why shouldn't marijuanas be legalized essay

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The Evidence—and Lack Thereof—About Cannabis

Research is still needed on cannabis’s risks and benefits. 

Lindsay Smith Rogers

Although the use and possession of cannabis is illegal under federal law, medicinal and recreational cannabis use has become increasingly widespread.

Thirty-eight states and Washington, D.C., have legalized medical cannabis, while 23 states and D.C. have legalized recreational use. Cannabis legalization has benefits, such as removing the product from the illegal market so it can be taxed and regulated, but science is still trying to catch up as social norms evolve and different products become available. 

In this Q&A, adapted from the August 25 episode of Public Health On Call , Lindsay Smith Rogers talks with Johannes Thrul, PhD, MS , associate professor of Mental Health , about cannabis as medicine, potential risks involved with its use, and what research is showing about its safety and efficacy. 

Do you think medicinal cannabis paved the way for legalization of recreational use?

The momentum has been clear for a few years now. California was the first to legalize it for medical reasons [in 1996]. Washington and Colorado were the first states to legalize recreational use back in 2012. You see one state after another changing their laws, and over time, you see a change in social norms. It's clear from the national surveys that people are becoming more and more in favor of cannabis legalization. That started with medical use, and has now continued into recreational use.

But there is a murky differentiation between medical and recreational cannabis. I think a lot of people are using cannabis to self-medicate. It's not like a medication you get prescribed for a very narrow symptom or a specific disease. Anyone with a medical cannabis prescription, or who meets the age limit for recreational cannabis, can purchase it. Then what they use it for is really all over the place—maybe because it makes them feel good, or because it helps them deal with certain symptoms, diseases, and disorders.

Does cannabis have viable medicinal uses?

The evidence is mixed at this point. There hasn’t been a lot of funding going into testing cannabis in a rigorous way. There is more evidence for certain indications than for others, like CBD for seizures—one of the first indications that cannabis was approved for. And THC has been used effectively for things like nausea and appetite for people with cancer.

There are other indications where the evidence is a lot more mixed. For example, pain—one of the main reasons that people report for using cannabis. When we talk to patients, they say cannabis improved their quality of life. In the big studies that have been done so far, there are some indications from animal models that cannabis might help [with pain]. When we look at human studies, it's very much a mixed bag. 

And, when we say cannabis, in a way it's a misnomer because cannabis is so many things. We have different cannabinoids and different concentrations of different cannabinoids. The main cannabinoids that are being studied are THC and CBD, but there are dozens of other minor cannabinoids and terpenes in cannabis products, all of varying concentrations. And then you also have a lot of different routes of administration available. You can smoke, vape, take edibles, use tinctures and topicals. When you think about the explosion of all of the different combinations of different products and different routes of administration, it tells you how complicated it gets to study this in a rigorous way. You almost need a randomized trial for every single one of those and then for every single indication.

What do we know about the risks of marijuana use?  

Cannabis use disorder is a legitimate disorder in the DSM. There are, unfortunately, a lot of people who develop a problematic use of cannabis. We know there are risks for mental health consequences. The evidence is probably the strongest that if you have a family history of psychosis or schizophrenia, using cannabis early in adolescence is not the best idea. We know cannabis can trigger psychotic symptoms and potentially longer lasting problems with psychosis and schizophrenia. 

It is hard to study, because you also don't know if people are medicating early negative symptoms of schizophrenia. They wouldn't necessarily have a diagnosis yet, but maybe cannabis helps them to deal with negative symptoms, and then they develop psychosis. There is also some evidence that there could be something going on with the impact of cannabis on the developing brain that could prime you to be at greater risk of using other substances later down the road, or finding the use of other substances more reinforcing. 

What benefits do you see to legalization?

When we look at the public health landscape and the effect of legislation, in this case legalization, one of the big benefits is taking cannabis out of the underground illegal market. Taking cannabis out of that particular space is a great idea. You're taking it out of the illegal market and giving it to legitimate businesses where there is going to be oversight and testing of products, so you know what you're getting. And these products undergo quality control and are labeled. Those labels so far are a bit variable, but at least we're getting there. If you're picking up cannabis at the street corner, you have no idea what's in it. 

And we know that drug laws in general have been used to criminalize communities of color and minorities. Legalizing cannabis [can help] reduce the overpolicing of these populations.

What big questions about cannabis would you most like to see answered?

We know there are certain, most-often-mentioned conditions that people are already using medical cannabis for: pain, insomnia, anxiety, and PTSD. We really need to improve the evidence base for those. I think clinical trials for different cannabis products for those conditions are warranted.

Another question is, now that the states are getting more tax revenue from cannabis sales, what are they doing with that money? If you look at tobacco legislation, for example, certain states have required that those funds get used for research on those particular issues. To me, that would be a very good use of the tax revenue that is now coming in. We know, for example, that there’s a lot more tax revenue now that Maryland has legalized recreational use. Maryland could really step up here and help provide some of that evidence.

Are there studies looking into the risks you mentioned?

Large national studies are done every year or every other year to collect data, so we already have a pretty good sense of the prevalence of cannabis use disorder. Obviously, we'll keep tracking that to see if those numbers increase, for example, in states that are legalizing. But, you wouldn't necessarily expect to see an uptick in cannabis use disorder a month after legalization. The evidence from states that have legalized it has not demonstrated that we might all of a sudden see an increase in psychosis or in cannabis use disorder. This happens slowly over time with a change in social norms and availability, and potentially also with a change in marketing. And, with increasing use of an addictive substance, you will see over time a potential increase in problematic use and then also an increase in use disorder.

If you're interested in seeing if cannabis is right for you, is this something you can talk to your doctor about?

I think your mileage may vary there with how much your doctor is comfortable and knows about it. It's still relatively fringe. That will very much depend on who you talk to. But I think as providers and professionals, everybody needs to learn more about this, because patients are going to ask no matter what.

Lindsay Smith Rogers, MA, is the producer of the Public Health On Call podcast , an editor for Expert Insights , and the director of content strategy for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

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Why Marijuana Should Not Be Legal: Potential Risks and Drawbacks

Marijuana legalization has been a topic of debate for many years, with strong arguments both for and against its legality. If you are someone who is deeply concerned about the potential impact of drug use on individuals and society, and you need an argumentative essay, an online custom essay writing service with the command of the best writing experts create for you an amazing essay.

Why Cannabis Shouldn’t Be Legalised

I have always been interested in the topic of marijuana legalization and have spent a considerable amount of time researching the potential risks and benefits associated with cannabis use. While some argue that marijuana should be legalized for medical and recreational use, I strongly believe that it should remain illegal. In this essay, I will explore why I believe that why shouldn’t marijuanas be legalized. Specifically, I will examine the potential negative consequences of marijuana use, including its impact on cognitive function, mental health, and societal well-being. By sharing my perspective and research, I hope to provide a comprehensive understanding of this complex issue and shed light on the potential risks of legalizing marijuana.

So, here reasons why shouldn’t marijuanas be legalized:

The Cognitive Effects of Marijuana Use: Short-Term Memory Loss, Reduced Concentration, and Impaired Judgment

Firstly, marijuana is considered a psychoactive drug that can affect the brain and impair cognitive function. The use of marijuana can cause short-term memory loss, reduced concentration, and impaired judgment, which can increase the risk of accidents and injuries. This is especially concerning when individuals who are under the influence of marijuana operate heavy machinery or drive a car.

Mental Health Risks Associated with Marijuana Use: Depression, Anxiety, and Psychosis

Secondly, marijuana use has been linked to an increased risk of mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, and psychosis. Studies have shown that individuals who use marijuana regularly are more likely to develop these conditions than those who do not use the drug. Additionally, long-term marijuana use can cause changes in the brain’s structure and function, which may increase the risk of addiction and other negative outcomes.

The Risks of Marijuana Use for Adolescents: Long-Term Cognitive Problems and Brain Development

Thirdly, the legalization of marijuana could lead to increased availability and accessibility, which could result in more people using the drug, including young people. Research has shown that the use of marijuana during adolescence can have a negative impact on brain development and may lead to long-term problems with cognitive function.

Societal Concerns: Drug-Related Crime, Accidents, and Healthcare Costs

Lastly, legalizing marijuana would create a number of societal problems, including increased drug-related crime, a rise in drug-related accidents and injuries, and an increase in healthcare costs associated with marijuana use.

The legal status of marijuana has been widely debated, with opinions ranging from its potential benefits such as increased tax revenue and reduced incarceration rates to its potential risks such as negative impacts on individuals and society. As we grapple with this issue, it is important to consider the health and safety of all involved and to gain a full understanding of the evidence before making any decisions. The choice on whether or not to legalize marijuana should be based on an analysis of both the data and the values and concerns of those affected by this issue.

Why Marijuana Should Not Be Legal: Tips Tips On Writing Essay

Writing a well-crafted why marijuanas should not be legal essay requires careful planning and attention to detail. When tackling a topic as controversial as the legalization of marijuana, it is important to approach the subject with a clear and well-informed perspective. In order to write a persuasive and effective essay, it is essential to conduct thorough research, use credible sources, structure your essay carefully, consider counterarguments, use clear and concise language, and edit and revise your work. By following these guidelines, you can create a well-argued and compelling marijuana should not be legalized article that persuades readers to see your perspective on the issue.

Do your Research

Before you begin writing why we shouldn’t legalize weed, make sure you have a solid understanding of the potential risks and drawbacks associated with marijuana use. This may involve reviewing scientific research, examining statistics and data, and considering the perspectives of experts in the field.

Use Credible Sources

When citing evidence to support your argument, be sure to use credible sources such as peer-reviewed journals, government reports, and reputable news outlets. Avoid relying on biased or unreliable sources.

Structure your Essay Carefully

A well-organized informative essay should have a clear introduction that sets out your argument, several well-supported body paragraphs that present evidence and analysis, and a concise conclusion that summarizes your main points and restates your thesis.

Consider Counterarguments

When presenting your argument, be sure to consider and respond to potential counterarguments. This will help strengthen your essay and demonstrate that you have considered multiple perspectives on the issue.

Use Clear and Concise Language

Be sure to use clear, concise language throughout your essay. Avoid using overly complex or technical terminology, and make sure your arguments are easy to follow and understand.

