbied for lax rules in influencing government, and people died. As he points out, the United States historically is very bad at regulating drugs. Ismail, does the experience of the opioid epidemic — has that changed your viewpoint on what legalization would look like?

No, because I don’t see legalization as only a question of the regulations that have to do with the drug. I think that there are factors beyond just the way opioids are regulated and are regulated that has to do with why there’s a crisis today. And I actually personally tend to frame it as an overdose crisis. I do think opioids are a big part of that. But if you’ve been following the numbers for the last couple of years, it’s absolutely the case that overdoses with methamphetamine and other drugs are also extremely intensely increasing. And the way that, as you said, a certain framework of pharmaceutical regulation has operated with certain opioids is such a good example of what I imagine legalization to be. Like, I think if I were putting together a thinking through with people — what would be an ideal legalization scheme? And I really agree with what Jonathan said, where it’s a case by case basis. And there may be drugs that don’t need or shouldn’t have fully legally regulated systems, and maybe decriminalization is the appropriate environment for that. And maybe decriminalization of certain kinds of behaviors — and I think one really good example that feels like it’s at the center of this is this question about advertising and marketing. I think that what companies are allowed to say, what claims they’re allowed to make, how they’re allowed to advertise, what expectations are setting with consumers — those factors are pretty significant. That’s not to say that if there wasn’t the aggressive marketing campaign with some of these opioids that we’d be in the same or a different position today. It’s really difficult to tell. It’s a system that has been highly affected by interests that are not in that of the consumer, not in the interest of the public. When society was flooded with cigarette ads, a lot of people started smoking more cigarettes. That’s not — and of course, there’s a risk to smoking cigarettes. But to me, that’s an artificial pressure that comes from the market and its incentives. And I think that once you take out some of those things to the extent that that’s possible in a legal market, you might actually be able to adjust some of those outcomes.

But I think that’s the point. It’s easy to imagine an ideal legalization, but that’s not what we’re going to get. We’re going to get the legalization that comes out of our political process and institutions. And marketing is the concrete example. Once a product is legalized, the companies that produce it will enjoy First Amendment commercial free speech protections that will allow them to market.

Should they?

It doesn’t matter whether they should or should not. In the United States, under our Constitution, which protects commercial free speech, they will. In another country, with a different constitution, the government would have greater power to restrict advertising. Many of the current restrictions on cannabis advertising only are constitutional because it is still illegal under federal law.

Yeah, I spent a brief time looking at some of the ads that were made for OxyContin. And there’s one that says that, when you know acetaminophen won’t be enough, OxyContin 12 Hour — which is, like, acetaminophen is Tylenol. And going from Tylenol to OxyContin is a real — it’s a real leap. But I think that gets to something I’m curious about — because the United States has been a leader in determining the control of drug trade and practice, Jonathan, how do you think hypothetically that a legalization or decriminalization would impact international markets? Do you think that there would be a collapse in the price, internationally, of cocaine or heroin? What would that even look like?

Yeah, it’s a great question. And sort of the short answer is that in any place that legalizes and allows for profit industry, you’re going to see a price collapse. And because these things are so easy to smuggle, that would put downward pressure on other countries that are connected commercially to the country that legalized. And in an interconnected world, that’s a lot of places. You’re seeing some of this already, even without legalization, from the switch to synthetics which can be produced anywhere and are easier to produce surreptitiously than with crop based products. And legalization would be a little bit like the innovation of fentanyl coming into the market. It would greatly reduce the cost of production. And over time, that puts downward pressure on prices.

Ismail, I know that your organization has been thinking a lot about this with regard to psychedelics, so whether that’s LSD, whether that’s the use with MDMA in Oregon and other places, psychedelics and the use of psychedelics is getting increasing state support. The California State Senate in June of this year passed a bill that would legalize the social sharing and possession and use of psychedelics. It’s something that’s coming around. What does that look like, and how has your organization participated in that conversation?

Yeah, a couple of things. So I work for the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, which was founded in 1986 after MDMA was criminalized in an emergency scheduling decision by the D.E.A. MDMA — best known as the active ingredient in ecstasy. It’s now— through MAPS and the Public Benefit Corporation, which we work with — in that entity is taking MDMA through the F.D.A. process, with the intention of having it recognized as a prescription medicine. But while we’re focusing primarily on MDMA, it’s absolutely the case that one of the large goals and kind of value systems that MAPS has utilized over the last 35 years is toward legal, regulated access for psychedelic substances, and specifically, in a legal, medical, or cultural context. And while my personal perspective on this does have to do with really shifting drug laws for all of the substances involved, it is absolutely true that psychedelics are experiencing a kind of like zeitgeist, or some sort of like resurgence in society, now that we have a couple of decades of solid clinical and observational data, you know, depending on the substance, depending on the environment, that show that they may have benefits for certain people in certain mental health contexts. That’s happening simultaneously to this renewed awareness of the spiritual use of some of these substances in certain contexts, which regulatory and structurally speaking, looks very different from like a medicalized, or like, a medical adjacent system. So you mentioned Measure 110 in Oregon. At the same time, Oregon also passed Measure 109, which is a legal psilocybin services system, and psilocybin being the active ingredient in what people call magic mushrooms. And that’s relevant, because it’s actually the first legalized, or attempt at a legalized regulated system for access to one of these substances aside from cannabis. And I’ll just say — to kind of close this thought — that psychedelics are an interesting bridge, because while I think some people want them to be the silver bullet for mental health. And they have all these benefits, and it’s certainly true that for certain people and in certain contexts, they do have tremendous benefit. But they do come with risks. And the thing about psychedelics is that they’re actually more known for their psychological risks as opposed to their physical risks.

And that’s a really interesting thing, because it brings up how we actually navigate and handle mental health in the United States.

I want to push back very lightly on that, because I think that when — in D.C., the language around the decriminalization of mushrooms, which I supported, it very much implied that not only should mushrooms be decriminalized, but that you should do them.

I think that this gets into the question of — we don’t necessarily exist in the ideal regulatory and cultural marketplace for legalized psychedelics or legalized drugs in general. And I’m curious as to how you’re thinking about how, yes, it would be fantastic if these drugs would be used in these safe contexts, in these — whether secular or religious ceremonies, or with the right groups of people. But they won’t be. And I’m curious how you’re thinking about this.

Well, this brings me to the question of education, which we haven’t touched on too much in this conversation yet. I think that the current legal status of psychedelics has — and all drugs - has significantly warped the education that people receive about them. I was part of the DARE generation, and when I learned that —

Oh, I was too.

I was too. Some would say it did not prove effective.

Totally. Do you remember the doobies with the big googly eyes, like, they’re going to come get you. Like, when I learned that methamphetamine and marijuana were not the same, that were they were not equally dangerous, which is what I was taught in sixth grade, I experienced a big rupture where I actually — it was probably the beginning for me of beginning to really doubt what education I was receiving, not just about drugs, but about other things in general. And I would say now, especially looking back at what feels like propaganda for the drug war, it makes it really difficult to trust what kind of education and information people are getting. So to answer your question, you’re right. There’s absolutely no way to control the way people use drugs. Like, there’s no guarantee that even with the best regulatory system and the best policy in every way, people will use them the way that we want every time. However, I do think that stigma and misinformation and drug hysteria contributes to people using drugs in less educated ways. And that’s not to say that more information would fix the overdose crisis. It would not fix a lot of these issues with addiction. But I do think that with psychedelics specifically and especially, better education about the environment would make quite a big difference. One of the most persuasive things I can say when I’m doing advocacy work around psychedelics is that psychedelic therapy is not that fun. I mean, it is true that people can have super ecstatic and joyous experiences with psychedelics, but psychedelic therapy as a treatment modality is actually quite challenging. And dealing with one’s own internalized trauma is not a particularly fun process. It’s not something you want to do at a festival surrounded by your friends. You want to do it in a safe place, maybe with a blanket and some chill music going on, in a room where you can do that with people who you can trust. So it’s — a lot of that has to do with the environment that people are in. And because all psychedelics are equally illegal and you can’t do them anywhere, then that means you can do them anywhere, you know.

Yeah, when you’re surrounded by 90,000 people, it’s maybe not the best time to maybe encounter God.

On the psychedelics, the people who are optimistic about legalization are often very optimistic about the potential of education. My caution is when you allow a for profit industry, a lot of the education, quote unquote, is going to be provided by the industry. You referred earlier to — I may get the details wrong, but I think it might have been a Purdue advertisement that said when Tylenol is not enough, take Oxy. I mean, I don’t have the details right, but that is them trying to educate you about the right — in their mind — set and setting for drug use, not for your benefit, but for their profits’ benefit. Legalizing supply is night and day different than just decriminalizing. The power of the market that is unleashed when you create corporations that make money by inducing greater use of their product, coupled with — intrinsically, some of these products are appealing or addictive — that’s a potent combination we need to be very careful about.

Hi, Jane. My name is Blake and I live in Boston. One thought that’s been occupying my mind, and something I talked to my dad and family about, is on cryptocurrency — in particular, Bitcoin. And I guess one thing that I’ve been struggling with is trying to determine whether I believe it’s something that’s going to stick around or if it’s just a fad. It’s been really hard for me to find sources that are objective and look at both sides of the coin, no pun intended there. Thanks so much. Take care.

Hi Blake. Well, I have a lot of thoughts on cryptocurrency, but I think the question isn’t it a fad, or is it something that’s going to stick around forever, because the answer to both of those can be yes. I don’t think cryptocurrency is going to save the world. I also think that it’s going to be around for a long time. And it’s something that I’d like to learn more about. But I have a feeling that both sides tend to overstate either the importance or the lack of importance of cryptocurrency. That seems to be how this kind of thing goes.

What are you arguing about with your family, your friends, your frenemies? Tell me about the big debate you’re having in a voicemail by calling 347-915-4324, and we might play an excerpt of it on a future episode. Jonathan, can you talk a little bit about overdoses and the potential health impacts?

Opioids are particularly dangerous in terms of overdose risk, but what makes them less problematic because we do have pharmacological therapies for them, methadone being the original and most famous — perhaps buprenorphine. We do not have anything like that in terms of pharmacotherapies for the common stimulants. And it makes a difference, because if you’re going to legalize — particularly legalize supply, allow for profit companies to promote the use, you’re going to get more use. You’ll get more dependence. And it’s a very different thing. If you are choosing policies that promote dependence to something for which there is no real effective treatment, as opposed to opioids — it’s not that opioids are gentle, but we do at least have a treatment.

Ismail, how do we think about recovery, and how do we think about the aftershocks of legalization? I’m just curious how you think about addiction in this conversation.

Yeah, I have what might be a slightly unpopular opinion, especially in today’s time. Like, addiction itself — let’s say, like, drug dependency, to be a little more specific — itself, I don’t necessarily see as a social harm or a social bad. I think that a lot of people manage a lot of addictions totally fine, regularly, because it’s not disruptive to them, because they have access to a safe supply of what it is that they’re addicted to. Of course, the effects of a caffeine addiction or caffeine dependency are significantly less dramatic and less likely to cause some sort of antisocial behavior than a withdrawal from a different substance. But I think that what both Jonathan and you have mentioned, Jane, that I think is more relevant, has to do with the consequences and the secondary effects — of course, on the individual, but especially on society. Alcohol is a great example, because we do have what people would consider a safe supply of alcohol. It’s a regulated product with tons and tons of social externalities that are still there. The difference is that the purchase, the manufacture, the use of alcohol — if criminalized, I believe, would make our current alcohol related issues worse. But I do think that the big difference with other substances is that because they’re criminalized, you have all of those effects, those secondary antisocial effects of dependence or antisocial use, et cetera. And you have the additional layer of criminalization for the use itself. I’m curious about — especially Jonathan’s perspective on this, because there are examples where certain countries like Switzerland are using heroin to manage heroin addiction. Right, they’re actually allowing people to have a safe, consistent supply of heroin. In places like Portugal and Spain, you have a huge percentage of people who were on heroin in the ‘80s and ‘90s who’ve transitioned onto methadone, and are still on methadone decades later. But they’re able to have jobs. They’re able to have families. They’re able to do x, y, z — so.

I think this gets right to the heart of where you and I differ, if I may. I mean, on the last — we had legal supply of prescription opioids and still had a lot of overdoses. There’s no question that an inconsistent supply exacerbates the problem. But I don’t think legal supply of opioids would eliminate overdoses. But to be more fundamental about it, you and I differ on whether or not legal supply necessarily can stabilize a person who is dependent on the substance. To me, that’s substance specific. Caffeine and nicotine are two drugs for which if you have legal supply that is not adulterated and so on, the person can function in everyday life just fine, even if they are dependent. But for the stimulants — crack, methamphetamine, and for alcohol, just providing abundant amounts of unadulterated, free supply does not let those people stabilize their lives. And that has terrible repercussions for them and their families.

Yeah and I would just — to clarify, I don’t necessarily think that an uninterrupted, as much as you want, supply of any drug is going to be good for everyone. Like, I —

Well, that’s what for profit companies are going to want to supply if we legalize.

But there is nuance there. But my question — actually, back to you is — I wonder about your thoughts about why there hasn’t been the same — because while there is a tremendous amount of methamphetamine use, it’s not the case as far as I understand that the increase in methamphetamine use is a result of increased, for example, prescribing of dexamphetamine or other amphetamine analogs that are legal for various treatments, whereas you do see a little bit more of that shift from prescription opioids to underground use of opiates with that market. So I hear what you’re saying. And it seems to be the case that a regulated, safe supply of something like Adderall actually doesn’t have the same effect as in bringing people into a super unregulated, dangerous, unadulterated market in the same way you see with opioids. And it’s true that we also don’t have the pharmaceutical interventions for stimulants as we do with opioids, but I wonder what makes that different. Why are people going to meth in that way versus the other?

Yes, stimulants is a broad category. And some of them are tougher than others. I mean, at some level caffeine is a stimulant, but it’s not a very powerful one, to speak informally, whereas methamphetamine definitely is. Adderall is more on the caffeine end of the spectrum, blessedly, although there is actually some diversion of Adderall. But it’s a different feel. This is like somebody with access to Adderall selling it or giving it to their friend in college to help them study, because they think it’s going to be a performance enhancing smart drug. But on the whole —

I’ve never I’ve never heard of that happening, ever — definitely don’t know anything about that.

Adderall’s worth talking about for a minute here, because it does illustrate the phenomenon that — the trick with providing generous supply to some people is, in part, can they make money by diverting it to other people — money, or do favors for friends. The prescription opioids got out of control for a whole bunch of reasons, many reasons. But one of them was the fact that there was already this value in the illegal market. And you also could seek a prescription based on symptoms that could not be objectively assessed by the clinician. And that combination was a problem. You could show up and say, oh, my back hurts a lot. Give me these things for the cost of a co-pay, and I can turn around and sell them for a lot of money. We’re going to always be vulnerable if you, through the medical system, provide subsidized access to anything for which there is demand in the illegal market. And Adderall does have that character. It just fortunately is nowhere near as bad for you, or risk of overdose, as the opioids were.

Yeah, or meth. I hear that. That makes a lot of sense, and I appreciate that answer. And also I think that the other factor, especially with regulated stimulants — and this is, I think also one of the questions with respect to regulations in general, which is method of administration. Because I do think that the fact that you don’t have smokable amphetamines or injectable amphetamines through regulated system also means that people who are accessing it through a regulated market tend to be doing it in a way that’s not going to have the same super rapid onset, and then related withdrawal, et cetera that you might have with methamphetamine use or other related things.

Yeah, I’ll agree with that. And then it’s also location of administration. So cocaine is available as a medicine. It turns out to be a vasoconstrictor and topical anesthetic that’s useful in minor surgeries. We have no problem with diversion of medical cocaine to illegal markets, because it’s only used inside the medical facility, administered by the clinician. So if we were to talk about, like, psychedelics used by a psychiatrist, on site, under supervision, that sort of medical use would have next to no risk of diversion to a market. But if we were ever to say to somebody, here are two pills a day for the next month. Take them home, do what you want with them. Then, there’s much greater risk of some of those being diverted into the market.

Yeah, and just to clarify — the way that psychedelics are being incorporated into health care now, it’s more like a procedure or a surgery than it is like other psychiatric interventions, where it actually is in the presence of a therapist or a psychiatrist or someone who has specific training to work with both these altered states of consciousness as well with the substances themselves.

Jonathan, I’m curious. Are we asking some of the wrong questions about consumption and distribution if we’re thinking about something as big as what decriminalization or legalization of substances beyond marijuana would look like?

Well, first of all, the bigness of decriminalize and legalize are very, very different. Decriminalization would be a big change, but it’s not a change the world. Legalization of supply, that’s totally different. You said that’s a big shake up. It’s a once in a century event. I would just stress — it’s a once and for all time event. Once you create a legal industry, it’s going to be really hard to get rid of it. When you create a legal industry, you create a powerful lobbying force. One of the challenges we have is regulatory capture. It’s already starting with cannabis. We haven’t even gotten to national legalization yet. But you just presume- - if you’re going to legalize supply of something, presume that there will be regulatory capture, presume you will never go back. And presume that a lot of the regulations are actually going to be shaped by what’s in the industry interests much more so than public health. Public health doesn’t tend to win in the lobbying battles against industry.

I totally agree that legalizing drugs, legalizing supply would be a generational event. It would be a massive, massive shift in the way things are done — even though, as I like to remind people, drugs were legal and traded until about 100 years ago. And it was US pressure on international actors that really brought us into the realm of prohibition that we have now — among others, because even large colonial powers, the Dutch and the English and others, were very happily trading a lot of these drugs for a long time before prohibition in its current form existed. So I also think that we are in a new paradigm in the sense that people have much more awareness and a willingness to talk through the stigma around the dependency and addiction and so on. And that does give me hope, that as we look at these questions around advertising and marketing and so on, that maybe it is possible that these public health perspectives could be better considered. I hope that our experience with tobacco and with opioids could lead to a more rational drug policy with respect to legal access of other substances. That could be naively optimistic, but I feel like as a policy reform advocate, if I’m not somewhat optimistic, then there’s really no point to going forward. And I think it’s really good to have some level of possibility for what there could be beyond where — we currently are.

I admire that optimism. I’m usually the one who’s accused of being optimistic. Compared to you, I guess I’m the jaded, cynical one. We’ll see.

Jonathan, Ismail, thank you so much for joining me. And I really appreciated this conversation.

Good. It was a joy to be here.

Thanks so much, Jonathan. Thank you so much, Jane.

Ismail Ali is a Policy and Advocacy Director at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. Jonathan P. Caulkins is the H. Guyford Stever University Professor of Operations, Research, and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. If you want to learn more about drug policy of the United States, I recommend “Is There A Case For Legalizing Heroin” by Benjamin Wallace-Wells in The New Yorker, published in April of 2021. For the other side, you can read “The Drug Policy Roulette” by Jonathan P. Caulkins and Michael A.C. Lee in the National Affairs Summer 2012 edition. And listen to “Michael Pollan’s ‘Trip Report,’” an episode on The New York Times opinion podcast “Sway.” You can find links to all of these in our episode notes.

“The Argument” is a production of New York Times opinion. It’s produced by Phoebe Lett, Elisa Gutierrez, and Vishakha Darbha, edited by Alison Bruzek and Sarah Geis, with original music and sound design by Isaac Jones. Additional engineering by Carole Sabouraud, and additional mixing by Sonia Herrero. Fact checking by Kate Sinclair, and audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks this week to Kristin Lin.

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Produced by ‘The Argument’

Medical marijuana is now legal in more than half of the country . The cities of Denver, Seattle , Washington and Oakland, Calif., have also decriminalized psilocybin (the psychedelic element in “magic mushrooms”). Oregon went one step further, decriminalizing all drugs in small quantities, including heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine.

Attitudes toward drugs have changed considerably over the years. But the question of whether all drugs should be legalized continues to be contentious. How much have attitudes toward illegal drugs changed? And why?

[You can listen to this episode of “The Argument” on Apple , Spotify or Google or wherever you get your podcasts .]

This week, Jane Coaston talks to Ismail Ali, the policy and advocacy director for the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, and Jonathan P. Caulkins, a professor of operations research and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College, about the pros and cons of legalizing all drugs.

Mentioned in this episode:

“ Is there a Case for Legalizing Heroin? ” by Benjamin Wallace-Wells in The New Yorker

“ The Drug-Policy Roulette ” by Jonathan P. Caulkins and Michael A.C. Lee in the National Affairs Summer 2012 edition

“ Michael Pollan’s ‘Trip Report,’ ” on The New York Times Opinion podcast “Sway”

(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)

Thoughts? Email us at [email protected] or leave us a voice mail message at (347) 915-4324. We want to hear what you’re arguing about with your family, your friends and your frenemies. (We may use excerpts from your message in a future episode.)

By leaving us a message, you are agreeing to be governed by our reader submission terms and agreeing that we may use and allow others to use your name, voice and message.

“The Argument” is produced by Phoebe Lett, Elisa Gutierrez and Vishakha Darbha and edited by Alison Bruzek and Sarah Geis; fact-checking by Kate Sinclair; music and sound design by Isaac Jones; mixing by Sonia Herrero, and audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

Drug Legalization?: Time for a real debate

Subscribe to governance weekly, paul stares ps paul stares.

March 1, 1996

• 11 min read

Whether Bill Clinton “inhaled” when trying marijuana as a college student was about the closest the last presidential campaign came to addressing the drug issue. The present one, however, could be very different. For the fourth straight year, a federally supported nationwide survey of American secondary school students by the University of Michigan has indicated increased drug use. After a decade or more in which drug use had been falling, the Republicans will assuredly blame the bad news on President Clinton and assail him for failing to carry on the Bush and Reagan administrations’ high-profile stand against drugs. How big this issue becomes is less certain, but if the worrisome trend in drug use among teens continues, public debate about how best to respond to the drug problem will clearly not end with the election. Indeed, concern is already mounting that the large wave of teenagers—the group most at risk of taking drugs—that will crest around the turn of the century will be accompanied by a new surge in drug use.

As in the past, some observers will doubtless see the solution in much tougher penalties to deter both suppliers and consumers of illicit psychoactive substances. Others will argue that the answer lies not in more law enforcement and stiffer sanctions, but in less. Specifically, they will maintain that the edifice of domestic laws and international conventions that collectively prohibit the production, sale, and consumption of a large array of drugs for anything other than medical or scientific purposes has proven physically harmful, socially divisive, prohibitively expensive, and ultimately counterproductive in generating the very incentives that perpetuate a violent black market for illicit drugs. They will conclude, moreover, that the only logical step for the United States to take is to “legalize” drugs—in essence repeal and disband the current drug laws and enforcement mechanisms in much the same way America abandoned its brief experiment with alcohol prohibition in the 1920s.

Although the legalization alternative typically surfaces when the public’s anxiety about drugs and despair over existing policies are at their highest, it never seems to slip off the media radar screen for long. Periodic incidents—such as the heroin-induced death of a young, affluent New York City couple in 1995 or the 1993 remark by then Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders that legalization might be beneficial and should be studied—ensure this. The prominence of many of those who have at various times made the case for legalization—such as William F. Buckley, Jr., Milton Friedman, and George Shultz—also helps. But each time the issue of legalization arises, the same arguments for and against are dusted off and trotted out, leaving us with no clearer understanding of what it might entail and what the effect might be.

As will become clear, drug legalization is not a public policy option that lends itself to simplistic or superficial debate. It requires dissection and scrutiny of an order that has been remarkably absent despite the attention it perennially receives. Beyond discussion of some very generally defined proposals, there has been no detailed assessment of the operational meaning of legalization. There is not even a commonly accepted lexicon of terms to allow an intellectually rigorous exchange to take place. Legalization, as a consequence, has come to mean different things to different people. Some, for example, use legalization interchangeably with “decriminalization,” which usually refers to removing criminal sanctions for possessing small quantities of drugs for personal use. Others equate legalization, at least implicitly, with complete deregulation, failing in the process to acknowledge the extent to which currently legally available drugs are subject to stringent controls.

Unfortunately, the U.S. government—including the Clinton administration—has done little to improve the debate. Although it has consistently rejected any retreat from prohibition, its stance has evidently not been based on in- depth investigation of the potential costs and benefits. The belief that legalization would lead to an instant and dramatic increase in drug use is considered to be so self-evident as to warrant no further study. But if this is indeed the likely conclusion of any study, what is there to fear aside from criticism that relatively small amounts of taxpayer money had been wasted in demonstrating what everyone had believed at the outset? Wouldn’t such an outcome in any case help justify the continuation of existing policies and convincingly silence those—admittedly never more than a small minority—calling for legalization?