Edit and Revise

Once you have completed a first draft, take the time to edit and revise your essay. Look for spelling and grammar errors, as well as any areas where your argument could be strengthened or clarified. Consider seeking feedback from a teacher or peer to help you improve your essay. With these tips in mind, you can create a compelling argument against the legalization of marijuana.

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Pros and Cons of Legalizing Marijuana

The pros of legalizing marijuana, the cons of legalizing marijuana.

• Scientific Evidence

The pros and cons of legalizing marijuana are still being debated. Today, 37 U.S. states allow for the medical use of marijuana. A growing number allow recreational use.

However, as a Schedule I controlled substance, marijuana is illegal under federal law. This Drug Enforcement Administration designation means that marijuana is considered to have "no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse." It also limits medical studies into the potential benefits of cannabis .

This article explains the pros and cons of legalizing marijuana, as some have argued them.

Americans overwhelmingly support the legalization of marijuana. In fact, according to the Pew Research Center, 88% of Americans support legalizing marijuana. Of those, 59% say it should be legal for medical and recreational use and 30% say it should be legal for medical reasons only.

Several possible health benefits of medical marijuana have been proposed:

• Nausea : Marijuana is effective in relieving nausea and vomiting. Studies have shown that cannabis can decrease nausea caused by chemotherapy and almost eliminate vomiting.
• Spasticity : Marijuana can relieve pain and spasticity associated with multiple sclerosis.
• Appetite : Marijuana can help treat appetite loss associated with conditions like  HIV/AIDS and certain types of cancers.
• Chronic pain : Marijuana can relieve certain types of chronic pain, including neuropathic pain, which is caused by nerve damage.

And arguments in favor of using medical marijuana include:

• It's safer : Marijuana is safer than some other medications prescribed to treat pain. For example, some people may use it instead of opioids for pain management. Opioids are highly addictive and are typically not recommended for long-term use in treating chronic pain.
• You can use it in many ways : You do not need to smoke cannabis for its benefits. Products such as cannabidiol oil (CBD), topical pain relief treatments, edibles, and other non-smoking applications are now available.
• You don't need to get high : As studies continue, researchers are finding benefits in the individual compounds in cannabis. When these chemicals are isolated—such as CBD has been—they can offer treatment options without the "high" produced by the compound commonly known as THC.
• It's natural : People have used marijuana for centuries as a natural medicinal agent with good results.

Recreational Marijuana

Marijuana is legal for recreational use in 20 states and the District of Columbia. In 20 other states, marijuana has been decriminalized. This means there are no criminal penalties in these states for minor marijuana-related offenses like possession of small amounts or cultivation for personal use.

Those who oppose the legalization of marijuana point to the health risks of the drug, including:

• Memory issues : Frequent marijuana use may seriously affect your short-term memory.
• Cognition problems : Frequent use can impair your cognitive (thinking) abilities.
• Lung damage : Smoking anything, whether it's tobacco or marijuana, can damage your lung tissue. In addition, smoking marijuana could increase the risk of lung cancer .
• Abuse : Marijuana carries a risk of abuse and addiction.
• Accidents : Marijuana use impairs driving skills and increases the risk for car collisions.

The fact that the federal government groups it in the same category as drugs like heroin, LSD, and ecstasy is reason enough to keep it illegal, some say. As Schedule I drugs are defined by having no accepted value, legalization could give users the wrong impression about where research on the drug stands.

Scientific Evidence Remains Limited

In the past, clinical trials to to determine if marijuana is effective in treating certain conditions have been restrictive and limited. However, as medical marijuana becomes more common throughout the world, researchers are doing more studies.

Expert reviews of current research continue to say more studies are needed. In addition, many hurdles involve controlling the quality and dosing of cannabis with what is legally available to researchers.

One review of research noted that the long-term effects of cannabis are still unknown. Without more research into dosage and adverse effects, scientific evidence of risks and therapeutic effects remains soft.

Researchers need to evaluate marijuana using the same standards as other medications to understand whether it is valuable for managing any conditions.

Until the federal government downgrades marijuana from a Schedule I drug, widespread clinical trials are unlikely to happen in the United States.

Medical marijuana is increasingly available in the U.S. It is often used to treat chronic pain, muscle spasms, and nausea and vomiting, and to increase appetite. However, it can affect thinking and memory, increase the risk of accidents, and smoking it may harm the lungs and lead to cancer.

More studies are needed to understand the benefits of medical marijuana. However, unless the federal government removes it as a Schedule I controlled substance, research, access, and legality will remain complicated.

A Word From Verywell

There are both benefits and risks to medical marijuana. If you're considering using marijuana medicinally, don't be afraid to talk to your doctor about it. They can help you determine whether marijuana may be the proper treatment for you.

Medical marijuana remains controversial, but it is gaining traction as a legitimate recommendation for various symptoms. Even though many states have legalized cannabis for medicinal purposes and recreational use, more research is needed.

National Conference of State Legislatures. State medical marijuana laws .

United States Drug Enforcement Administration. Drug scheduling .

Pew Research Center. Americans overwhelmingly say marijuana should be legal for recreational or medical use .

Badowski ME. A review of oral cannabinoids and medical marijuana for the treatment of chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting: a focus on pharmacokinetic variability and pharmacodynamics . Cancer Chemother Pharmacol. 2017;80(3):441-449. doi:10.1007/s00280-017-3387-5

Corey-Bloom J, Wolfson T, Gamst A, et al. Smoked cannabis for spasticity in multiple sclerosis: a randomized, placebo-controlled trial .  CMAJ . 2012;184(10):1143-1150. doi:10.1503/cmaj.110837

American Cancer Society. Marijuana and Cancer .

Hill KP. Medical marijuana for treatment of chronic pain and other medical and psychiatric problems: A clinical review . JAMA. 2015;313(24):2474-83. doi:10.1001/jama.2015.6199

Choo EK, Feldstein Ewing SW, Lovejoy TI. Opioids out, cannabis in: Negotiating the unknowns in patient care for chronic pain . JAMA . 2016;316(17):1763-1764. doi:10.1001/jama.2016.13677

Corroon J, Sexton M, Bradley R. Indications and administration practices amongst medical cannabis healthcare providers: a cross-sectional survey . BMC Fam Pract. 2019;20(1):174. doi:10.1186/s12875-019-1059-8

Morales P, Reggio PH, Jagerovic N. An overview on medicinal chemistry of synthetic and natural derivatives of cannabidiol . Front Pharmacol . 2017;8:422. doi:10.3389/fphar.2017.00422

The Council of State Governments. State approaches to marijuana policy .

Harvard Health Publishing, Harvard Medical School. The Effects of Marijuana on your Memory .

Ghasemiesfe M, Barrow B, Leonard S, Keyhani S, Korenstein D. Association between marijuana use and risk of cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis . JAMA Netw Open. 2019;2(11):e1916318. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2019.16318

Preuss U, Huestis M, Schneider M et al. Cannabis use and car crashes: A review . Front Psychiatry . 2021;12. doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2021.643315

Deshpande A, Mailis-Gagnon A, Zoheiry N, Lakha SF. Efficacy and adverse effects of medical marijuana for chronic noncancer pain: Systematic review of randomized controlled trials . Can Fam Physician. 2015;61(8):e372-81.

Hill KP, Palastro MD, Johnson B, Ditre JW. Cannabis and pain: a clinical review .  Cannabis Cannabinoid Res . 2017;2(1):96-104. doi:10.1089/can.2017.0017

Maida V, Daeninck PJ. A user's guide to cannabinoid therapies in oncology . Curr Oncol. 2016;23(6):398-406. doi:10.3747/co.23.3487

Meier MH, Caspi A, Cerdá M, et al. Associations between cannabis use and physical health problems in early midlife: A longitudinal comparison of persistent cannabis vs tobacco users. JAMA Psychiatry. 2016;73(7):731-40. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2016.0637

By Angela Morrow, RN Angela Morrow, RN, BSN, CHPN, is a certified hospice and palliative care nurse.

2018 Theses Doctoral

Essays on Cannabis Legalization

Thomas, Danna Kang

Though the drug remains illegal at the federal level, in recent years states and localities have increasingly liberalized their marijuana laws in order to generate tax revenue and save resources on marijuana law enforcement. Many states have adopted some form of medical marijuana and/or marijuana decriminalization laws, and as of 2017, Washington, Colorado, Maine, California, Oregon, Massachusetts, Nevada, Alaska, and the District of Columbia have all legalized marijuana for recreational use. In 2016 recreational marijuana generated over $1.8 billion in sales. Hence, studying marijuana reforms and the policies and outcomes of early recreational marijuana adopters is an important area of research. However, perhaps due to the fact that legalized recreational cannabis is a recent phenomenon, a scarcity of research exists on the impacts of recreational cannabis legalization and the efficacy and efficiency of cannabis regulation. This dissertation aims to fill this gap, using the Washington recreational marijuana market as the primary setting to study cannabis legalization in the United States. Of first order importance in the regulation of sin goods such as cannabis is quantifying the value of the marginal damages of negative externalities. Hence, Chapter 1 (co-authored with Lin Tian) explores the impact of marijuana dispensary location on neighborhood property values, exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in marijuana retailer location. Policymakers and advocates have long expressed concerns that the positive effects of the legalization--e.g., increases in tax revenue--are well spread spatially, but the negative effects are highly localized through channels such as crime. Hence, we use changes in property values to measure individuals' willingness to pay to avoid localized externalities caused by the arrival of marijuana dispensaries. Our key identification strategy is to compare changes in housing sales around winners and losers in a lottery for recreational marijuana retail licenses. (Due to location restrictions, license applicants were required to provide an address of where they would like to locate.) Hence, we have the locations of both actual entrants and potential entrants, which provides a natural difference-in-differences set-up. Using data from King County, Washington, we find an almost 2.4% decrease in the value of properties within a 0.5 mile radius of an entrant, a $9,400 decline in median property values. The aforementioned retail license lottery was used to distribute licenses due to a license quota. Retail license quotas are often used by states to regulate entry into sin goods markets as quotas can restrict consumption by decreasing access and by reducing competition (and, therefore, increasing markups). However, license quotas also create allocative inefficiency. For example, license quotas are often based on the population of a city or county. Hence, licenses are not necessarily allocated to the areas where they offer the highest marginal benefit. Moreover, as seen in the case of the Washington recreational marijuana market, licenses are often distributed via lottery, meaning that in the absence of an efficiency secondary market for licenses, the license recipients are not necessarily the most efficient potential entrants. This allocative inefficiency is generated by heterogeneity in firms and consumers. Therefore, in Chapter 2, I develop a model of demand and firm pricing in order to investigate firm-level heterogeneity and inefficiency. Demand is differentiated by geography and incorporates consumer demographics. I estimate this demand model using data on firm sales from Washington. Utilizing the estimates and firm pricing model, I back out a non-parametric distribution of firm variable costs. These variable costs differ by product and firm and provide a measure of firm inefficiency. I find that variable costs have lower inventory turnover; hence, randomly choosing entrants in a lottery could be a large contributor to allocative inefficiency. Chapter 3 explores the sources of allocative inefficiency in license distribution in the Washington recreational marijuana market. A difficulty in studying the welfare effects of license quotas is finding credible counterfactuals of unrestricted entry. Therefore, I take a structural approach: I first develop a three stage model that endogenizes firm entry and incorporates the spatial demand and pricing model discussed in Chapter 2. Using the estimates of the demand and pricing model, I estimate firms' fixed costs and use data on locations of those potential entrants that did not win Washington's retail license lottery to simulate counterfactual entry patterns. I find that allowing firms to enter freely at Washington's current marijuana tax rate increases total surplus by 21.5% relative to a baseline simulation of Washington's license quota regime. Geographic misallocation and random allocation of licenses account for 6.6\% and 65.9\% of this difference, respectively. Moreover, as the primary objective of these quotas is to mitigate the negative externalities of marijuana consumption, I study alternative state tax policies that directly control for the marginal damages of marijuana consumption. Free entry with tax rates that keep the quantity of marijuana or THC consumed equal to baseline consumption increases welfare by 6.9% and 11.7%, respectively. I also explore the possibility of heterogeneous marginal damages of consumption across geography, backing out the non-uniform sales tax across geography that is consistent with Washington's license quota policy. Free entry with a non-uniform sales tax increases efficiency by over 7% relative to the baseline simulation of license quotas due to improvements in license allocation.