A real debate that acknowledges the unavoidable complexities and uncertainties surrounding the notion of drug legalization is long overdue. Not only would it dissuade people from making the kinds of casual if not flippant assertions—both for and against—that have permeated previous debates about legalization, but it could also stimulate a larger and equally critical assessment of current U.S. drug control programs and priorities.

First Ask the Right Questions

Many arguments appear to make legalization a compelling alternative to today’s prohibitionist policies. Besides undermining the black-market incentives to produce and sell drugs, legalization could remove or at least significantly reduce the very problems that cause the greatest public concern: the crime, corruption, and violence that attend the operation of illicit drug markets. It would presumably also diminish the damage caused by the absence of quality controls on illicit drugs and slow the spread of infectious diseases due to needle sharing and other unhygienic practices. Furthermore, governments could abandon the costly and largely futile effort to suppress the supply of illicit drugs and jail drug offenders, spending the money thus saved to educate people not to take drugs and treat those who become addicted.

However, what is typically portrayed as a fairly straightforward process of lifting prohibitionist controls to reap these putative benefits would in reality entail addressing an extremely complex set of regulatory issues. As with most if not all privately and publicly provided goods, the key regulatory questions concern the nature of the legally available drugs, the terms of their supply, and the terms of their consumption (see page 21).

What becomes immediately apparent from even a casual review of these questions—and the list presented here is by no means exhaustive—is that there is an enormous range of regulatory permutations for each drug. Until all the principal alternatives are clearly laid out in reasonable detail, however, the potential costs and benefits of each cannot begin to be responsibly assessed. This fundamental point can be illustrated with respect to the two central questions most likely to sway public opinion. What would happen to drug consumption under more permissive regulatory regimes? And what would happen to crime?

Relaxing the availability of psychoactive substances not already commercially available, opponents typically argue, would lead to an immediate and substantial rise in consumption. To support their claim, they point to the prevalence of opium, heroin, and cocaine addiction in various countries before international controls took effect, the rise in alcohol consumption after the Volstead Act was repealed in the United States, and studies showing higher rates of abuse among medical professionals with greater access to prescription drugs. Without explaining the basis of their calculations, some have predicted dramatic increases in the number of people taking drugs and becoming addicted. These increases would translate into considerable direct and indirect costs to society, including higher public health spending as a result of drug overdoses, fetal deformities, and other drug-related misadventures such as auto accidents; loss of productivity due to worker absenteeism and on-the-job accidents; and more drug-induced violence, child abuse, and other crimes, to say nothing about educational impairment.

Advocates of legalization concede that consumption would probably rise, but counter that it is not axiomatic that the increase would be very large or last very long, especially if legalization were paired with appropriate public education programs. They too cite historical evidence to bolster their claims, noting that consumption of opium, heroin, and cocaine had already begun falling before prohibition took effect, that alcohol consumption did not rise suddenly after prohibition was lifted, and that decriminalization of cannabis use in 11 U.S. states in the 1970s did not precipitate a dramatic rise in its consumption. Some also point to the legal sale of cannabis products through regulated outlets in the Netherlands, which also does not seem to have significantly boosted use by Dutch nationals. Public opinion polls showing that most Americans would not rush off to try hitherto forbidden drugs that suddenly became available are likewise used to buttress the pro-legalization case.

Neither side’s arguments are particularly reassuring. The historical evidence is ambiguous at best, even assuming that the experience of one era is relevant to another. Extrapolating the results of policy steps in one country to another with different sociocultural values runs into the same problem. Similarly, within the United States the effect of decriminalization at the state level must be viewed within the general context of continued federal prohibition. And opinion polls are known to be unreliable.

More to the point, until the nature of the putative regulatory regime is specified, such discussions are futile. It would be surprising, for example, if consumption of the legalized drugs did not increase if they were to become commercially available the way that alcohol and tobacco products are today, complete with sophisticated packaging, marketing, and advertising. But more restrictive regimes might see quite different outcomes. In any case, the risk of higher drug consumption might be acceptable if legalization could reduce dramatically if not remove entirely the crime associated with the black market for illicit drugs while also making some forms of drug use safer. Here again, there are disputed claims.

Opponents of more permissive regimes doubt that black market activity and its associated problems would disappear or even fall very much. But, as before, addressing this question requires knowing the specifics of the regulatory regime, especially the terms of supply. If drugs are sold openly on a commercial basis and prices are close to production and distribution costs, opportunities for illicit undercutting would appear to be rather small. Under a more restrictive regime, such as government-controlled outlets or medical prescription schemes, illicit sources of supply would be more likely to remain or evolve to satisfy the legally unfulfilled demand. In short, the desire to control access to stem consumption has to be balanced against the black market opportunities that would arise. Schemes that risk a continuing black market require more questions—about the new black markets operation over time, whether it is likely to be more benign than existing ones, and more broadly whether the trade-off with other benefits still makes the effort worthwhile.

The most obvious case is regulating access to drugs by adolescents and young adults. Under any regime, it is hard to imagine that drugs that are now prohibited would become more readily available than alcohol and tobacco are today. Would a black market in drugs for teenagers emerge, or would the regulatory regime be as leaky as the present one for alcohol and tobacco? A “yes” answer to either question would lessen the attractiveness of legalization.

What about the International Repercussions?

Not surprisingly, the wider international ramifications of drug legalization have also gone largely unremarked. Here too a long set of questions remains to be addressed. Given the longstanding U.S. role as the principal sponsor of international drug control measures, how would a decision to move toward legalizing drugs affect other countries? What would become of the extensive regime of multilateral conventions and bilateral agreements? Would every nation have to conform to a new set of rules? If not, what would happen? Would more permissive countries be suddenly swamped by drugs and drug consumers, or would traffickers focus on the countries where tighter restrictions kept profits higher? This is not an abstract question. The Netherlands’ liberal drug policy has attracted an influx of “drug tourists” from neighboring countries, as did the city of Zurich’s following the now abandoned experiment allowing an open drug market to operate in what became known as “Needle Park.” And while it is conceivable that affluent countries could soften the worst consequences of drug legalization through extensive public prevention and drug treatment programs, what about poorer countries?

Finally, what would happen to the principal suppliers of illicit drugs if restrictions on the commercial sale of these drugs were lifted in some or all of the main markets? Would the trafficking organizations adapt and become legal businesses or turn to other illicit enterprises? What would happen to the source countries? Would they benefit or would new producers and manufacturers suddenly spring up elsewhere? Such questions have not even been posed in a systematic way, let alone seriously studied.

Irreducible Uncertainties

Although greater precision in defining more permissive regulatory regimes is critical to evaluating their potential costs and benefits, it will not resolve the uncertainties that exist. Only implementation will do that. Because small-scale experimentation (assuming a particular locality’s consent to be a guinea pig) would inevitably invite complaints that the results were biased or inconclusive, implementation would presumably have to be widespread, even global, in nature.

Yet jettisoning nearly a century of prohibition when the putative benefits remain so uncertain and the potential costs are so high would require a herculean leap of faith. Only an extremely severe and widespread deterioration of the current drug situation, nationally and internationally—is likely to produce the consensus—again, nationally and internationally that could impel such a leap. Even then the legislative challenge would be stupendous. The debate over how to set the conditions for controlling access to each of a dozen popular drugs could consume the legislatures of the major industrial countries for years.

None of this should deter further analysis of drug legalization. In particular, a rigorous assessment of a range of hypothetical regulatory regimes according to a common set of variables would clarify their potential costs, benefits, and trade- offs. Besides instilling much-needed rigor into any further discussion of the legalization alternative, such analysis could encourage the same level of scrutiny of current drug control programs and policies. With the situation apparently deteriorating in the United States as well as abroad, there is no better time for a fundamental reassessment of whether our existing responses to this problem are sufficient to meet the likely challenges ahead.

Governance Studies

Russell Wheeler

April 18, 2024

Vanda Felbab-Brown

April 16, 2024

March 21, 2024

• The Inventory

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The drug war devastated Black and other minority communities. Is marijuana legalization helping?

A major argument for legalizing the adult use of cannabis after 75 years of prohibition was to stop the harm caused by disproportionate enforcement of drug laws in black, latino and other minority communities.

ARLINGTON, Wash. (AP) — When Washington state opened some of the nation's first legal marijuana stores in 2014, Sam Ward Jr. was on electronic home detention in Spokane, where he had been indicted on federal drug charges. He would soon be off to prison to serve the lion's share of a four-year sentence.

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A decade later, Ward, who is Black, recently posed in a blue-and-gold throne used for photo ops at his new cannabis store, Cloud 9 Cannabis. He greeted customers walking in for early 4/20 deals . And he reflected on being one of the first beneficiaries of a Washington program to make the overwhelmingly white industry more accessible to people harmed by the war on drugs.

“It feels great to know that I’m the CEO of a store, with employees, people depending on me,” Ward said. “Just being a part of something makes you feel good.”

A major argument for legalizing the adult use of cannabis was to stop the harm caused by disproportionate enforcement of drug laws that sent millions of Black, Latino and other minority Americans to prison and perpetuated cycles of violence and poverty. Studies have shown that minorities were incarcerated at a higher rate than white people, despite similar rates of cannabis use.

But efforts to help those most affected participate in — and profit from — the legal marijuana sector have been halting.

Since 2012, when voters in Washington and Colorado approved the first ballot measures to legalize recreational marijuana, legal adult use has spread to 24 states and the District of Columbia. Nearly all have “social equity” provisions designed to redress drug war damages.

Those provisions include erasing criminal records for certain pot convictions, granting cannabis business licenses and financial help to people convicted of cannabis crimes, and directing marijuana tax revenues to communities that suffered.

“Social equity programs are an attempt to reverse the damage that was done to Black and brown communities who are over-policed and disproportionately impacted,” said Kaliko Castille, former president of the Minority Cannabis Business Association.

States have varying ways of defining who can apply for social equity marijuana licenses, and they're not necessarily based on race.

In Washington, an applicant must own more than half the business and meet other criteria, such as having lived for at least five years between 1980 and 2010 in an area with high poverty, unemployment or cannabis arrest rates; having been arrested for a cannabis-related crime; or having a below-median household income.

Legal challenges over the permitting process in states like New York have slowed implementation.

After settling other cases , New York — which has issued 60% of all cannabis licenses to social equity applicants, according to regulators — is facing another lawsuit. Last month, the libertarian-leaning Pacific Legal Foundation alleged it favors women- and minority-owned applicants in addition to those who can demonstrate harm from the drug war.

“It's that type of blanket racial and gender preference that the Constitution prohibits,” said Pacific Legal attorney David Hoffa.

Elsewhere, deep-pocketed corporations that operate in multiple states have acquired social equity licenses, possibly frustrating the intent of the laws. Arizona lawmakers this year expressed concern that licensees had been pressured by predatory businesses into ceding control.

Difficulty in finding locations due to local cannabis business bans or in obtaining bank loans due to continued federal prohibition has also prevented candidates from opening stores. In some cases, the very things that qualified them for licenses — living in poor neighborhoods, criminal records and lack of assets — have made it hard to secure the money needed to open cannabis businesses.

The drafters of Washington's pioneering law were preoccupied with keeping the U.S. Justice Department from shutting down the market. They required background checks designed to keep criminals out.

“A lot of the early states, they simply didn’t have social equity on their radar,” said Jana Hrdinova, administrative director of the Drug Enforcement and Policy Center at Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law.

Many states that legalized more recently — including Arizona, Connecticut, Ohio, Maryland and Missouri — have had social equity initiatives from the start.

Washington established its program in 2020. But only in the past several months has it issued the first social equity retail licenses. Just two — including Ward's — have opened.

Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board Member Ollie Garrett called the progress so far disappointing, but said officials are working with applicants and urging some cities to rescind zoning bans so social equity cannabis businesses can open.

The state, which collects roughly half a billion dollars a year in marijuana tax revenue, is making $8 million available in grants to social equity licensees to help with expenses, such as security systems and renovations, as well as business coaching.

It also is directing $250 million to communities harmed by the drug war — including housing assistance, small-business loans, job training and violence prevention programs.

Ward's turnaround is one officials hope to see repeated.

He started dealing marijuana in his teens, he said. In 2006, a customer pulled a gun on him, and Ward was shot in the hand.

A single father of seven children, he continued dealing drugs to support them, he said, until he was indicted in 2014 — along with 30 other people — in an oxycodone distribution conspiracy. He served nearly three years in prison.

Ward, now 39, spent that time taking classes, working out and training other inmates. He started a personal training business after he was released, got a restaurant job and joined a semipro football team, the Spokane Wolfpack.

That's where he met Dennis Turner, a Black entrepreneur who briefly owned the team. Turner had worked as a restaurant manager on cruise ships, for the postal service and as a corrections officer before investing his savings — $6,000 — in a friend's medical marijuana growing operation. They used the proceeds to help open a medical dispensary in Cheney, a small college town southwest of Spokane, that eventually became an adult-use marijuana retailer.

In Washington's social equity program, Turner saw an opportunity to make Ward a business executive. The two joined Rashel Palmer, whose husband co-owns the football team, in launching Cloud 9 at a cost of around $400,000. They picked Arlington, Washington — 320 miles (515 kilometers) away — because it's a quickly growing city with limited cannabis competition, they said.

Ward “saw me as a guy that he looked up to, that did good business, was self-made and came out the trenches, and he just wanted to pick my brain,” Turner said.

Turner is working to open cannabis stores in New Mexico and Ohio through social equity programs in those states. He hopes one day to sell them for tens of millions of dollars. In the meantime, he intends to use his businesses to support local charities, such as the Boys and Girls Club in Arlington and the Carl Maxey Center, which provides services to the Black community in Spokane.

Another new social equity licensee is David Penn Jr., 47, who helped persuade Pasco, in south-central Washington, to rescind its ban. Penn, who is Black, was arrested on a crack cocaine charge as a teenager. In 2011, he was kicked out of his apartment after a marijuana bust.

A friend with two other cannabis outlets is financing Penn's store. His location, a dirt-floored building next to a gas station, still needs to be built out. State grants will help, but won't be enough.

“It's like they're giving you the carriage, but you need the horses to get this thing going,” Penn said.

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Minor and Major Arguments on Legalization of Marijuana Essay

Minor argument, major argument.

Conlusion : Marijuana should not be legalised.

Premises 1 : If marijuana were to be legalized it would be impossible to regulate its’ sell to, and use by the minors. It would set free, the bounds that exist on the transit of the drug, making it reach the intended and unintended places including possession by children. The use of the drug by minors on the other hand has devastating effects.

Premises 2 : legalization increases the use of the drug for non-medical reasons. Legalization increases the circulation in the society which means that those who are to use it for reactional purposes are also getting it at increased rates than when it is illegal. The increased use for non-medical reasons means more abuse in the society (White, 2009).

Premises 3: Marijuana use has long-term adverse medical effects. Legalization the legalization would mean that the country was allowing the citizens be exposed to these conditions when it was possible to control such through having it remain illegal (Vick, 2010).

Premise 4 : Even when used for medical reasons, Marijuana still has side effects which need to be avoided through not legalizing it. They include destabilized thinking.

Premise 5 : With legal marijuana, deviancy cases will increase. Marijuana has been directly related to crime. With it being legalized, the impact is that crime will rise.

Support: As Govier (2010) identifies, “Marijuana should not be legalized. That’s because sustained use of marijuana worsens a person’s memory, and nothing that adversely affects one’s mental abilities should be legalized”. According to Govier (2010), the medical harms of marijuana outweigh its medical benefits.

Lepore (1985) states, “Marijuana should not be legalized because of its side effects!!” According to Lepore (1985), “Marijuana weakens the adrenal glands”, and displaces a vitamin called L-glutamine. The loss of L-glutamine, according to Lepore (1985), makes one have a hampered thinking.

A survey by U.S Department of Justice (1992), identified that 80 percent of the American population believe “it was a bad idea” to legalize and only “14% said it was a good idea”. As Peck and Dolch (2001) state, Marijuana use in a case study caused a boy to, “ran away from home a couple of times, vandalize buildings, and stole things”. As the authors believe, such use distorts the normal behavior of the citizens thus a loss especially from the most active category of the youth.

Conlusion: marijuana should be legalized.

Premise 1 : Marijuana remaining illegal is against the constitutional rights of people. According to the constitution, citizen posses the right to chose what they do as liberty bestowed on them by the constitution. Not legalizing it makes it that the government was controlling their liberty thus defining what they can do not do with their own lives.

Premise 2: Some people are prescribed to use marijuana as a medication to their medical conditions. Making marijuana illegal is denying them a right to the use of this substance as a medicine. This is inhumane because for some the unavailability of marijuana due to its being illegal means they have to suffer pains (Cantor & Berkowitz, 1984).

Premise 3: Having marijuana as illegal is an act of discrimination. It discriminates the minority who are the citizens and users of the drug. This discrimination leads to branding and name calling on this category and thus an act which continues and fuels deviancy in society.

Premise 4: Marijuana being illegal causes legal battles which lead to waste of security and law enforcement resources. With this quality, the police units are engaged in constant struggles called drug wars. This reduces the number of police who can be engaged in other meaningful security activities aimed at protecting citizens.

Support: Rosenthal, Kubby and Newhart (2003) state, “ the damage to the mental health of millions of Americans as a result of arrest, incarceration, loss of property, and humiliation are far more serious than any medical damage ever reported from the use of marijuana” as Rosenthal, Kubby and Newhart (2003) believe, marijuana’s use for medical reasons is a valid reason why it has to be legalized because for these categories, denying them through having it illegal is like denying then a drug they cannot live without.

As Rosenthal, Kubby and Newhart (2003) believe too, the millions who depend on marijuana for medical and non-medical reasons should not be made to suffer further loses through the court procedures they are put to.

Study done by Flowers (1999) reveled that, “1 in 10 respondents believed use of marijuana should be legal. Nearly 49 percent felt that marijuana should be legal by prescription for medical purposes, while over 13 percent believed marijuana use should be decriminalized”

Cantor, N., & Berkowitz, L. (1984). Theorizing in social psychology: Special topics . Orlando: Academic Press.

Flowers, R. B. (1999). Drugs, alcohol and criminality in American society . Jefferson, NC: McFarland.

Govier, T. (2010). A practical study of argument . Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning.

Lepore, D. (1985). The ultimate healing system: Breakthrough in nutrition, Kinesiology and holistic healing techniques: course manual . Pleasant Grove, Utah: Woodland Pub.

Rosenthal, E., Kubby, S., & Newhart, S. (2003). Why marijuana should be legal . Philadelphia: Running Press.

U.S Department of Justice (1992). Drugs, Crime, and the Justice System . New York: DIANE Publishing.

Peck, D. L., & Dolch, N. A. (2001). Extraordinary behavior: A case study approach to understanding social problems . Westport, Conn: Praeger.

Vick, D. (2010). Drugs & Alcohol in the 21st Century: Theory, Behavior, & Policy . NY: Jones & Bartlett Learning.

White, J. E. (2009). Contemporary moral problems . Australia: Thomson Wadsworth.

• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2023, December 25). Minor and Major Arguments on Legalization of Marijuana. https://ivypanda.com/essays/legalization-of-marijuana/

"Minor and Major Arguments on Legalization of Marijuana." IvyPanda , 25 Dec. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/legalization-of-marijuana/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'Minor and Major Arguments on Legalization of Marijuana'. 25 December.

IvyPanda . 2023. "Minor and Major Arguments on Legalization of Marijuana." December 25, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/legalization-of-marijuana/.

1. IvyPanda . "Minor and Major Arguments on Legalization of Marijuana." December 25, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/legalization-of-marijuana/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Minor and Major Arguments on Legalization of Marijuana." December 25, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/legalization-of-marijuana/.

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The drug war devastated Black and other minority communities. Is marijuana legalization helping?

A major argument for legalizing the adult use of cannabis after 75 years of prohibition was to stop the harm caused by disproportionate enforcement of drug laws in Black, Latino and other minority communities

ARLINGTON, Wash. -- When Washington state opened some of the nation's first legal marijuana stores in 2014, Sam Ward Jr. was on electronic home detention in Spokane, where he had been indicted on federal drug charges. He would soon be off to prison to serve the lion's share of a four-year sentence.

A decade later, Ward, who is Black, recently posed in a blue-and-gold throne used for photo ops at his new cannabis store, Cloud 9 Cannabis. He greeted customers walking in for early 4/20 deals. And he reflected on being one of the first beneficiaries of a Washington program to make the overwhelmingly white industry more accessible to people harmed by the war on drugs.

“It feels great to know that I’m the CEO of a store, with employees, people depending on me,” Ward said. “Just being a part of something makes you feel good.”

A major argument for legalizing the adult use of cannabis was to stop the harm caused by disproportionate enforcement of drug laws that sent millions of Black, Latino and other minority Americans to prison and perpetuated cycles of violence and poverty. Studies have shown that minorities were incarcerated at a higher rate than white people, despite similar rates of cannabis use.

But efforts to help those most affected participate in — and profit from — the legal marijuana sector have been halting.

Since 2012, when voters in Washington and Colorado approved the first ballot measures to legalize recreational marijuana, legal adult use has spread to 24 states and the District of Columbia. Nearly all have “social equity” provisions designed to redress drug war damages.

Those provisions include erasing criminal records for certain pot convictions, granting cannabis business licenses and financial help to people convicted of cannabis crimes, and directing marijuana tax revenues to communities that suffered.

“Social equity programs are an attempt to reverse the damage that was done to Black and brown communities who are over-policed and disproportionately impacted,” said Kaliko Castille, former president of the Minority Cannabis Business Association.

States have varying ways of defining who can apply for social equity marijuana licenses, and they're not necessarily based on race.

In Washington, an applicant must own more than half the business and meet other criteria, such as having lived for at least five years between 1980 and 2010 in an area with high poverty, unemployment or cannabis arrest rates; having been arrested for a cannabis-related crime; or having a below-median household income.

Legal challenges over the permitting process in states like New York have slowed implementation.

After settling other cases, New York — which has issued 60% of all cannabis licenses to social equity applicants, according to regulators — is facing another lawsuit. Last month, the libertarian-leaning Pacific Legal Foundation alleged it favors women- and minority-owned applicants in addition to those who can demonstrate harm from the drug war.

“It's that type of blanket racial and gender preference that the Constitution prohibits,” said Pacific Legal attorney David Hoffa.

Elsewhere, deep-pocketed corporations that operate in multiple states have acquired social equity licenses, possibly frustrating the intent of the laws. Arizona lawmakers this year expressed concern that licensees had been pressured by predatory businesses into ceding control.

Difficulty in finding locations due to local cannabis business bans or in obtaining bank loans due to continued federal prohibition has also prevented candidates from opening stores. In some cases, the very things that qualified them for licenses — living in poor neighborhoods, criminal records and lack of assets — have made it hard to secure the money needed to open cannabis businesses.

The drafters of Washington's pioneering law were preoccupied with keeping the U.S. Justice Department from shutting down the market. They required background checks designed to keep criminals out.

“A lot of the early states, they simply didn’t have social equity on their radar,” said Jana Hrdinova, administrative director of the Drug Enforcement and Policy Center at Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law.

Many states that legalized more recently — including Arizona, Connecticut, Ohio, Maryland and Missouri — have had social equity initiatives from the start.

Washington established its program in 2020. But only in the past several months has it issued the first social equity retail licenses. Just two — including Ward's — have opened.

Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board Member Ollie Garrett called the progress so far disappointing, but said officials are working with applicants and urging some cities to rescind zoning bans so social equity cannabis businesses can open.

The state, which collects roughly half a billion dollars a year in marijuana tax revenue, is making $8 million available in grants to social equity licensees to help with expenses, such as security systems and renovations, as well as business coaching.

It also is directing $250 million to communities harmed by the drug war — including housing assistance, small-business loans, job training and violence prevention programs.

Ward's turnaround is one officials hope to see repeated.

He started dealing marijuana in his teens, he said. In 2006, a customer pulled a gun on him, and Ward was shot in the hand.

A single father of seven children, he continued dealing drugs to support them, he said, until he was indicted in 2014 — along with 30 other people — in an oxycodone distribution conspiracy. He served nearly three years in prison.

Ward, now 39, spent that time taking classes, working out and training other inmates. He started a personal training business after he was released, got a restaurant job and joined a semipro football team, the Spokane Wolfpack.