• Cannabis--Law and legislation
• Marijuana industry
• Drug legalization
• Drugs--Economic aspects

More About This Work

• DOI Copy DOI to clipboard

• Signs of Addiction

Marijuana Legalization: Educating Risks and Costs

Position Statement

The Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation has an important responsibility and is uniquely qualified to comment on the risks and effects of marijuana use, the consequences of which we see every day among the people we serve at our addiction treatment centers around the country.

While the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation opposes the expansion of marijuana legalization, we support federal action to drive more research and regulation to protect against the public health consequences of current and future legalization efforts.

We know marijuana is dangerous to many users and addictive to some, and that young people are particularly vulnerable. As debates about legalizing recreational marijuana and medicinal marijuana have intensified during the past decade, many young people have come to view the drug as less risky. Not surprisingly, more of them are using marijuana (also known as cannabis). According to a study from researchers at Columbia University, the entry point for teen substance use has shifted away from cigarettes and alcohol and toward marijuana.

Early use of cannabis is especially troubling. The human brain develops throughout adolescence and well beyond. Marijuana use can harm learning, thinking and memory development, and use of the drug has been linked to mental health issues, including psychosis, as well as other physical health problems. According to one recent study, even a little cannabis consumed by a teenager can cause changes in the part of the brain involved in emotion-related processing, learning and memory formation. We also know the earlier a young person starts to use any mood- or mind-altering substance, the greater the possibility of developing a substance use disorder. Indeed, at our  behavioral health center for adolescents and young adults in Minnesota, 89 percent of our 734 residential patients in 2017 had cannabis in their substance use history, and 84 percent were diagnosed with cannabis use disorder. Each year, we treat approximately two dozen young people who have cannabis-involved psychosis.

One of the recurring themes we hear from the youth we treat is regret—of wasted time, lost opportunities, squandered talent, impaired memory, reduced performance and disinterest in healthy activities. Since 2009, our prevention division, FCD Prevention Works, has surveyed more than 100,000 students in grades 6-12 about substance use beliefs and norms. According to our FCD Student Attitudes and Behavior Survey database, students who used cannabis in the past year, when compared with those who did not, were:

• Thirty-one percent less likely to get 'A's;
• Five times more likely to report feeling the need to also use alcohol or other drugs;
• Twice as likely to have trouble concentrating on important tasks;
• More likely to ride with an impaired driver (30 percent) than students who reported using alcohol (21 percent); and
• Two to three times more likely to engage in physically, emotionally and academically risky behaviors.

According to patients from around the country who come to our treatment centers , prices for marijuana continue to drop in the current environment, making the drug more affordable, especially for young people. We also hear that young marijuana users are shifting more rapidly than ever into using dangerous concentrates of the drug due to new vaping technology and the explosion of high-concentrate cannabis products, including edibles, brought about by commercialization.

The recognition of these risks to the health and trajectory of our young people has been lost in the fervor to legalize marijuana. Too many people—including teenagers—think, incorrectly, that cannabis is a benign or harmless substance. Many parents have told us that it has become increasingly difficult to overcome such misperceptions when talking with their children about marijuana. Public dialogue has become so distorted that some young people who develop addiction to cannabis report that their condition isn't taken seriously, even when their lives are unraveling as a result.

Minimization of the risks—through expanded legalization and misinformation, propagated by profit-minded commercial interests that began their legalization campaigns many years ago—will have long-term public health consequences that will hurt our most vulnerable, high-risk people the most.

According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the number of daily cannabis users has increased from approximately three million Americans in 2005 to eight million (about one in five cannabis users) in 2017. By contrast, only one in 15 drinkers consumes alcohol daily. While ten percent of the population is most vulnerable to any substance use disorder, it is reasonable to expect that the higher rates of daily marijuana use, as a norm, will only heighten the vulnerability to addiction faced by cannabis users. Among young people, daily cannabis use is at its highest rate in 30 years. More older Americans are using cannabis, too, and it's much more potent than the cannabis of their youth. Among all ages, cannabis use in the United States doubled from 2005 to 2015.

More than ever, we believe it is paramount to educate the public, especially young people and their parents, with objective information about the risks and potentially addictive dynamics of all drugs, including cannabis, and the availability of help. Many Americans are suffering because of cannabis use disorder, and it is important they know that recovery is possible.

While we oppose the use of the word "medicine" to describe cannabis because it has not been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), we understand that some non-psychoactive constituents of the cannabis plant might have medicinal efficacy; therefore we support further research to investigate whether or not medicines can be developed and evaluated through the FDA process. The FDA's approval in 2018 of a cannabidiol-derived oral solution to treat rare, severe forms of epilepsy is a good example of how the process ought to work. The eagerness in some states to approve medical cannabis based on hopeful signs rather than rigorous scientific scrutiny and FDA approval reflects a disregard for the importance of adequate research and the known risks associated with cannabis use. For example, some states have approved cannabis as a treatment for opioid addiction. The existing scientific evidence does not support such use and, instead, points to significant risks for some patients.

With regard to decriminalization, we support sensible criminal justice reforms that reduce the penalties for marijuana possession/use and that promote recovery and redemption. We are sympathetic to social justice issues—addiction itself is one—and do not believe harsh criminal penalties for possession and use are warranted, especially given the racial disparities in our criminal justice system. Such reforms, however, do not require legalization and commercialization of marijuana. In fact, promises of social justice gains appear to be falling short in states where legal cannabis is already a big business.

Other promises have fallen short too. In California, for example, cannabis sales were down a year after legalization, tax revenues were well below forecasts and the black market was thriving. In Colorado, we have seen a concerning rise in cannabis-involved traffic fatalities and hospitalizations.

Nevertheless, popular support for cannabis legalization has surged. Heading into 2019, 10 states and the District of Columbia had legalized recreational marijuana and 23 other states had implemented medical marijuana programs. Several more states—including New York, New Jersey and Illinois—also appeared poised to consider measures to legalize recreational marijuana soon.

Unfortunately, the federal government has ceded its authority to enforce the current federal law against cannabis. Two successive Administrations—representing each of our major political parties—have chosen not to enforce it. As a result, the status of cannabis as an illegal Schedule 1 drug under the federal Controlled Substances Act means very little, and federal inaction is sending mixed messages to the public and to our youth about the known and scientifically-validated and public health impact of marijuana.

Given the confused and complex state of the nation's cannabis policy, the federal government's most pressing responsibility is to drive more research and robust regulation to protect against the public health consequences of current and future legalization efforts. It is unclear whether "rescheduling" under the Controlled Substances Act is necessary or whether other Congressional and Administration actions can accomplish the same. In either case, it is especially critical to redouble federally funded research efforts to rigorously analyze the impact of existing community-and state-level policies on a wide range of outcomes, including school attendance, employment and health impacts, among others. Doing so, and establishing timelines for the dissemination of such research, would provide a more compelling rationale for other states to delay further legalization efforts. The findings of such research should be included in a robust review of all known evidence and published in a federal public health report identifying both the risks of marijuana use and the impact of expanded availability.

In the current legal environment, private companies have generally been unwilling to subject their medicinal products to FDA scrutiny or to incur the costs of such a process, and scientifically unsubstantiated claims have gained popular acceptance. At the same time, the debates about medical marijuana and recreational marijuana have become blurred, which has worked in the favor of legalization supporters. The federal government, in the absence of enforcing its own laws against cannabis, should now assume the responsibility of funding and potentially conducting the robust research needed to determine if any of the non-psychoactive constituents in cannabis have medical value and to provide guidance into the development of pharmacy-obtainable medications that are safe and effective, with reliable dosage and known composition. Such research should also clarify the constituents of cannabis that do not have any efficacy in treating various ailments.

To protect public health and safety, the country's current patchwork of state policies also needs regulatory guardrails at the federal level. We encourage the federal government to explore creative ways to ensure more effective, consistent regulations in those states where cannabis is legal. Such regulations should include, at a minimum:

• Sufficient funding for robust, evidence-based research on the public health effects of community- and state-level policy changes;
• Educational campaigns to publicize the recent scientific findings of rigorous research studies that point to cannabis-related harms;
• Compliance checks at points of sale to prevent illegal sales to young people;
• A ban on cannabis advertising;
• Restrictions on where cannabis can be sold and used;
• Restrictions on the development of new products, especially those that target children and adolescents;
• Restrictions on cannabis outlet density to prevent concentration in some areas;
• Drugged-driving statutes and tools to implement enforcement, as difficult as this may be given limitations in the available methods for measuring THC concentration in drivers;
• More routine cannabis misuse screening and counseling interventions in primary care settings;
• Implementation of specific evaluations and treatment for youth who misuse cannabis and those who become addicted to it;
• Clear requirements and guidelines regarding potency, dosage information and labels; and
• Dedicated revenue to support the above strategies.