That's where he met Dennis Turner, a Black entrepreneur who briefly owned the team. Turner had worked as a restaurant manager on cruise ships, for the postal service and as a corrections officer before investing his savings — $6,000 — in a friend's medical marijuana growing operation. They used the proceeds to help open a medical dispensary in Cheney, a small college town southwest of Spokane, that eventually became an adult-use marijuana retailer.

In Washington's social equity program, Turner saw an opportunity to make Ward a business executive. The two joined Rashel Palmer, whose husband co-owns the football team, in launching Cloud 9 at a cost of around $400,000. They picked Arlington, Washington — 320 miles (515 kilometers) away — because it's a quickly growing city with limited cannabis competition, they said.

Ward “saw me as a guy that he looked up to, that did good business, was self-made and came out the trenches, and he just wanted to pick my brain,” Turner said.

Turner is working to open cannabis stores in New Mexico and Ohio through social equity programs in those states. He hopes one day to sell them for tens of millions of dollars. In the meantime, he intends to use his businesses to support local charities, such as the Boys and Girls Club in Arlington and the Carl Maxey Center, which provides services to the Black community in Spokane.

Another new social equity licensee is David Penn Jr., 47, who helped persuade Pasco, in south-central Washington, to rescind its ban. Penn, who is Black, was arrested on a crack cocaine charge as a teenager. In 2011, he was kicked out of his apartment after a marijuana bust.

A friend with two other cannabis outlets is financing Penn's store. His location, a dirt-floored building next to a gas station, still needs to be built out. State grants will help, but won't be enough.

“It's like they're giving you the carriage, but you need the horses to get this thing going,” Penn said.

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Home — Essay Samples — Nursing & Health — Marijuana — Legalization Of Marijuana

Legalization of Marijuana

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The drug war devastated Black and other minority communities. Is marijuana legalization helping?

More than 10 years after legal marijuana sales launched in Washington state, the first store under a social equity program has opened. The state’s program aims to remedy the effect that the war on drugs had on black and brown communities.

Cloud 9 Cannabis CEO and co-owner Sam Ward Jr., left, and co-owner Dennis Turner pose at their shop, Thursday, Feb. 1, 2024, in Arlington, Wash. Cloud 9 is one of the first dispensaries to open under the Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board’s social equity program, established in efforts to remedy some of the disproportionate effects marijuana prohibition had on communities of color. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

• Copy Link copied

Cloud 9 Cannabis co-owner Dennis Turner, left, and CEO and co-owner Sam Ward Jr., pose at their shop, Thursday, Feb. 1, 2024, in Arlington, Wash. Cloud 9 is one of the first dispensaries to open under the Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board’s social equity program, established in efforts to remedy some of the disproportionate effects marijuana prohibition had on communities of color. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Operational lead Willie Morrow stocks shelves at Cloud 9 Cannabis as the store prepares to open, Thursday, Feb. 1, 2024, in Arlington, Wash. Cloud 9 is one of the first dispensaries to open under the Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board’s social equity program, established in efforts to remedy some of the disproportionate effects marijuana prohibition had on communities of color. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Cloud 9 Cannabis CEO and co-owner Sam Ward Jr. poses at his shop, Thursday, Feb. 1, 2024, in Arlington, Wash. Cloud 9 is one of the first dispensaries to open under the Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board’s social equity program, established in efforts to remedy some of the disproportionate effects marijuana prohibition had on communities of color. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Cloud 9 Cannabis co-owner Dennis Turner, left, poses for a portrait with CEO and co-owner Sam Ward Jr., at their shop, Thursday, Feb. 1, 2024, in Arlington, Wash. Cloud 9 is one of the first dispensaries to open under the Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board’s social equity program, established in efforts to remedy some of the disproportionate effects marijuana prohibition had on communities of color. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

An employee puts away product at Cloud 9 Cannabis, Thursday, Feb. 1, 2024, in Arlington, Wash. Cloud 9 is one of the first dispensaries to open under the Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board’s social equity program, established in efforts to remedy some of the disproportionate effects marijuana prohibition had on communities of color. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Cloud 9 Cannabis co-owner and CEO Sam Ward Jr., left, and co-owner Dennis Turner, right, pose at their shop, Thursday, Feb. 1, 2024, in Arlington, Wash. Cloud 9 is one of the first dispensaries to open under the Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board’s social equity program, established in efforts to remedy some of the disproportionate effects marijuana prohibition had on communities of color. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Operational lead Willie Morrow stocks shelves at Cloud 9 Cannabis as the store prepares to open for the first time, Thursday, Feb. 1, 2024, in Arlington, Wash. Cloud 9 is one of the first dispensaries to open under the Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board’s social equity program, established in efforts to remedy some of the disproportionate effects marijuana prohibition had on communities of color. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Cloud 9 Cannabis CEO and co-owner Sam Ward Jr. shows a scar on his hand where he was shot during a drug deal gone wrong in 2006, Thursday, Feb. 1, 2024, in Arlington, Wash. Cloud 9 is one of the first dispensaries to open under the Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board’s social equity program, established in efforts to remedy some of the disproportionate effects marijuana prohibition had on communities of color. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Cloud 9 Cannabis CEO and co-owner Sam Ward Jr. adjusts his chains, Thursday, Feb. 1, 2024, in Arlington, Wash. Cloud 9 is one of the first dispensaries to open under the Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board’s social equity program, established in efforts to remedy some of the disproportionate effects marijuana prohibition had on communities of color. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Cloud 9 Cannabis CEO and co-owner Sam Ward Jr. wears chains among over a custom hoodie, Saturday, April 13, 2024, in Arlington, Wash. The shop is one of the first dispensaries to open under the Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board’s social equity program, established in efforts to remedy some of the disproportionate effects marijuana prohibition had on communities of color. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Cloud 9 Cannabis CEO and co-owner Sam Ward Jr. poses in a throne photo-op for customers, Saturday, April 13, 2024, in Arlington, Wash. The shop is one of the first dispensaries to open under the Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board’s social equity program, established in efforts to remedy some of the disproportionate effects marijuana prohibition had on communities of color. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Cloud 9 Cannabis CEO and co-owner Sam Ward Jr. smiles while posing for a photo in a throne photo-op for customers, Saturday, April 13, 2024, in Arlington, Wash. The shop is one of the first dispensaries to open under the Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board’s social equity program, established in efforts to remedy some of the disproportionate effects marijuana prohibition had on communities of color. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Cloud 9 Cannabis CEO and co-owner Sam Ward Jr. poses outside his store, Saturday, April 13, 2024, in Arlington, Wash. The shop is one of the first dispensaries to open under the Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board’s social equity program, established in efforts to remedy some of the disproportionate effects marijuana prohibition had on communities of color. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Cloud 9 Cannabis employee Kyler Hollingsworth grabs a product for customers, Saturday, April 13, 2024, in Arlington, Wash. The shop is one of the first dispensaries to open under the Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board’s social equity program, established in efforts to remedy some of the disproportionate effects marijuana prohibition had on communities of color. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Cloud 9 Cannabis employee Kyler Hollingsworth checks out customers, Saturday, April 13, 2024, in Arlington, Wash. The shop is one of the first dispensaries to open under the Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board’s social equity program, established in efforts to remedy some of the disproportionate effects marijuana prohibition had on communities of color. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

A 420 plate is displayed behind a glass bong on the shelves at Cloud 9 Cannabis, Saturday, April 13, 2024, in Arlington, Wash. The shop is one of the first dispensaries to open under the Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board’s social equity program, established in efforts to remedy some of the disproportionate effects marijuana prohibition had on communities of color. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Cloud 9 Cannabis employee Beau McQueen, right, helps a customer, Saturday, April 13, 2024, in Arlington, Wash. The shop is one of the first dispensaries to open under the Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board’s social equity program, established in efforts to remedy some of the disproportionate effects marijuana prohibition had on communities of color. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

ARLINGTON, Wash. (AP) — When Washington state opened some of the nation’s first legal marijuana stores in 2014, Sam Ward Jr. was on electronic home detention in Spokane, where he had been indicted on federal drug charges. He would soon be off to prison to serve the lion’s share of a four-year sentence.

A decade later, Ward, who is Black, recently posed in a blue-and-gold throne used for photo ops at his new cannabis store, Cloud 9 Cannabis. He greeted customers walking in for early 4/20 deals . And he reflected on being one of the first beneficiaries of a Washington program to make the overwhelmingly white industry more accessible to people harmed by the war on drugs.

“It feels great to know that I’m the CEO of a store, with employees, people depending on me,” Ward said. “Just being a part of something makes you feel good.”

A major argument for legalizing the adult use of cannabis was to stop the harm caused by disproportionate enforcement of drug laws that sent millions of Black, Latino and other minority Americans to prison and perpetuated cycles of violence and poverty. Studies have shown that minorities were incarcerated at a higher rate than white people, despite similar rates of cannabis use.

But efforts to help those most affected participate in — and profit from — the legal marijuana sector have been halting.

Since 2012, when voters in Washington and Colorado approved the first ballot measures to legalize recreational marijuana, legal adult use has spread to 24 states and the District of Columbia. Nearly all have “social equity” provisions designed to redress drug war damages.

Those provisions include erasing criminal records for certain pot convictions, granting cannabis business licenses and financial help to people convicted of cannabis crimes, and directing marijuana tax revenues to communities that suffered.

“Social equity programs are an attempt to reverse the damage that was done to Black and brown communities who are over-policed and disproportionately impacted,” said Kaliko Castille, former president of the Minority Cannabis Business Association.

States have varying ways of defining who can apply for social equity marijuana licenses, and they’re not necessarily based on race.

In Washington, an applicant must own more than half the business and meet other criteria, such as having lived for at least five years between 1980 and 2010 in an area with high poverty, unemployment or cannabis arrest rates; having been arrested for a cannabis-related crime; or having a below-median household income.

Legal challenges over the permitting process in states like New York have slowed implementation.

After settling other cases , New York — which has issued 60% of all cannabis licenses to social equity applicants, according to regulators — is facing another lawsuit. Last month, the libertarian-leaning Pacific Legal Foundation alleged it favors women- and minority-owned applicants in addition to those who can demonstrate harm from the drug war.

“It’s that type of blanket racial and gender preference that the Constitution prohibits,” said Pacific Legal attorney David Hoffa.

Elsewhere, deep-pocketed corporations that operate in multiple states have acquired social equity licenses, possibly frustrating the intent of the laws. Arizona lawmakers this year expressed concern that licensees had been pressured by predatory businesses into ceding control.

Difficulty in finding locations due to local cannabis business bans or in obtaining bank loans due to continued federal prohibition has also prevented candidates from opening stores. In some cases, the very things that qualified them for licenses — living in poor neighborhoods, criminal records and lack of assets — have made it hard to secure the money needed to open cannabis businesses.

The drafters of Washington’s pioneering law were preoccupied with keeping the U.S. Justice Department from shutting down the market. They required background checks designed to keep criminals out.

“A lot of the early states, they simply didn’t have social equity on their radar,” said Jana Hrdinova, administrative director of the Drug Enforcement and Policy Center at Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law.

Many states that legalized more recently — including Arizona, Connecticut, Ohio, Maryland and Missouri — have had social equity initiatives from the start.

Washington established its program in 2020. But only in the past several months has it issued the first social equity retail licenses. Just two — including Ward’s — have opened.

Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board Member Ollie Garrett called the progress so far disappointing, but said officials are working with applicants and urging some cities to rescind zoning bans so social equity cannabis businesses can open.

The state, which collects roughly half a billion dollars a year in marijuana tax revenue, is making $8 million available in grants to social equity licensees to help with expenses, such as security systems and renovations, as well as business coaching.

It also is directing $250 million to communities harmed by the drug war — including housing assistance, small-business loans, job training and violence prevention programs.

Ward’s turnaround is one officials hope to see repeated.

He started dealing marijuana in his teens, he said. In 2006, a customer pulled a gun on him, and Ward was shot in the hand.

A single father of seven children, he continued dealing drugs to support them, he said, until he was indicted in 2014 — along with 30 other people — in an oxycodone distribution conspiracy. He served nearly three years in prison.

Ward, now 39, spent that time taking classes, working out and training other inmates. He started a personal training business after he was released, got a restaurant job and joined a semipro football team, the Spokane Wolfpack.

That’s where he met Dennis Turner, a Black entrepreneur who briefly owned the team. Turner had worked as a restaurant manager on cruise ships, for the postal service and as a corrections officer before investing his savings — $6,000 — in a friend’s medical marijuana growing operation. They used the proceeds to help open a medical dispensary in Cheney, a small college town southwest of Spokane, that eventually became an adult-use marijuana retailer.