In today's patchwork policy landscape, taxes on legal cannabis have actually driven demand for cheaper, untaxed black-market cannabis. Therefore, while higher alcohol taxes have been shown to reduce alcohol use and related public health consequences, relying too much on cannabis taxes may be counterproductive in the current landscape. For now, it is best to fund public health strategies from multiple revenue sources.

The dialogue around cannabis legalization has been muddied by the federal government's neglect of this issue. It is time for Congress and the Administration to course-correct in a responsible, necessary and politically viable way—by driving more regulation and research. Such actions would help protect against the public health consequences of current legalization efforts, better inform the dialogue moving forward, and, ideally, slow down legalization efforts nationally—aligning with the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation's clear and singular aim of reducing the harmful impact of addiction.

• Historical trends in the grade of onset and sequence of cigarette, alcohol, and marijuana use among adolescents from 1976–2016: Implications for "Gateway" patterns in adolescence
• Grey Matter Volume Differences Associated with Extremely Low Levels of Cannabis Use in Adolescence
• Concerns Rising Over High-Potency Marijuana Use
• More Older Americans Are Turning To Marijuana
• Marijuana Use in America Has Doubled in the Past Decade, Study Says
• Legal marijuana made big promises on racial equity—and fell short
• Promises and Pitfalls of Cannabis Taxes

What Can You Do to Build Marijuana Awareness in Your Community

The Pew Research Center reports that a slim majority of Americans now support legalization. At the same time, opponents are beginning to step up community-based efforts. Regardless of which side you’re on, the reality is that your voice is needed in this debate.

Consider what you have learned about the topic. Assess your own thoughts. What are your values? What are your positions? What are your priorities? How would you like to weigh in?

The following represent just a few of the possible priorities you might identify for yourself and your community.

• Prevent or promote marijuana legalization
• Repeal legalized marijuana
• Provide more public education on marijuana
• Include more education with marijuana prescriptions
• Intervene and treat more of the people who develop cannabis use disorder
• Prepare schools to provide more prevention education and counseling related to marijuana
• Promote more marijuana research
• Regulate marijuana more effectively

Once you’ve identified your own priorities, you may want to engage others in your community. Here is a general game plan for doing so.

Create a Community Coalition for Marijuana Awareness

Community coalition building is a key strategy for increasing awareness of marijuana-related issues. In addition to increasing public awareness, the process of forming a coalition creates new relationships in communities and can strengthen ties between local governments and community members. The basic steps are:

• Identify coalition members
• Hire or assign a local coordinator
• Conduct a local visioning session
• Gather relevant information and data
• Develop an action plan for increasing awareness of marijuana issues and battling addiction
• Implement the action plan

Consider involving schools, treatment providers and others in the health care field, recovery support resources and local law enforcement, among others.

Create a Media Campaign for Marijuana Awareness

Effective publicity is important to any marijuana awareness campaign. You might want to provide marijuana statistics and information about your coalition’s efforts to daily newspapers, television and radio stations, and other local media, such as weekly community newspapers, school and faith-based newspapers, and organization newsletters. You could do so by writing press releases, submitting letters to the editor and opinion columns, and creating public service announcements, for example. Social media should be part of your coalition’s strategy as well, and a community marijuana awareness website might also be helpful.

Host Community Events for Marijuana Awareness

Community events, no matter how large or small, can go a long way toward building awareness and keeping marijuana issues in the forefront of public dialogue. They also help generate media coverage. Best of all, events connect neighbors, empower families and acquaint citizens with valuable resources. Events can help create community solidarity by engaging community members, including young people, in a common purpose. Sometimes they also provide the opportunity to collaborate with neighboring communities. Your coalition might want to host a marijuana education forum, for example, or mock drug courts, regular evening discussions, online chats or even community webinars and video meetings. You could invite people in recovery to speak, ask local artists to create relevant pieces, involve a youth improv troupe, convene a panel of experts and so on. The possibilities are limited only by your coalition’s imagination.

The nation is divided on marijuana policy, and researching policies in other areas of the country can help you develop an approach for your own community. Look for policies that align with your community’s priorities and have proven successful elsewhere.

Be a Lobbyist

Acting as a lobbyist is one way that you can effect policy change. You and others from your community may want to schedule visits with local, state or national lawmakers to voice your views on marijuana legalization and related issues.

It may be easiest to start with local community representatives—your mayor and members of your city council and school board. They may, in turn, be willing to help you set up meetings with state legislators, who in turn could help you set up meetings with members of Congress, if applicable to your objectives.

If you schedule a meeting at a congressional office in Washington, D.C., expect to interact primarily with busy legislative assistants. It’s best to have a brief, well-organized presentation prepared that addresses specific concerns in the senator’s or representative’s district. Members of Congress tend to appreciate personal stories from and about the people they represent.

Whatever level of government you’re trying to affect, it’s helpful to do some background research before approaching public officials. Find out about their interests, the committees on which they serve and their known policy positions. You also may want to check with other local organizations for relevant data, studies and resources that support your objectives. You’ll want to make sure that your request is specific and that you are armed with accurate information as well as local anecdotes and examples.

What Is Happening with Medical Marijuana Policy?

In the United States, marijuana has been a controlled substance for the lifetime of most people living today. But there has been a movement for several decades to bring back medical applications of the drug. Many states have now legalized marijuana for medical purposes, although restrictions regarding its use vary from state to state.

For example, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a neurosurgeon who has served as a chief medical consultant in broadcast journalism and was vetted for the position of Surgeon General by President Barack Obama, publicly chronicled how his viewpoint changed on medical marijuana through documentary research. “When it comes to marijuana…there are very legitimate medical applications…. I didn’t look far enough. I didn’t review papers from smaller labs in other countries doing some remarkable research.” He further specified, “There is now promising research into the use of marijuana that could impact tens of thousands of children and adults, including treatment for cancer, epilepsy, and Alzheimer’s, to name a few.”

Many medical professionals disagree, however. There is also a strong position that the evidence for medical marijuana is unclear and that alternative treatments exist with fewer risks and unknowns.

Another view is that different people react differently to the same medication, and that different people face different risks when it comes to using a particular drug. Therefore it can be useful to have options. In this view, as a medicine, cannabis may be a good choice for some people and a bad choice for others.

Some medical professionals have prescribed cannabis for cancer, anorexia, AIDS, glaucoma, chronic pain, arthritis, insomnia, migraines, anxiety, depression, headache, nausea, epilepsy, asthma, premenstrual tension, drug withdrawal and other conditions.

When we examine the historical statements about the drug, contemporary medical uses are very similar to ancient ones. However, medical professionals do not universally agree that medical marijuana is beneficial, and those who are willing to prescribe it acknowledge that it is not an FDA-approved medication and that it is still classified as a Schedule I narcotic by the federal government. If a state has approved medical marijuana, it is generally recommended that the state medical association develop standardized physician criteria for writing medical marijuana recommendations and share the criteria with law enforcement and the public.

In the United States, a synthetic cannabinoid, “dronabinol,” was approved for use in 1986. It is marketed as Marinol capsules and is indicated for treatment of anorexia associated with weight loss in patients with AIDS, and for the nausea and vomiting associated with cancer chemotherapy for patients who have failed to respond adequately to conventional drugs aimed at suppressing those symptoms.

Some medical marijuana opponents point to Marinol as an alternative to medical marijuana in its smoked form. On the other hand, proponents of medical marijuana note that Marinol can lead to death, while smoked marijuana has never caused a documented overdose fatality. Medical marijuana supporters also argue that Marinol takes one hour to reach full effect, while smoked cannabis acts within minutes.

In Canada in 2005 and in the United Kingdom in 2010, a prescription medicine called Sativex was released. It is a mouth spray for treating spasticity in patients with multiple sclerosis. It contains a synthetic version of THC. Sativex is currently under review by the FDA for use in the United States.

U.S. research trials for medical marijuana must follow a strict process that has considerably limited the amount of federally approved research activity. A proposal must first gain approval from the FDA. After that, a marijuana permit must be obtained from the Drug Enforcement Administration. Last but not least, a supply of medical marijuana must be obtained from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), which controls all approved medical marijuana grown for research purposes in the United States.

While the Obama administration removed the earlier need for marijuana research proposals to be approved by the Public Health Service, the application process remains difficult and lengthy. That is largely because of marijuana’s federal classification as a Schedule I narcotic.

Despite the hurdles, some research is happening, leading to developments like a new federal patent on cannabinoids for their use as antioxidants and neuroprotectants. A number of bills have also been introduced to reduce the red tape and expand research. And NIDA has vowed to “build farm capacity flexible enough to accommodate various levels of demand for research marijuana and marijuana products over the next five years.” NIDA, in fact, renewed a contract with the University of Mississippi (where the marijuana is grown) for up to $68.7 million through 2020.

Research studies are also taking place elsewhere. At the end of 2014, the Colorado Board of Health announced that it would spend over $8 million to study the efficacy of medical marijuana. Three of the studies need federal approval and therefore require marijuana supplied by NIDA. Five other observational studies involve participants providing their own marijuana.

The incredible variety of cannabis plant strains makes it difficult to have consistency in medical marijuana products. Typically, medical marijuana also requires different doses and types for different ailments. This variability will no doubt be an ongoing complication to medical marijuana research, since the FDA drug review process requires exact quantities and composition of drugs for recipients.

Drug approvals in the United States take an average of 12 years from invention to market, and only one in 5,000 makes the cut. Many are paying close attention to the scientific discussions and the political positioning taking place among physicians, health insurance companies, health care organizations, policymakers, patients, parents, schools and communities. Influential medical institutions such as the Mayo Clinic and UnitedHealth Group recognize these conversations, the need for more research, and the increase in states supporting medical marijuana, but have refrained from taking a stance on the issue, instead publishing educational information and calling for more research.

The debate over the value of marijuana as medicine is an interesting and often heated one, with knowledgeable people weighing in on both sides of the issue. Regardless of one’s personal views, it is important to always keep in mind that marijuana is a potent drug deemed addictive by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and illegal by the federal government. While it is important to stay updated on legal trends and ramifications, it is even more important to concentrate on efforts to prevent marijuana misuse and abuse—especially among youth.

Arguments for Medical Marijuana

• Legalization of medical marijuana offers access to a medication that may effectively treat many health conditions.
• Marijuana provides another alternative for those who have experienced unsuccessful treatment with other medications and modalities.
• The passage of medical marijuana laws sets a precedent for medicinal usage of the plant and validates the need for medical research trials.
• Medical marijuana may reduce powerful opioid prescriptions, if research proves its effectiveness for chronic pain.
• Cannabinoids, chemical compounds in marijuana with apparent medical benefits, can be extracted, replicated and applied in ways that don’t involve smoking, thereby eliminating negative impacts of that methodology.
• Marijuana dispensaries run by state governments, as opposed to illegal markets, should provide safer regulation, safer products and state tax profits.

Arguments Against Medical Marijuana

• Medical marijuana is not approved by the FDA, and research is lacking to support its use for many of the conditions for which it is prescribed.
• Medical marijuana policies make marijuana increasingly accessible and reduce the perception of risk, which is particularly concerning for youth.
• Medical marijuana increases the number of people using marijuana, which in turn increases the number of people at risk for addiction.
• Addiction and other adverse health effects from using marijuana have individual and social costs.
• Smoking marijuana can lead to a host of medical problems, similar to those that present in tobacco smokers and negative effects like lung cancer may outweigh potential benefits.
• Medical marijuana could lead to decreased public perception of harm, and could thereby increase illicit use.
• In some states that allow medical marijuana, medical professionals question the legitimacy of some prescribing physicians and their reasons for recommending medical marijuana.

What Is Happening with Recreational Marijuana Policy?

Many more states have legalized medical marijuana than those that have legalized adult recreational marijuana. In those that have legalized recreational marijuana, you cannot be arrested, ticketed or convicted for using marijuana as long as you follow the laws related to age, place and amount of consumption. However, you can still get arrested for selling or trafficking marijuana if you aren’t following state laws on licensure and taxation.

Recreational marijuana markets introduce more variables and policy considerations. While the Obama administration chose not to interfere with state recreational marijuana laws as long as states were abiding by their respective laws and keeping retail businesses within their own borders, current or future administrations could decide to challenge such laws. Recreational marijuana poses legal risk given that it is still currently against federal law to sell, use or possess marijuana.

The U.S. Controlled Substances Act is the relevant federal law, and it defines a controlled substance as a drug or chemical that is illegal or needs to be very strictly regulated. The law also establishes several categories, or “schedules,” of controlled substances that are used to determine penalties for possessing, using or misusing drugs, or selling individual types of substances. A drug is categorized in a particular schedule based on several factors:

• Scientific knowledge about the drug and its effects
• The likelihood that the drug will be misused or abused
• How the drug is (and has historically been) misused or abused
• How the drug poses a risk to the public
• Whether the drug currently has accepted medical uses
• Whether use of the drug can lead to addiction
• Whether the drug is used or likely to be used in making another controlled substance

Schedule I drugs are considered the most dangerous; Schedule V drugs are considered the least dangerous. According to current federal law, heroin, LSD, ecstasy and marijuana are all classified as Schedule I drugs.

Although the Obama administration did not interfere with states that legalized recreational marijuana, the federal law does limit those states in certain ways. For example, marijuana in those states must be grown, sold, used and taxed within state borders without using federal land, federally-managed resources like water or federally regulated banks. Retail marijuana businesses also cannot deduct business expenses on their federal income taxes. In addition, colleges, universities and employers in states where marijuana is legal can still enforce alcohol and other drug policies that reflect federal rather than state regulations.

States with legalized recreational marijuana have generated handsome tax revenues as a result. Colorado, for example, reported $700 million in marijuana sales and nearly $70 million in tax revenue in 2014. These figures, of course, don’t include the costs that those states will incur from marijuana-related hospitalization, regulation and policing—figures that are still being quantified. Several more states are debating legalization, and could be attracted to the potential tax dollars. It’s worth restating, however, that state budgets with recreational marijuana revenue could be put at risk if stricter federal enforcement ever returns. Colorado and Washington are seen by many as testing grounds for legalization, and it is still too early to draw definitive conclusions about the impact on adult and youth usage patterns, crime rates, substance use disorder rates, vehicular deaths and other relevant financial and social effects.

As such states learn from their experience, they are also attempting to identify best-practice regulatory policies to address state versus municipal conflicts, the tenuous federal versus state conflict, research trials, cultural considerations, federal bank funding issues and more.

Arguments for Legalized Recreational Marijuana

• Marijuana is less physically harmful than the legal drug alcohol.
• Efforts to forcibly control rather than permit the use of marijuana have alienated and incarcerated otherwise law-abiding citizens.
• The U.S. government has failed to control the supply of marijuana despite high rates of incarceration for marijuana possession.
• Universal access to treatment and educational programs can decrease the demand for marijuana (as it has for tobacco use).
• Most people who use marijuana do not go on to use other drugs.
• Legalization would permit tax income, some of which could be used to provide treatment and fund prevention programs.
• Government regulation would permit oversight of the drug’s purity and provide a means for levying sanctions against those who divert marijuana to adolescents.

Arguments Against Legalized Recreational Marijuana

• Marijuana is addictive, alters the natural chemical composition of the brain and affects physiological functions throughout the body.
• Use equals risk—when more people smoke marijuana, more will develop cannabis use disorders.
• While perhaps not as physically dangerous as some other substances, marijuana leads to a decline in cognitive skills and motivation that can affect opportunities, talent, memory, performance and interest in healthy activities.
• Alcohol and tobacco are legal but also produce great societal consequences, and introducing yet another legal substance to mainstream culture could have unpredictable, harmful consequences.
• Legalizing marijuana for adults would communicate acceptance of its use and likely decrease the perception of its harmfulness, including among youth.
• Marijuana use complicates the diagnosis and treatment of a variety of underlying psychiatric conditions.
• Frequent use of marijuana affects adolescent development; in adults, it often impairs maturation psychologically, socially, professionally and spiritually.

What Is Happening with Decriminalization Efforts, and How Are Changes in Marijuana Policy Impacting Law Enforcement?

You have probably heard the term “decriminalization” used in marijuana discussions. It is important to know that  decriminalization is not the same as legalization . Decriminalizing simply means to significantly reduce the consequences for breaking marijuana laws.

For example, states that have decriminalized marijuana typically don’t prosecute people caught with small amounts of the drug intended for personal consumption (usually under an ounce), meaning they don’t go to jail, and the offense typically doesn’t go on their criminal record. They may still get a ticket and fine, however, much like one would for a minor traffic violation or an “open container” violation for alcohol. In some states that have decriminalized marijuana, people who get caught using or possessing small amounts could also be ordered to attend educational classes on substance misuse and addiction.

Decriminalization affects law enforcement efforts by lowering the priority of marijuana-related arrests. Legalization efforts have also affected law enforcement, sometimes in unanticipated ways. For example, Colorado has experienced an increase in homelessness due to people moving to the state hoping to find work in the legal marijuana industry.

While the creation of any new industry does lead to more jobs, there is a limit to the number of opportunities, and many of those seeking employment are not qualified. Another unforeseen challenge for marijuana businesses is that they must comply with federal banking restrictions that require them to deal in cash, creating targets for burglaries and robberies.

One of the biggest issues for law enforcement is the black, or illegal, market, which still exists even in states with legalized recreational and/or medical marijuana. States also describe a “gray” market, one in which legal producers sell inventory under the table to black-market suppliers.

Personal growing laws can present law enforcement problems because they may be unclear and open to interpretation. For example, residents of Colorado might grow their limit of six marijuana plants, but could conceivably grow additional plants for family members, friends or neighbors. Cooperative spaces such as warehouses or homes converted for growing operations cause problems as well. And states also must monitor street prices to ensure the price of the legal supply remains competitive despite the taxes they levy. Otherwise, price-conscious consumers will look to black- and gray-market inventory instead.

Ensuring that each cultivated plant has a license is time consuming and difficult to monitor without a warrant. Search warrants also can be difficult to obtain due to ambiguity around medical marijuana licenses and recreational laws. Seizures of illegal products are complicated as well, due to conflicting state and federal laws, and questions about what to do with the seized inventory. In addition, canines trained for drug detection may need retraining or replacement because often they have not been taught to discern between marijuana and other illegal substances.

Law enforcement must also deal with drugged driving. Obviously, people should not drive while impaired by marijuana and should expect legal ramifications if they are caught doing so. The problem is enforcement. Methods for testing the effects of marijuana produce ambiguous results since THC is fat soluble, which means detectable traces linger in the body even after users are no longer intoxicated. A marijuana “Breathalyzer” test does not yet exist, technology allowing oral fluid testing is still being developed and blood tests are prohibitively expensive.

In addition, current drugged driving laws run into legal obstacles when it comes to medical marijuana patients. In July 2015, Denver resident Melanie Brinegar was pulled over for an expired license plate tag, but the officer smelled marijuana and performed field and blood tests. Brinegar had a medical marijuana license and used cannabis daily for chronic pain, which meant the THC level in her blood was high. She was acquitted of drugged driving even though her blood test came back at nearly four times the legal limit.

Complicating the problem further is the combined use of alcohol and marijuana. The risk from driving under the influence of both alcohol and cannabis is greater than the risk of driving under the influence of either alone, and data from Colorado shows impaired driving related to marijuana is increasing. Authorities need to clearly define the behaviors that constitute impairment and determine consistent ways of identifying and measuring those behaviors.

Law enforcement also must tackle other public safety concerns, such as explosions or fires that result from home growers attempting to make marijuana extracts like hash oil—a dangerous process that requires proper equipment to ensure safety. As one might suspect, this issue also affects medical facilities and first responders. Other safety concerns related to growing operations include toxic mold, THC in the air and on surfaces, and unsafe carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide levels due to fertilizers, pesticides, and disconnected vents— methods used to enhance plant growth.

Edible marijuana products are causing medical issues as well, due to accidental ingestion and potency issues. In Colorado, hospitalizations related to marijuana have increased 218 percent from 2000 to 2013. “Marijuana tourism” also contributes to the problem because most tourists are novice users with, in too many cases, little education to guide their use.