In Washington’s social equity program, Turner saw an opportunity to make Ward a business executive. The two joined Rashel Palmer, whose husband co-owns the football team, in launching Cloud 9 at a cost of around $400,000. They picked Arlington, Washington — 320 miles (515 kilometers) away — because it’s a quickly growing city with limited cannabis competition, they said.

Ward “saw me as a guy that he looked up to, that did good business, was self-made and came out the trenches, and he just wanted to pick my brain,” Turner said.

Turner is working to open cannabis stores in New Mexico and Ohio through social equity programs in those states. He hopes one day to sell them for tens of millions of dollars. In the meantime, he intends to use his businesses to support local charities, such as the Boys and Girls Club in Arlington and the Carl Maxey Center, which provides services to the Black community in Spokane.

Another new social equity licensee is David Penn Jr., 47, who helped persuade Pasco, in south-central Washington, to rescind its ban. Penn, who is Black, was arrested on a crack cocaine charge as a teenager. In 2011, he was kicked out of his apartment after a marijuana bust.

A friend with two other cannabis outlets is financing Penn’s store. His location, a dirt-floored building next to a gas station, still needs to be built out. State grants will help, but won’t be enough.

“It’s like they’re giving you the carriage, but you need the horses to get this thing going,” Penn said.

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9 facts about Americans and marijuana

The use and possession of marijuana is illegal under U.S. federal law, but about three-quarters of states have legalized the drug for medical or recreational purposes. The changing legal landscape has coincided with a decades-long rise in public support for legalization, which a majority of Americans now favor.

Here are nine facts about Americans’ views of and experiences with marijuana, based on Pew Research Center surveys and other sources.

As more states legalize marijuana, Pew Research Center looked at Americans’ opinions on legalization and how these views have changed over time.

Data comes from surveys by the Center,  Gallup , and the  2022 National Survey on Drug Use and Health  from the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Information about the jurisdictions where marijuana is legal at the state level comes from the  National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws .

More information about the Center surveys cited in the analysis, including the questions asked and their methodologies, can be found at the links in the text.

Around nine-in-ten Americans say marijuana should be legal for medical or recreational use,  according to a January 2024 Pew Research Center survey . An overwhelming majority of U.S. adults (88%) say either that marijuana should be legal for medical use only (32%) or that it should be legal for medical  and  recreational use (57%). Just 11% say the drug should not be legal in any form. These views have held relatively steady over the past five years.

Views on marijuana legalization differ widely by age, political party, and race and ethnicity, the January survey shows.

While small shares across demographic groups say marijuana should not be legal at all, those least likely to favor it for both medical and recreational use include:

• Older adults: 31% of adults ages 75 and older support marijuana legalization for medical and recreational purposes, compared with half of those ages 65 to 74, the next youngest age category. By contrast, 71% of adults under 30 support legalization for both uses.
• Republicans and GOP-leaning independents: 42% of Republicans favor legalizing marijuana for both uses, compared with 72% of Democrats and Democratic leaners. Ideological differences exist as well: Within both parties, those who are more conservative are less likely to support legalization.
• Hispanic and Asian Americans: 45% in each group support legalizing the drug for medical and recreational use. Larger shares of Black (65%) and White (59%) adults hold this view.

Support for marijuana legalization has increased dramatically over the last two decades. In addition to asking specifically about medical and recreational use of the drug, both the Center and Gallup have asked Americans about legalizing marijuana use in a general way. Gallup asked this question most recently, in 2023. That year, 70% of adults expressed support for legalization, more than double the share who said they favored it in 2000.

Half of U.S. adults (50.3%) say they have ever used marijuana, according to the 2022 National Survey on Drug Use and Health . That is a smaller share than the 84.1% who say they have ever consumed alcohol and the 64.8% who have ever used tobacco products or vaped nicotine.

While many Americans say they have used marijuana in their lifetime, far fewer are current users, according to the same survey. In 2022, 23.0% of adults said they had used the drug in the past year, while 15.9% said they had used it in the past month.

While many Americans say legalizing recreational marijuana has economic and criminal justice benefits, views on these and other impacts vary, the Center’s January survey shows.

• Economic benefits: About half of adults (52%) say that legalizing recreational marijuana is good for local economies, while 17% say it is bad. Another 29% say it has no impact.

• Criminal justice system fairness: 42% of Americans say legalizing marijuana for recreational use makes the criminal justice system fairer, compared with 18% who say it makes the system less fair. About four-in-ten (38%) say it has no impact.
• Use of other drugs: 27% say this policy decreases the use of other drugs like heroin, fentanyl and cocaine, and 29% say it increases it. But the largest share (42%) say it has no effect on other drug use.
• Community safety: 21% say recreational legalization makes communities safer and 34% say it makes them less safe. Another 44% say it doesn’t impact safety.

Democrats and adults under 50 are more likely than Republicans and those in older age groups to say legalizing marijuana has positive impacts in each of these areas.

Most Americans support easing penalties for people with marijuana convictions, an October 2021 Center survey found . Two-thirds of adults say they favor releasing people from prison who are being held for marijuana-related offenses only, including 41% who strongly favor this. And 61% support removing or expunging marijuana-related offenses from people’s criminal records.

Younger adults, Democrats and Black Americans are especially likely to support these changes. For instance, 74% of Black adults  favor releasing people from prison  who are being held only for marijuana-related offenses, and just as many favor removing or expunging marijuana-related offenses from criminal records.

Twenty-four states and the District of Columbia have legalized small amounts of marijuana for both medical and recreational use as of March 2024,  according to the  National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws  (NORML), an advocacy group that tracks state-level legislation on the issue. Another 14 states have legalized the drug for medical use only.

Of the remaining 12 states, all allow limited access to products such as CBD oil that contain little to no THC – the main psychoactive substance in cannabis. And 26 states overall have at least partially  decriminalized recreational marijuana use , as has the District of Columbia.

In addition to 24 states and D.C.,  the U.S. Virgin Islands ,  Guam  and  the Northern Mariana Islands  have legalized marijuana for medical and recreational use.

More than half of Americans (54%) live in a state where both recreational and medical marijuana are legal, and 74% live in a state where it’s legal either for both purposes or medical use only, according to a February Center analysis of data from the Census Bureau and other outside sources. This analysis looked at state-level legislation in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

In 2012, Colorado and Washington became the first states to pass legislation legalizing recreational marijuana.

About eight-in-ten Americans (79%) live in a county with at least one cannabis dispensary, according to the February analysis. There are nearly 15,000 marijuana dispensaries nationwide, and 76% are in states (including D.C.) where recreational use is legal. Another 23% are in medical marijuana-only states, and 1% are in states that have made legal allowances for low-percentage THC or CBD-only products.

The states with the largest number of dispensaries include California, Oklahoma, Florida, Colorado and Michigan.

Note: This is an update of a post originally published April 26, 2021, and updated April 13, 2023.  

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Argumentative Essay On Marijuana Legalization

Published by gudwriter on May 27, 2018 May 27, 2018

Most students have serious problems writing a quality essay as they lack the necessary experience. If you need help writing an essay on legalization of marijuana, the perfect solution is to buy thesis proposal from experts online.

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Why Marijuana Should be Legalized Argumentative Essay Outline

Introduction.

Thesis: Marijuana should be legalized as it is more beneficial that it may be detrimental to society.

Paragraph 1:

Marijuana has not caused turmoil in some of the countries where it has been legalized.

• Marijuana does not increase violent, and property crimes as many suggest.
• Studies reveal that in Colorado, violent crimes have declined following the legalization of marijuana.

Paragraph 2:

Prohibiting use of marijuana does not limit its consumption.

• In spite of the many laws prohibiting the use of marijuana, it is one of the most highly abused drugs.
• 58% of young people from all over the world use marijuana.
• It has not been attributed to any health complications.

Paragraph 3:

Legalization of marijuana would help state governments save taxpayers money.

• Governments spend lots of funds on law enforcement agencies that uphold laws restricting the use of marijuana.
• They also spend vast sums of money on sustaining arrested dealers and consumers in prison.
• Legalizing marijuana would result in saving vast sums of money.

Paragraph 4:

Marijuana is less noxious than other legal substances.

• Marijuana has less health side effects than other legal substances such as alcohol and tobacco.
• Alcohol is 114 times more destructive than marijuana.

Paragraph 5:

Marijuana has been proven to have medical benefits.

• Marijuana helps stop seizures in epileptic patients.
• It helps stop nausea in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy .

Paragraph 6:

Marijuana has been proven to be a stress reliever.

• Marijuana relieves stress and depression in their users by causing excitement.
• Its use reduces violence and deaths related to stress and depression.

Conclusion.

There are many misconceptions about marijuana existent in the modern world. People have continued to ignore health benefits linked to this substance citing their unproven beliefs. Owing to its ability to stop seizures, nausea, and stress in individuals governments should highly consider marijuana legalization. Its legalization will also help state governments reduce expenses that result from maintaining suspects convicted of marijuana possession and consumption.

Why Marijuana Should be Legalized Argumentative Essay

The argument that marijuana use should be made legal has gained momentum both in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world in recent years. This has seen the drug being legalized in some states in the U.S. such that by 2013, twenty states had legalized medical marijuana. As of the same year, Colorado and Washington had legalized recreational marijuana. The arguments behind the push for legalization majorly revolve around the idea that the drug has medicinal effects. However, there are also arguments that there are serious health effects associated with the drug and this has only further fueled the already raging debate. This paper argues that marijuana should be legalized as it is more beneficial that it may be detrimental to society.

Marijuana has not caused any notable negative effects in countries where it has been legalized. There is a general belief that marijuana consumers are violent. However, no authentic research can prove these assertions. As already seen, some states in the United States have legalized both medicinal and recreational marijuana. In spite of this, no cases of marijuana-related violence have been recorded so far in such states (Markol, 2018). Reports reveal that the rate of violence and property crimes have decreased in Colorado following the legalization of the drug. If marijuana does not increase violent crimes, there is no reason as to why it should not be legalized.

It is also noteworthy that prohibiting marijuana use does not limit its consumption. Less than 10% of countries in the world prevent the use of marijuana, but according to research, 58% of young people in most of these countries are marijuana users (Head, 2016). General reports reveal that marijuana is one of most commonly abused drug in the world. It is also readily available in most states as it is a naturally growing plant (Head, 2016). In spite of its continued use, there are few cases, if any, of marijuana-related health complications that have been reported in any of these countries (Head, 2016). Therefore, if the illegality of marijuana does not limit its consumption, then state governments should consider its legalization.

Legalization of marijuana would further help state governments save taxpayers’ money. It is widely known that in countries where marijuana is illegal, authorities are stringent and will arrest any individual found in possession of the drug (Sanger, 2017). However, as earlier mentioned, laws prohibiting the use of the drug do not prevent its consumption, and this means that many people are arrested and prosecuted for possessing it (Sanger, 2017). State governments therefore use a lot of funds to support law enforcement agencies that seek to uphold laws prohibiting the use of marijuana (Sanger, 2017). Many people have been arrested and incarcerated for either possessing or consuming the drug, and the government has to use taxpayers’ money to sustain such people in prison. Since these actions do not limit consumption of marijuana, state governments should legalize the drug so as to save taxpayers money.

Another advantage of marijuana is that it is less noxious than other legal substances. According to research, marijuana is the least harmful drug among the many legal drugs existent in the world today (Owen, 2014). There are millions of campaigns every year cautioning people against smoking cigarettes, but there has been none seeking to warn people about marijuana consumption (Owen, 2014). Lobby groups have even been making efforts to push for legalization of marijuana. If marijuana had severe health effects as many purport, state governments would be investing heavily in campaigns aimed at discouraging its consumption (Owen, 2014). According to studies, alcohol, which is legal in many countries, is 114 times more harmful than marijuana (Owen, 2014). Therefore, if such harmful substances can be legalized, then there are no justifications as to why marijuana should not be legalized.