Trafficking of marijuana is another problem, especially in a state such as Colorado, which shares borders with seven other states. In 2014, law enforcement intercepted Colorado marijuana destined for other states 360 times—a 592 percent increase over the yearly average between 2005 and 2008. And driving across the border is not the only way the drug is being trafficked. From 2010 through 2014, the number of known parcels containing Colorado marijuana being mailed to other states increased 2,033 percent. Inventory tracking for marijuana outlets helps, but it has taken time to set up tracking systems. Colorado authorities did not have an established data collection system when marijuana laws changed—important for measuring crime rates, hospitalizations and so on. Suffice it to say, the nation is just beginning to understand the impact of changing marijuana policy on law enforcement.

History of Alcohol and Marijuana Policy

A history of alcohol policy in the united states.

As marijuana policies are re-examined in the United States, it may be useful to look at our history of alcohol policy for guidance.

Alcohol has been a part of American culture for hundreds of years. Some Native American tribes used alcohol for ceremonial purposes during the precolonial era. In the sixteenth century, the pilgrims landed the Mayflower illegally at Cape Cod rather than at their chartered destination in Virginia because they were looking to replenish their supply of beer. By the 1820s, Americans of all ages were drinking more than at any point in our history—consuming on average about three times as much alcohol per day as their counterparts do now in the twenty-first century.

Widespread overconsumption and public drunkenness led to the temperance movement, which gained momentum through the formation of the American Temperance Society in 1826. Temperance groups called for abstinence from alcohol and gained cultural momentum, resulting in increased demands for government prohibition. Maine passed a law in 1851 prohibiting the manufacture and sale of liquor, only to repeal it five years later. The temperance movement eventually lost steam during the Civil War, but it was revived afterward. In 1881, Kansas made history when it amended its constitution to outlaw alcoholic beverages. Other states began to follow suit.

The outbreak of World War I in 1914 spurred calls for nationwide prohibition, due to the need for devoting the nation’s barley crop to bread rations for soldiers, rather than to beer production.

 In 1920, Congress ratified the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, making the production, import, transport and sale of alcohol illegal nationwide. The separate Volstead Act (designed to enforce Prohibition) went into effect the same year. Estimates indicate alcohol consumption fell sharply during the first few years of Prohibition, and even though it rose a bit during later Prohibition years, overall consumption still remained 30 to 40 percent below pre-Prohibition levels.

At the same time, illegal activities rose during Prohibition. Illegally distilled spirits, such as moonshine and bathtub gin, were produced in mass. Speakeasies that served illegal alcohol gained popularity. Bootlegging, the dangerous illegal transportation of alcohol, became incredibly profitable. Organized crime groups grew in size, were well-funded and became increasingly violent. Law enforcement, overstretched by insufficient resources, struggled to carry out the laws associated with Prohibition. Lack of coordination between federal, state, and local authorities complicated enforcement efforts. In addition, methanol poisonings increased due to the poor quality of amateur homemade alcoholic beverages. And lawmakers who drank alcohol themselves were exposed as hypocrites.

Cries for repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment increased, particularly in urban areas. Prohibition laws were intended to curb violence and crime, but the opposite happened. And the black market for alcohol disrupted the legitimate economy, which also suffered from the rising costs of Prohibition enforcement and the collapse of the stock market in 1929.

With the onset of the Great Depression, state governments began looking again at the tax revenue that legal alcohol sales could generate. In 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt secured the Democratic nomination for president and won on a platform that supported ending Prohibition. Soon after his election, in 1933, Congress proposed and the states approved the Twenty-First Amendment, which repealed both the Eighteenth Amendment and Volstead Act. A few states continued statewide prohibition, but by 1966 all of them had abandoned it.

While the federal government regulates production of alcoholic beverages, taxes alcohol sales and requires a Surgeon General health warning on alcoholic products, alcohol sales are now regulated primarily by state and local governments. As a result, there are differences throughout the nation regarding when alcohol is sold, where it is sold, how it is sold, what varieties are sold and so on. In fact, some dry communities still exist. After Prohibition, the drinking age in most areas of the country was eighteen. Eventually, all states adopted a minimum drinking age of twenty-one, encouraged to do so by the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984, which tied the age requirement to federal highway funds.

Also of note: home brewing of beer and wine, unlike the federally regulated production of distilled alcohols, is now legal in all states (Mississippi and Alabama were the last to legalize this activity in 2013). However, home brewers are not allowed to sell the wine and beer they produce.

A History of Marijuana Policy in the United States

Varieties of cannabis plants are also known as hemp plants, although the word  hemp  is more commonly used when referring to fiber derived from such plants. Hemp, the fiber, has been used extensively throughout history for items such as rope, paper, fabrics and sail canvas. Hemp fiber also can be used to create concrete-like blocks for construction projects, bioplastics, jewelry and biofuels. In colonial America, hemp production was a requirement of English rule, and George Washington himself grew it as one of his main crops at Mount Vernon. At that time, hemp plants were low in tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active component of cannabis, and valued mostly for their role in industry.

Medicinal use of cannabis did not make its first appearance in America until the 1850s, when products with cannabis extracts were first produced and sold for the purpose of treating maladies such as pain and muscle spasticity. Soon after, pharmaceutical regulations were introduced in individual states. Products containing habit-forming substances like cannabis were often labeled poison and, in some cases, were available only with a physician’s prescription.

In the early 1900s, California passed the Poison Act, which was intended to make it a misdemeanor to be in possession of cannabis products not intended for medicinal use. However, it unexpectedly was applied to medicinal use as well. Eventually, similar laws passed in other states. The Federal Bureau of Narcotics was established in 1930 to enforce legislation that regulated and taxed products derived from opium and coca plants, and Harry J. Anslinger was appointed commissioner. Anslinger, a supporter of Prohibition, enforced criminalization of marijuana and publicized his belief that it incited violence and lewd sexual behavior. All states soon had laws regulating cannabis, and the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 made possession or transfer of cannabis illegal on a federal level while imposing a tax on medical marijuana and industrial hemp.

Stricter punishments for marijuana offenses were put in place in the 1950s. And, although the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 unconstitutional in 1970, passage of the Controlled Substances Act that same year placed cannabis in the Schedule I federal classification, where it remains today, making both medical and recreational marijuana illegal in the eyes of the federal government. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) was created in 1973 to enforce federal drug laws.

Changes toward more lenient marijuana policy began in the 1970s, with some states decriminalizing it, or significantly reducing the penalties for illegal use. In 1996, California legalized medical marijuana, but the U.S. Supreme Court successfully upheld the ability of the DEA to enforce the Controlled Substances Act, even when it conflicts with such a state law. In 2005, the Supreme Court once again upheld the DEA’s authority in such conflicts.

Still, more states continued to reduce penalties for marijuana-related charges, and some continued to pass medical marijuana laws. Then, in 2012, Washington and Colorado legalized recreational marijuana, with intentions to regulate it like alcohol. Colorado created a Marijuana Enforcement Division, and Washington placed marijuana regulation under its State Liquor Control Board. Since then, other states have passed laws legalizing recreational marijuana, and several have approved medical marijuana programs.

In 2013, the Obama administration said the federal government would not challenge state legalization efforts. Two years later, the Obama administration eased some restrictions on cannabis research to study its potential as medicine. Meanwhile, various bills have been introduced in Congress to reclassify federal scheduling of marijuana, reduce or eliminate penalties for minor marijuana violations and legalize medical marijuana nationally.

A Brief History of Marijuana as Medicine

Some have viewed marijuana as having medical value throughout history:

• The Chinese emperor Fu Hsi referenced it as a popular medicine in 2900 BC, and the herb was included in the Chinese Pharmacopeia, the Rh-Ya, in 1500 BC. By 100 AD, the Chinese had more than one hundred medical uses for marijuana, including treating gout, malaria and absentmindedness. In 200 AD, surgeon Hua T’o performed a number of surgeries using an anesthetic made from cannabis resin and wine.
• The original Hebrew version of the book of Exodus refers to a “holy anointing oil” that combined olive oil, fragrant herbs and  kaneh bosm  (cannabis).
• The ancient Egyptians prescribed cannabis for glaucoma, inflammation, “cooling the uterus” and administering enemas.
• Bhang , a drink that combined cannabis and milk, was used as an anesthetic and antiphlegmatic in India around 1000 BC. By 600 BC, Indians believed it could prolong life, improve thinking and judgment, reduce fevers, induce sleep, cure dysentery and cure leprosy.
• The Persians of 700 BC listed cannabis as the most important of 10,000 medicinal plants.
• The Greeks of 200 BC used it for earaches, edema and inflammation.
• In 70 AD, a Roman army medical text declared  kannabis  useful for treating earache and suppressing sexual longing. Soon thereafter, Roman author Pliny the Elder noted that the roots of cannabis boiled in water eased cramped joints, gout and violent pain.
• Across Arabia in the ninth century, cannabis was used to treat a variety of ailments, including migraines and syphilis.
• In England in 1621, clergyman Robert Burton suggested using cannabis to treat depression in his book  The Anatomy of Melancholy . Other British herbalists suggested cannabis for gout and joint pain. Later, in Victorian England, cannabis was used for muscle spasms, menstrual cramps, rheumatism and convulsions; to promote uterine contractions in childbirth; and as a sleep aid.
• In colonial America, hemp was raised as a fiber crop; however, George Washington made notes in his diary of 1765 about his interest in the medicinal uses of the plant.
• By 1840, marijuana had become part of mainstream Western medicine, and was added to the U.S. Pharmacopeia in 1850. It was also included in patent medicines. Newer uses included increasing appetites, treating opium withdrawal, and suppressing vomiting and nausea.
• In the United States from 1900 to the 1930s, cannabis was included in many medications. The American pharmaceutical companies Parke-Davis and Eli Lilly sold extracts of cannabis for use as an analgesic, antispasmodic and sedative, while Grimault and Co. marketed marijuana cigarettes to treat asthma.
• Cannabis was prohibited in the United Kingdom under its Dangerous Drugs Act in 1928. In the United States, all states had enacted laws regulating marijuana by 1936. Its use in medicine was replaced by aspirin as well as by morphine and other opiates. By 1942, it was removed from its place in the U.S. Pharmacopeia and was considered to have no therapeutic legitimacy.