Further, marijuana has been proven to have medicinal benefits. Several countries, particularly in Europe, and the United States have legalized both medicinal and recreational marijuana. Their move to legalize marijuana was based on medical reports that showed a variety of health benefits linked to the drug (Noonan, 2017). Research shows that marijuana can reduce seizures in epileptic persons. Several studies have also proven that the drug indeed has a variety of health benefits. For instance, Charlotte Figi, who is now aged 10, used to have more than 100 seizures every month at age three, but since Colorado legalized medicinal and recreational marijuana, her parents started treating her with the substance, and today her seizures have significantly reduced (Noonan, 2017). Marijuana has as well been proven to reduce nausea in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. Owing to this medicinal value, state governments should consider legalizing the drug.

Additionally, marijuana has been proven to be a stress reliever. Consumption of the drug causes excitement among its users enabling them to forget about troubling situations. Unlike alcohol which is likely to aggravate stress and depression, marijuana works wonders in alleviating anxiety and depression (Sanger, 2017). There are many health and social effects associated with stress, including mental disorders and violence against others (Sanger, 2017). To avoid cases of stress-related violence and mental disorders, state governments should make marijuana consumption legal.

There are many misconceptions about marijuana in the world today. People have continued to ignore the health benefits linked with this substance and have instead focused on citing yet-to-be proven misconceptions. Owing to the ability of the drug to stop seizures, nausea, and stress in individuals, governments should seriously consider its legalization. The legalization will also help state governments reduce expenses that result from sustaining suspects convicted of marijuana possession and consumption. So far, there is more than enough evidence proving that marijuana has lots of benefits to individuals, the society, and the government, and therefore should be legalized.

Head, T. (2016). “8 reasons why marijuana should be legalized”. ThoughtCo . Retrieved June 27, 2020 from https://www.thoughtco.com/reasons-why-marijuana-should-be-legalized-721154

Markol, T. (2018). “5 reasons why marijuana should be legalized”. Marijuana Reform . Retrieved June 27, 2020 from http://marijuanareform.org/5-reasons-marijuana-legalized/

Noonan, D. (2017). “Marijuana treatment reduces severe epileptic seizures”. Scientific American . Retrieved June 27, 2020 from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/marijuana-treatment-reduces-severe-epileptic-seizures/

Owen, P. (2014). “6 powerful reasons to legalize marijuana”. New York Times . Retrieved June 27, 2020 from https://www.alternet.org/drugs/6-powerful-reasons-new-york-times-says-end-marijuana-prohibition

Sanger, B. (2017). “10 legit reasons why weed should be legalized right now”. Herb . Retrieved June 27, 2020 from https://herb.co/marijuana/news/reasons-weed-legalized

Why Marijuana Should be Legal Essay Outline

Thesis:  Marijuana has health benefits and should thus be legal.

Benefits of Marijuana

Marijuana slows and stops the spread of cancer cells.

• Cannabidiol can turn off a gene called Id-1 and can therefore stop cancer.
• In an experiment, researchers were able to treat breast cancer cells with Cannabidiol.

Marijuana helps with pain and nausea reduction for people going through chemotherapy.

• Cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy suffer from severe pains and nausea.
• This can further complicate their health.
• Marijuana can stir up their appetite, decrease nausea, and reduce pain.

Paragraph  3:

Marijuana can control epileptic seizure.

• Marijuana extract stopped seizures in epileptic rats in ten hours.
• The seizures were controlled by the THC.

Disadvantages of Marijuana

Marijuana is addictive.

• One in ten marijuana users become addicted over time.
• If one stops using the drug abruptly, they may suffer from such withdrawal symptoms.

Marijuana use decreases mental health.

• Users suffer from memory loss and restricted blood flow to the brain.
• Users have higher chances of developing depression and schizophrenia.

Marijuana use damages the lungs more than cigarette smoking .

• Marijuana smokers inhale the smoke more deeply into their lungs and let it stay there for longer.
• The likelihood of lung cancer can be increased by this deeper, longer exposure to carcinogens.

Why Marijuana Should Be Legal

Paragraph 7:

Improved quality and safety control.

• Legalization would lead to the creation of a set of standards for safety and quality control.
• Users would know what they exactly get in exchange for the money they offer.
• There would be no risks of users taking in unknown substances mixed in marijuana.

Paragraph 8:

Marijuana has a medicinal value.

• Medical marijuana treats a wide assortment of “untreatable” diseases and conditions.
• Public health would be improved and the healthcare system would experience less of a drain.  

Paragraph 9: 

Among the major arguments against marijuana legalization is often that legalization would yield an increase in drug-impaired driving.

• This argument holds that even now when the drug is yet to be fully legalized in the country, it is a major causal factor in highway deaths, injuries, and crushes.
• It however beats logic why marijuana is illegalized on the ground that it would increase drug-impaired driving while alcohol is legal but also significantly contributes to the same problem.

Legalization of marijuana would have many benefits. The drug is associated with the treatment of many serious illnesses including the dreaded cancer. Legalization would also save users from consuming unsafe marijuana sold by unscrupulous people.

Why Marijuana Should Be Legal Essay

There is an ongoing tension between the belief that marijuana effectively treats a wide range of ailments and the argument that it has far-reaching negative health effects. There has nevertheless been a drive towards legalization of the drug in the United States with twenty nine states and the District of Columbia having legalized it for medical and recreational purposes. It was also found by a study that there is a sharp increase in the use of marijuana across the country (Kerr, Lui & Ye, 2017). Major public health concerns are being prompted by this rise. This should however not be the case because marijuana has health benefits and should thus be legal.

Marijuana slows and stops the spread of cancer cells. A study found that Cannabidiol can turn off a gene called Id-1 and can therefore stop cancer. A 2007 report by researchers at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco also indicated that the spread of cancer may be prevented by Cannabidiol. In their lab experiment, the researchers were able to treat breast cancer cells with this component (Nawaz, 2017). The positive outcome of the experiment showed that Id-1 expression had been significantly decreased.

Marijuana also helps with pain and nausea reduction for people going through chemotherapy. Cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy suffer from severe pains, appetite loss, vomiting, and painful nausea. This can further complicate their already deteriorating health. Marijuana can be of help here by stirring up the appetite, decreasing nausea, and reducing pain (Nawaz, 2017). There are also other cannabinoid drugs used for the same purposes as approved by the FDA.

It was additionally shown by a 2003 study that the use of marijuana can control epileptic seizure. Synthetic marijuana and marijuana extracts were given to epileptic rats by Virginia Commonwealth University’s Robert J. DeLorenzo. In about ten hours, the seizures had been stopped by the drugs (Nawaz, 2017). It was found that the seizures were controlled by the THC which bound the brain cells responsible for regulating relaxation and controlling excitability.

Some scientists claim that marijuana is addictive. According to them, one in ten marijuana users become addicted over time. They argue that if one stops using the drug abruptly, they may suffer from such withdrawal symptoms as anxiety and irritability (Barcott, 2015). However, the same argument could be applied to cigarette smoking, which is notably legal. There is need for more studies to be conducted into this claim being spread by opponents of marijuana legalization.

It is also argued that marijuana use decreases mental health. Those opposed to the legalization of recreational marijuana like to cite studies that show that users of the drug suffer from memory loss and restricted blood flow to the brain. They also argue that users have higher chances of developing depression and schizophrenia. However, these assertions have not yet been completely ascertained by science (Barcott, 2015). The claim about depression and schizophrenia is particularly not clear because researchers are not sure whether the drug triggers the conditions or it is used by smokers to alleviate the symptoms.

It is further claimed that marijuana use damages the lungs more than cigarette smoking. It is presumed that marijuana smokers inhale the smoke more deeply into their lungs and let it stay there for longer. The likelihood of lung cancer, according to this argument, can be increased by this deeper, longer exposure to carcinogens. However, the argument touches not on the frequency of use between marijuana and cigarette smokers (Barcott, 2015). It neither takes into account such alternative administration methods as edibles, tinctures, and vaporizing.

Legalization of marijuana would lead to improved quality and safety control. Purchasing the drug off the street provides end users with no means of knowing what they are exactly getting. On the other hand, legalizing it would immediately lead to the creation of a set of standards for safety and quality control (Caulkins, Kilmer & Kleiman, 2016). This would certainly work in the marijuana industry just as it is working in the tobacco and alcohol industries. Users would be able to know what they exactly get in exchange for the money they offer. Additionally, there would be no risks of users taking in unknown substances mixed in marijuana sold on the streets.

Marijuana should also be legal because it has a medicinal value. It has been proven that medical marijuana treats a wide assortment of “untreatable” diseases and conditions. These include problems due to chemotherapy, cancer, post-traumatic stress disorder, migraines, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, and Crohn’s disease (Caulkins, Kilmer & Kleiman, 2016). Public health would be improved and the healthcare system would experience less of a drain if medical cannabis products were made available to those suffering from the mentioned conditions. Consequently, more public funds would be available for such other public service initiatives as schools and roads.

Among the major arguments against marijuana legalization is often that legalization would yield an increase in drug-impaired driving. This argument holds that even now when the drug is yet to be fully legalized in the country, it has already been cited to be a major causal factor in highway deaths, injuries, and crushes. Among the surveys those arguing along this line might cite is one that was conducted back in 2010, revealing that of the participating weekend night-time drivers, “8.6 percent tested positive for marijuana or its metabolites” (“Why We Should Not Legalize Marijuana,” 2010). It was found in yet another study that 26.9% of drivers who were being attended to at a trauma center after sustaining serious injuries tested positive for the drug (“Why We Should Not Legalize Marijuana,” 2010). It however beats logic why marijuana is illegalized on the ground that it would increase drug-impaired driving while alcohol is legal but also significantly contributes to the same problem.

As the discussion reveals, legalization of marijuana would have many benefits. The drug is associated with the treatment of many serious illnesses including the dreaded cancer. Legalization would also save users from consuming unsafe marijuana sold by unscrupulous people. There are also other health conditions that can be controlled through the drug. Arguments against its legalization based on its effects on human health also lack sufficient scientific support. It is thus only safe that the drug is legalized in all states.

Barcott, B. (2015).  Weed the people: the future of legal marijuana in America . New York, NY: Time Home Entertainment.

Caulkins, J. P., Kilmer, B., & Kleiman, M. (2016).  Marijuana legalization: what everyone needs to know . New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Kerr, W., Lui, C., & Ye, Y. (2017). Trends and age, period and cohort effects for marijuana use prevalence in the 1984-2015 US National Alcohol Surveys.  Addiction ,  113 (3), 473-481.

Nawaz, H. (2017).  The debate between legalizing marijuana and its benefits for medical purposes: a pros and cons analysis . Munich, Germany: GRIN Verlag.

Why We Should Not Legalize Marijuana. (2010). In  CNBC . Retrieved June 25, 2020 from  https://www.cnbc.com/id/36267223 .

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Ben Lowenthal: Opponents Of Legal Cannabis Say They Want To 'Keep Hawaii, Hawaii.' Which Hawaii Are They Talking About?

The rhetoric and attitude don't remind me of the Hawaii I know.

By Ben Lowenthal

April 19, 2024 · 6 min read

About the Author

Ben Lowenthal

The rhetoric and attitude don’t remind me of the Hawaii I know.

The statutes directing how people grow, use and transport a certain plant for medical purposes call it cannabis. That’s because in 2017, the Legislature noted the different terms and found that the word “marijuana” has “no scientific basis but carries prejudicial implications rooted in racial stereotypes from the early twentieth century when cannabis use was first criminalized in the United States.”

But “marijuana” is still the name preferred by those who call it a “gateway drug” to harder narcotics and the one still used in parts of our penal code.

Criminal laws prohibit the possession and distribution of cannabis for any purpose other than medical ones.

It’s a misdemeanor to have an ounce. Selling a joint in or near a public park is still a felony with the threat of five-year imprisonment. And unregulated operations involving more than 100 plants or growing 25 plants or more on someone else’s land without permission is a class A felony exposing people to up to 20 years imprisonment or 10 years of probation.

That hasn’t changed. Even when Gov. David Ige took the modest step in 2019 of “decriminalizing” cannabis for people using up to 3 grams, the pejorative stayed on the statutes. It’s still a criminal “ violation ,” still punishable with a fine for up to $130, and it’s still an “ offense against public health and morals .”

This year could have been different. A bill originated in the Senate aimed to regulate “all aspects of the cannabis plant” by legalizing its use for adults, setting up a sales tax and restricting its use in relation to traffic offenses got through the Senate and crossed over to the House.

The bill prompted a loud cry of opposition from the usual suspects. Police chiefs of every county and every county prosecutor’s office lined up against legalization. Honolulu’s top prosecutor, Steve Alm, seemed to head the public opposition and didn’t mince words.