What You Can You Do If Marijuana Has Been Legalized in Your State

Whether marijuana is medically legal, recreationally legal or completely illegal in your state, you still may be concerned about the dangers of use, particularly among youth, as well as the potential for addiction. You’re also likely to be interested in pursuing public education or perhaps marijuana prevention efforts, as well as making sure addiction treatment and recovery resources are available in your community.

If marijuana is legal in your state, you probably have additional concerns, such as where it is sold, how much individuals can possess, where it is legal to use the drug, where it can be transported, how to govern drugged driving and more.

It may be helpful to know that in states where recreational marijuana has been approved, individual communities still have the right to opt out. For example, shortly after the passage of Oregon’s Measure 91 (legalizing statewide recreational marijuana), the League of Oregon Cities proposed a bill allowing cities and counties to ban marijuana within their borders or to levy their own taxes on retail sales to make marijuana prohibitively expensive. Some communities have also banned use in public areas, established zero-tolerance policies at schools and encouraged local businesses to adopt drug-testing programs for employees. In another example, the Colorado Attorney General’s Office has supported employer policies that forbid employees from using marijuana, even when off duty.

Many are keeping a close eye on the impact of marijuana policies in states where it is already legal. Indeed, your community may look to existing policies elsewhere for lessons learned. Yet keep in mind that those communities are still learning. Community monitoring and involvement need to be ongoing in order to continuously improve regulations and education about marijuana, and to minimize the negative impact of marijuana on youth and public health.

Understanding the Regulatory Framework if Marijuana Has Been Legalized in Your State

If you live in a state with legalized marijuana and want to help prevent marijuana from negatively impacting your community, it’s best to start by familiarizing yourself with the state law that made marijuana legal. It should either provide information or lead you to information about the regulatory framework that was established to govern your state’s marijuana industry. These regulations might address any number of issues, including licensing and production, taxes and pricing, how marijuana is prepared and consumed, and packaging and marketing. What’s more, ongoing regulatory oversight will ensure that changes are implemented when necessary and additional concerns are tackled as they arise.

Let’s start with licensing and production. State regulations will govern who is licensed to produce and sell marijuana, guidelines for product safety and quality, and security requirements designed to limit diversion from legal production systems to illegal markets. Review the state statute to learn how your state is addressing these issues in its regulatory framework.

You also will want to review your state’s marijuana taxes and how they relate to retail pricing. Both are flexible regulatory tools that can swiftly respond to changing circumstances or new evidence. The legal price of marijuana has a huge impact on the size of the illegal market, levels and patterns of consumption, home-growing trends, use of other drugs that may be less expensive and revenue generated from production and sales.

In 2014, Colorado rang up $700 million in marijuana sales and garnered $70 million in tax revenue—almost twice as much as the state collected from alcohol taxes that year. Of that, $24 million was appropriated for building schools, $8 million for marijuana research, and $11 million for addiction prevention and treatment targeted to students. Additional funds were set aside for law enforcement.

Community involvement can help steer marijuana revenues to education, prevention programs and addiction treatment. It is worth noting, however, that marijuana-based revenue streams remain at some risk, should the current or a future presidential administration decide to enforce federal laws more strictly.

As you examine your state’s regulatory framework, you may find rules and guidelines specific to different forms of marijuana. The drug can be prepared and consumed in a number of ways. Most often, we think of marijuana in its smoked form. But the drug also can be prepared in pill form, as an oil to be vaporized, as an edible product, as a liquid tincture and in other forms. Some argue that non-smoked derivatives should be regulated, approved and promoted in policy as a healthier alternative to smoked marijuana.

At the same time, others raise unique concerns about edible marijuana products. Indeed, recent deaths related to the dosages in edibles have highlighted the need for increased regulation of such goods. Advocates have called for better warning labels on the packaging, uniform lab testing standards to ensure product consistency and education campaigns. Stricter regulation of edible products means better control over what’s available, better information for the general public and fewer accidental deaths. Meanwhile, the need to expand research on marijuana edibles parallels the need to expand all types of marijuana research.

Another important issue is  marijuana potency . As you may have heard, the tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) levels in marijuana today are much higher than they were in decades past. While marijuana with higher THC levels poses more health risks, legal marijuana with low THC levels can fuel the illegal market for marijuana with higher THC concentrations. Regulations ought to be balanced accordingly.

Regulation of the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries has resulted in child-resistant packaging and other packaging requirements. Similarly, marijuana packaging should be child resistant, include general safety information and be targeted only to adults. That was not initially the case in Colorado. Edible marijuana products sold there looked so much like candy that Hershey won a lawsuit against an edibles company for trademark infringement. In response to this and other concerns, Colorado created a legislative task force dedicated to monitoring regulations on packaging of edible products and launched media campaigns to more effectively educate the public about cannabis consumption. In both cases, community advocates played a big role in raising concerns and bringing about change.

When it comes to marketing marijuana products, we can learn much from the alcohol and tobacco industries. Widespread marketing of alcohol has accompanied ever-increasing use, especially among youth. The same could once be said for tobacco marketing. However, with the advertising restrictions in recent decades, tobacco use has declined significantly. In light of this, banning all forms of marijuana advertising, promotion and sponsorship could significantly help with prevention efforts. Effective marketing restrictions can prevent problems, especially with underage use. Marijuana business interests may disagree with marketing restrictions, and in fact, they do in states like Colorado and Washington. For prevention-minded communities, this is an issue demanding early attention.

A related issue to licensing for marijuana producers is licensing of vendors, who must be trained to enforce and follow restrictions on sales relating to age, amount, intoxication and so on. Communities can also expect vendors to help educate customers about using responsibly, minimizing risks, and getting help or further information if needed. Vendors that fail to meet requirements should be penalized and, potentially, lose their license.

Also subject to regulation are the retail outlets where vendors sell their marijuana products. Most believe such stores should be only functional and should not include advertising, signage or product displays that promote marijuana use. Many also support restricting marijuana outlet locations to keep them away from places like schools, playgrounds, parks and homes, and to prevent them from becoming too concentrated in one area. Designated areas for consumption should be clearly marked and publicized to minimize public exposure and assist with law enforcement.

Purchaser regulations are another essential aspect of a state’s legal framework. Of course, age limits are important. Limits on purchasable amounts are critical, too, because they promote more responsible consumption and prevent resale to minors and others on the black market. In addition, drugged driving laws are vital to protecting the public from buyers who would drive under the influence of marijuana.

In the end, people’s well-being is the most important factor in the public discussion over marijuana, and establishing a regulatory framework is an important first step in reducing the negative impact of marijuana on the community. But the real work starts afterward. Regulations must be monitored for effectiveness and altered if necessary. That means data should be collected and measured to track progress toward policy goals—something that requires funding. As a community member, you may need to advocate for funding to support data collection, focus groups, research studies and more, all of which can be used to monitor use and addiction rates, demographic trends, drugged driving convictions, crash incidents, hospital visits, calls to poison control centers, public consumption violations and so on. Such data can inform local policymakers as they consider changes to laws, regulations and public investments. Ultimately, changes in public policy take place through community action—action that starts with you. So ask questions and be proactive.

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Why we should not legalize marijuana.

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 our nation.

The rate of current, past 30-day use of marijuana by Americans aged 12 and older in 1979 was 13.2 percent. In 2008 that figure stood at 6.1 percent. This 54-percent reduction in marijuana use over that 29-year period is a major public health triumph, not a failure.

Marijuana is the most commonly abused illegal drug in the U.S. and around the world. Those who support its legalization, for medical or for general use, fail to recognize that the greatest costs of marijuana are not related to its prohibition; they are the costs resulting from marijuana use itself.

There is a common misconception that the principle costs of marijuana use are those related to the criminal justice system. This is a false premise. Caulkins & Sevigny (2005) found that the percentage of people in prison for marijuana use is less than one half of one percent (0.1-0.2 percent).

An encounter with the criminal justice system through apprehension for a drug-related crime frequently can benefit the offender because the criminal justice system is often a path to treatment.

More than a third, 37 percent, of treatment admissions reported in the Treatment Episode Data Set, TEDS, collected from state-funded programs were referred through the criminal justice system. Marijuana was an identified drug of abuse for 57 percent of the individuals referred to treatment from the criminal justice system. The future of drug policy is not a choice between using the criminal justice system or treatment. The more appropriate goal is to get these two systems to work together more effectively to improve both public safety and public health.

In the discussion of legalizing marijuana, a useful analogy can be made to gambling. MacCoun & Reuter (2001) conclude that making the government a beneficiary of legal gambling has encouraged the government to promote gambling, overlooking it as a problem behavior. They point out that “the moral debasement of state government is a phenomenon that only a few academics and preachers bemoan.”

Legalized gambling has not reduced illegal gambling in the United States; rather, it has increased it. This is particularly evident in sports gambling, most of which is illegal. Legal gambling is taxed and regulated and illegal gambling is not. Legal gambling sets the stage for illegal gambling just the way legal marijuana would set the stage for illegal marijuana trafficking.

The gambling precedent suggests strongly that illegal drug suppliers would thrive by selling more potent marijuana products outside of the legal channels that would be taxed and otherwise restricted. If marijuana were legalized, the only way to eliminate its illegal trade, which is modest in comparison to that of cocaine, would be to sell marijuana untaxed and unregulated to any willing buyer.

Marijuana is currently the leading cause of substance dependence other than alcohol in the U.S. In 2008, marijuana use accounted for 4.2 million of the 7 million people aged 12 or older classified with dependence on or abuse of an illicit drug. This means that about two thirds of Americans suffering from any substance use disorder are suffering from marijuana abuse or marijuana dependence.

If the U.S. were to legalize marijuana, the number of marijuana users would increase. Today there are 15.2 million current marijuana users in comparison to 129 million alcohol users and 70.9 million tobacco users. Though the number of marijuana users might not quickly climb to the current numbers for alcohol and tobacco, if marijuana was legalized, the increase in users would be both large and rapid with subsequent increases in addiction.

Important lessons can be learned from those two widely-used legal drugs. While both alcohol and tobacco are taxed and regulated, the tax benefits to the public are vastly overshadowed by the adverse consequences of their use.