In his written testimony, during interviews and at rallies, Alm argued that legalization would have adverse impacts on tourism and paraphrased the comments of the president of a Japanese tourism agency by stating that “ Japanese tourists will stop coming to Hawaii. ”

But the opposition wasn’t working — at least not at first. Despite the growing no votes from a bipartisan group of Democrats and a few Republicans, the bill advanced.

That’s what prompted a rally against the bill in February. Speakers included the police chiefs, Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi and former governor Linda Lingle who all united against legalization.

They took an old slogan from a Honolulu City Council campaign a few years back that sought to educate tourists about the economy, culture and the environment. The words “Keep Hawaii, Hawaii” were printed on colorful signs posted in front of the stage. It was repeated again in the speeches and in written testimony urging legislators to uphold the status quo.

It’s a troubling slogan. I’m still not sure what it really means.

So what exactly does it mean to “Keep Hawaii, Hawaii” by preventing legalization?

Sure, the argument is that it’s intended to prevent large, corporate cannabis producers from setting up shop here, but why target them? How is that different than any other industry selling cigarettes, vapes, booze and red meat? Should law enforcement oppose that?

Is this even new to Hawaii? These islands have a long history of large corporations and entities, be it sugar and pineapple companies, hotel chains and even the United States military, coming here and influencing the economy.

I grew up on Maui nearly 20 miles from Wailuku. Other than Hana Highway, most of the roads of my childhood were narrow, winding and oftentimes unpaved. My classmates, friends and neighbors lived in gulches, under thick groves of trees and surrounded by pastures.

In my elementary school, we’d talk about the helicopters.

They flew low enough to shake people’s houses. They were loud enough to frighten animals and babies. These helicopters were part of “Operation Green Harvest.” Armed, militarized police officers patrolled the airspace above our homes flying low enough to look for cannabis. Those programs are gone now. Their popularity waned at the turn of this century.

Is that the Hawaii we’re trying to keep?

Then there’s the ACLU’s testimony in support of the bill. It cites the Office of Hawaiian Affairs’ report on the disparate treatment of Native Hawaiians in our prison system . The ACLU noted that Native Hawaiians “go to prison for drug offenses more often than people of other races or ethnicities.” What about that Hawaii? Should we keep it that way?

Police still use the smell of what they call marijuana as a basis for what criminal defense lawyers call a warrantless detention. They use it as an excuse to seize your car, pat down your pockets and try to question you about it. Is that the Hawaii worth keeping?

Apparently so. 

In the end, the bill died. Despite the projected revenues of $4.4 million in 2026 and $17 million in 2027 , Maui Rep. Kyle Yamashita cut off further deliberation of the bill because the timing wasn’t right and we need to “navigate challenges of managing the largest wildfire recovery efforts in Hawaii’s history.”

I’m still troubled by the slogan. The rhetoric and attitude didn’t remind me of Hawaii at all. When I found out the bill died, I thought about Merle Haggard’s 1969 country hit, “ Okie from Muskogee. ” The opening verse went like this:

“We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee.

We don’t take no trips on LSD.

We don’t burn no draft cards down Main Street.

We like livin’ right, bein’ free.”

Despite the irony of that last line, the song goes on to chide hippies and proudly “wave Old Glory down at the courthouse.” It’s an anthem for the right-wing conservatives who ramped up the War on Drugs.

The next time lawmakers try to legalize cannabis, the opposition should use the song and tinker their slogan: Keep Hawaii, Muskogee.

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Ben Lowenthal grew up on Maui. He earned his undergraduate degree studying journalism at San Francisco State University and his law degree at the University of Kansas. He is a deputy public defender practicing criminal defense in trial and appellate courts. He also runs “Hawaii Legal News,” a blog covering Hawaii appellate courts . The author's opinions are his own and don't necessarily reflect those of Civil Beat. You can reach him at  [email protected] .

Latest Comments (0)

For those who may be interested in what the data shows regarding cannabis legalization, I would point you to an article from the Cato Institute - "The Effect of Cannabis Legalization 2021 Update".Their conclusion: "The data so far, however, provide little support for the strong claims about legalization made by either opponents or supporters; the notable exception is tax revenue, which has exceeded some expectations. The absence of significant adverse consequences is especially striking given the sometimes-dire predictions made by legalization opponents."Opponents of legalization should be challenged to show the data/research that supports their position because there isn't any.

Village · 4 hours ago

Drove a tour bus van when I was in college. Pretty much every relatively young tourist wanted to use cannabis and why not they were all on vacation. Saying tourists wouldn't come if weed was legal is just silly and fear mongering.

BigDaddy · 6 hours ago

Hawai’i has been identified with cannabis for over a century. Grows like a weed. In the late 60s "Maui Wowie" was a recognized and sought after strain/source for any high schooler across the mainland. And, thanks to the Vietnam fiasco, every GI returning had tales of Thai stick; funneled back via military shipping. "Keep Hawaii Hawaii" is just a silly meaningless distraction.

Mauna2Moana · 9 hours ago

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Should drugs be legalized argumentative essay. Final 6.10 Argumentative Essay, Should All Drugs Be webapi.bu.edu 2022-10-11

The debate over whether drugs should be legalized has been a contentious one, with arguments on both sides. On one hand, proponents of drug legalization argue that it would reduce crime, lower incarceration rates, and potentially generate revenue through taxation. On the other hand, opponents argue that drug legalization would increase drug use and addiction, leading to negative consequences such as increased healthcare costs and potential harm to individuals and society.

One argument in favor of drug legalization is that it would reduce crime. The illegal drug trade is often associated with violence and other forms of criminal activity, as drug traffickers and dealers compete for market share. Legalizing drugs would take this trade out of the hands of criminal organizations and allow for regulation and control by the government, potentially reducing crime rates.

Another argument for drug legalization is that it would lower incarceration rates. The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, and a significant portion of prisoners are serving time for drug offenses. Legalizing drugs would reduce the number of people being arrested and imprisoned for drug-related crimes, potentially leading to lower incarceration rates.

Additionally, some proponents argue that drug legalization could generate revenue through taxation. Many states have already legalized marijuana and have seen significant tax revenue as a result. If other drugs were legalized, they could also be taxed and potentially provide a source of revenue for the government.

However, opponents of drug legalization argue that it would increase drug use and addiction. They argue that making drugs more readily available would likely lead to increased use, particularly among young people who may be more vulnerable to addiction. This could lead to negative consequences such as increased healthcare costs due to drug-related illness and injury, and potential harm to individuals and society.

In conclusion, the debate over whether drugs should be legalized is a complex one with valid arguments on both sides. While drug legalization may have some potential benefits, such as reduced crime and lower incarceration rates, it also carries the risk of increasing drug use and addiction. Ultimately, the decision to legalize drugs is a complex one that should take into account all of the potential consequences, both positive and negative.

"Should Drugs Be Legalized?" by William Bennett

Why Should Marijuana Be Legalized? So this within itself proves that these drugs have no positive benefits. Is legalising drugs being soft on crime? School-based programs have endeavored to teach youth strategies to overcome peer pressure as well as how to respond to challenging… Argumentative Essay: The Legalization Of Marijuana The legalisation of marijuana has been a controversial topic for the past few decades. He states that our… Character And Ecstasy: Against The Legalization Of Drugs That in turn makes heroin and cocaine more expensive and farther out of reach from those who do not have a way to make their own income. Children are less likely to come in contact with the drugs since they do not have the money nor connections to get to them. Jo Ray McCuen-Metherell and Anthony C. In recent years, one of the worldwide trending topics has been the issue of whether all drugs should be legalised or not.

Free Essay: Should Drugs Be Legalized?

Some of the short term effects are wakefulness, loss of appetite, overdose, heart attack and even death. For instance in San Francisco smoking opium was banned in 1875 andin Australia opium sale was prohibited in 1905. In a sample of 20 respondents, when asked about their opinion on marijuana legalization, 40% said they would prefer legalization, while 60% desired varying degrees of restriction in its legality. Drug users commit crime in order to maintain and support the expensive drug habits because of addiction. Out of the four arguments presented by the author, three were rebutted, and only one refuted. Counter Argument It is essential to fight gangs and cartels in the cities to ensure freedom for everyone.

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High consumption gives rise to an increase in anxiety, paranoia, anger, and violent outbursts. These drugs can be deadly, and could even kill someone if not handled responsibly. It almost seems that every "street drug" was once legal, but banned soon after its introduction in society. Drug abuse The level of drug abuse in the US has increased a lot hence leading to the creation of whether some drugs should be legalized in the country or not. Methamphetamine use causes economic and social impacts in Australia. Other countries that have a more relaxed approach to their drug laws than the United States have, do not have the problems with illegal drugs like the United States does. In the end, he expresses the idea that drug legalization would turn into modern slavery rather than help people live their lives to the fullest.

Argumentative Essay On Legalization Of Drugs

Palmieri, Christopher, and Michael Marois. The economic impacts of marijuana legalization, 2-4. Works Cited Barcott Bruce. The cost incurred in the judicial system is not fruitful at all in reducing the use of drugs within the country. First, marijuana has not been shown or verified to have any detrimental effects on the human body.

Why Drugs Should Be Legal

Both sides of the divide utilize high amounts of contradicting research that in many cases fail to outline the ultimate truths towards it. The claim that increased use of the drug interferes with the chemical sense of balance is vague. Is it time to lift the prohibition on recreational drugs such as marijuana and cocaine? The debate on whether or not drugs should be legalized is everlasting, but this can be changed. Those supporting the bill argue that criminalization makes more difficult for young people to have access to these drugs and could reduce the number of people who get addicted. .

Debate Over Legalization Of Drugs Argumentative Essay

Take a moment and think about this; that was only a park, imagine the effects on a whole country. Marijuana is a hallucinogen grown naturally as the cannabis plant. Most importantly, legalization would permit the government to define age limits on buyers and to regulate the whole supply chain of the drug, for instance, distributors, growers, and testing laboratories. While being under the influence, an addicts voice of reason is jeopardized, resulting in criminal activities which raise the chances of being apprehended by the law enforcers, as well as, heavy fines are imposed. The number of History of prohibition of drugs There are legal recreational drugs, such as alcohol and prohibition of drugs is long. To destroy yourself or someone else completely death , or to cause the most unspeakable social and emoti.

Why Should Marijuana Be Legalized?, Free Essay Sample

Glaucoma is another condition in which medical marijuana is distributed to patients, as it helps alleviate the symptoms and increase comfort in the person suffering, including lowering eye pressure Southall, 2010. The legalization of drugs has been a very controversial case for decades, with strong arguments on either side. These issues will continue and should be further enforced. Especially with the legalization of marijuana in several states, Colorado and Washington State being the first, the debate for and against drugs is more present than ever. Adhering to such laws would earn benefits while eliminating health risks that may occur from the legalization.

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Homelessness In California Essay 765 Words 4 Pages The continuous use of narcotics results in addiction, and financial struggles due to the costly upkeep. In short, the involvement of the government does not make its policy efficient but turns it into one of the competitors on the drug market, and this decision will not eliminate black markets. If younger adults had not been exposed to the illegal activity of buying or selling marijuana thus exposing them to other drugs, they wouldn 't do them. Gore Vidal Case For Legalizing Marijuana Summary 786 Words 4 Pages Upon reading Gore Vidals "Case for Legalizing Marijuana" one may wonder why drugs are not legal in the United States of America. They argue that prohibition of drugs is what causes those crimes. Drug policy has Methamphetamines In Australia Essay 793 Words 4 Pages This essay will illustrate these problems and offer solutions to them. To come to your own conclusions you have to take into account that we know very little on the total long term effects of drugs on the body.

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He proves it wrong by presenting the fact that most crimes committed by criminals with drug addiction took place before they started taking them. Contrary to the beliefs of those who advocate the legalization of marijuana, the current balanced, restrictive, and bipartisan drug policies of the United States are working reasonably well and they have contributed to reductions in the rate of marijuana use in Legalizing Marijuana Will Have Positive Effects on Society Many believe that the legalzation of Marijuana could benefit everyone within the US. Drugs should remain illegal in order to protect the health of people and prevent them from easily accessing drugs. Medical Marijuana - BusinessWeek. Conclusion When dealing with an issue like this you have to draw upon your own values to come up with a decision.

Should drugs be legalized? Legalization pros and cons

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