Alcohol-related costs total over $185 billion while federal and states collected an estimated $14.5 billion in tax revenue; similarly, tobacco use costs over $200 billion but only $25 billion is collected in taxes. These figures show that the costs of legal alcohol are more than 12 times the total tax revenue collected, and that the costs of legal tobacco are about 8 times the tax revenue collected. This is an economically disastrous tradeoff.

The costs of legalizing marijuana would not only be financial. New marijuana users would not be limited to adults if marijuana were legalized, just as regulations on alcohol and tobacco do not prevent use by youth. Rapidly accumulating new research shows that marijuana use is associated with increases in a range of serious mental and physical problems. Lack of public understanding on this relationship is undermining prevention efforts and adversely affecting the nation’s youth and their families.

Drug-impaired driving will also increase if marijuana is legalized. Marijuana is already a significant causal factor in highway crashes, injuries and deaths. In a recent national roadside survey of weekend nighttime drivers, 8.6 percent tested positive for marijuana or its metabolites, nearly four times the percentage of drivers with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of .08 g/dL (2.2 percent).

In another study of seriously injured drivers admitted to a Level-1 shock trauma center, more than a quarter of all drivers (26.9 percent) tested positive for marijuana. In a study of fatally injured drivers in Washington State, 12.7 percent tested positive for marijuana. These studies demonstrate the high prevalence of drugged driving as a result of marijuana use.

Many people who want to legalize marijuana are passionate about their perception of the alleged failures of policies aimed at reducing marijuana use but those legalization proponents seldom—if ever—describe their own plan for taxing and regulating marijuana as a legal drug. There is a reason for this imbalance; they cannot come up with a credible plan for legalization that could deliver on their exaggerated claims for this new policy.

Future drug policies must be smarter and more effective in curbing the demand for illegal drugs including marijuana. Smarter-drug prevention policies should start by reducing illegal drug use among the 5 million criminal offenders who are on parole and probation in the U.S. They are among the nation’s heaviest and most problem-generating illegal drug users.

Monitoring programs that are linked to swift and certain, but not severe, consequences for any drug use have demonstrated outstanding results including lower recidivism and lower rates of incarceration. New policies to curb drugged driving will not only make our roads and highways safer and provide an important new path to treatment, but they will also reduce illegal drug use.

Reducing marijuana use is essential to improving the nation’s health, education, and productivity. New policies can greatly improve current performance of prevention strategies which, far from failing, has protected millions of people from the many adverse effects of marijuana use.

Since legalization of marijuana for medical or general use would increase marijuana use rather than reduce it and would lead to increased rates of addiction to marijuana among youth and adults, legalizing marijuana is not a smart public health or public safety strategy for any state or for our nation.

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration . (1999). 1997 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse. (Office of Applied Studies). Rockville, MD. Retrieved March 31, 2010

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2009). Results from the 2008 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: National Findings. Office of Applied Studies, NSDUH Series H-36, HHS Publication No. SMA 09-4434. Rockville, MD.

Caulkins, J.P., & Sevigny, E.L. (2009). How many people does the U.S. imprison for drug use, and who are they? Contemporary Drug Problems, 32(3): 405-428.

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2009). Treatment Episode Data Set (TEDS). Highlights - 2007. National Admissions to Substance Abuse Treatment Services, Office of Applied Studies, DASIS Series: S-45, DHHS Publication No. (SMA) 09-4360. Rockville, MD.

MacCoun, R.J., & Reuter, P. (2001). Drug war heresies: Learning from other vices, times, and places. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Abt, V. cited in Casinos in Florida: An analysis of the economic and social impacts . (n.d.). Tallahassee, FL: Executive Office of the Governor Office of Planning and Budgeting. Retrieved April 1, 2010.

Dunstan, R. (1997). Gambling in California . California Research Bureau. Retrieved April 1, 2010.

Frey, J.H. Gambling on sports: Policy issues. Journal of Gambling Studies, 8(4), 351-360.

Sabet, K.A. (2009, June 7). The price of legalizing pot is too high . Los Angeles Times. Retrieved April 9, 2010.

Kerlikowske, R.G. (2010, March 4). Why marijuana legalization would compromise public health and public safety , annotated remarks. California Police Chiefs Association Conference. San Jose, CA.

D'Souza, D.C., Sewell, R.A., & Ranganathan, M. (2009). Cannabis and psychosis/schizophrenia: Human studies. European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, 259(7), 413-331.

Bates, B. (2010, Feb). Teen cannabis use predicts depression. Clinical Psychiatry News, 38(2).

Boschert, S. (2010, Feb). Marijuana self-medication might prompt mood disorders, stress. Clinical Psychiatry News, 38(2).

Compton, R., & Berning, A. (2009). Results of the 2007 National Roadside Survey of Alcohol and Drug Use by Drivers. Traffic Safety Facts Research Note. (DOT HS 811 175) Washington, DC: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Retrieved March 31, 2010 from http://www.nhtsa.gov/staticfiles/DOT/NHTSA/Traffic%20Injury%20Control/Articles/Associated%20Files/811175.pdf

Walsh, J.M., Flegel, R., Cangianelli, L.A., Atkins, R., Soderstrom, C.A., & Kerns, T.J. (2004). Epidemiology of alcohol and other drug use among motor vehicle crash victims admitted to a Level-1 trauma center. Traffic Injury Prevention, 5, 254-260.

Schwilke, E.W., dos Santos, M.I.S., & Logan, B.K. (2006). Changing patterns of drug and alcohol use in fatally injured drivers in Washington State. Journal of Forensic Sciences, 51(5), 1191-1198.

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Ross Douthat

Legalizing Marijuana Is a Big Mistake

By Ross Douthat

Opinion Columnist

Of all the ways to win a culture war, the smoothest is to just make the other side seem hopelessly uncool. So it’s been with the march of marijuana legalization: There have been moral arguments about the excesses of the drug war and medical arguments about the potential benefits of pot, but the vibe of the whole debate has pitted the chill against the uptight, the cool against the square, the relaxed future against the Principal Skinners of the past.

As support for legalization has climbed, commanding a two-thirds majority in recent polling , any contrary argument has come to feel a bit futile, and even modest cavils are couched in an apologetic and defensive style. Of course I don’t question the right to get high, but perhaps the pervasive smell of weed in our cities is a bit unfortunate …? I’m not a narc or anything, but maybe New York City doesn’t need quite so many unlicensed pot dealers …?

All of this means that it will take a long time for conventional wisdom to acknowledge the truth that seems readily apparent to squares like me: Marijuana legalization as we’ve done it so far has been a policy failure, a potential social disaster, a clear and evident mistake.

The best version of the square’s case is an essay by Charles Fain Lehman of the Manhattan Institute explaining his evolution from youthful libertarian to grown-up prohibitionist. It will not convince readers who come in with stringently libertarian presuppositions — who believe on high principle that consenting adults should be able to purchase, sell and enjoy almost any substance short of fentanyl and that no second-order social consequence can justify infringing on this right.

But Lehman explains in detail why the second-order effects of marijuana legalization have mostly vindicated the pessimists and skeptics. First, on the criminal justice front, the expectation that legalizing pot would help reduce America’s prison population by clearing out nonviolent offenders was always overdrawn, since marijuana convictions made up a small share of the incarceration rate even at its height. But Lehman argues that there is also no good evidence so far that legalization reduces racially discriminatory patterns of policing and arrests. In his view, cops often use marijuana as a pretext to search someone they suspect of a more serious crime, and they simply substitute some other pretext when the law changes, leaving arrest rates basically unchanged.

So legalization isn’t necessarily striking a great blow against mass incarceration or for racial justice. Nor is it doing great things for public health. There was hope, and some early evidence, that legal pot might substitute for opioid use, but some of the more recent data cuts the other way: A new paper published in The Journal of Health Economics found that “legal medical marijuana, particularly when available through retail dispensaries, is associated with higher opioid mortality.” There are therapeutic benefits to cannabis that justify its availability for prescription, but the evidence of its risks keeps increasing: This month brought a new paper strengthening the link between heavy pot use and the onset of schizophrenia in young men.

And the broad downside risks of marijuana, beyond extreme dangers like schizophrenia, remain as evident as ever: a form of personal degradation, of lost attention and performance and motivation, that isn’t mortally dangerous in the way of heroin but that can damage or derail an awful lot of human lives. Most casual pot smokers won’t have this experience, but the legalization era has seen a sharp increase in the number of noncasual users. Occasional use has risen substantially since 2008, but daily or near-daily use is up much more, with around 1‌‌6 million Americans , out of ‌more than 50 million users, now suffering from what ‌‌is termed marijuana use disorder.

In theory, there are technocratic responses to these unfortunate trends. In its ideal form, legalization would be accompanied by effective regulation and taxation, and as Lehman notes, on paper it should be possible to discourage addiction by raising taxes in the legal market, effectively nudging users toward more casual consumption.

In practice, it hasn’t worked that way. Because of all the years of prohibition, a mature and supple illegal marketplace already exists, ready to undercut whatever prices the legal market charges. So to make the legal marketplace successful and amenable to regulation, you would probably need much more enforcement against the illegal marketplace — which is difficult and expensive and, again, obviously uncool, in conflict with the good-vibrations spirit of the legalizers.

Then you have the extreme case of New York, where legal permitting has lagged while untold numbers of illegal shops are doing business unmolested by the police. But even in less-incompetent-seeming states and localities, a similar pattern persists. Lehman cites (and has reviewed ) the recent book “Can Legal Weed Win? The Blunt Realities of Cannabis Economics,” by Robin Goldstein and Daniel Sumner, which shows that unlicensed weed can cost as much as 50 percent less than the licensed variety. So the more you tax and regulate legal pot sales, the more you run the risk of having users just switch to the black market — and if you want the licensed market to crowd out the black market instead, you probably need to make legal pot as cheap as possible, which in turn undermines any effort to discourage chronic, life-altering abuse.

Thus policymakers who don’t want so much chronic use and personal degradation have two options. They can set out to design a much more effective (but necessarily expensive, complex and sometimes punitive) system of regulation and enforcement than what exists so far. Or they can reach for the blunt instrument of recriminalization, which Lehman prefers for its simplicity — with medical exceptions still carved out and with the possibility that possession could remain legal and that only production and distribution be prohibited.

I expect legalization to advance much further before either of these alternatives builds significant support. But eventually the culture will recognize that under the banner of personal choice, we’re running a general experiment in exploitation — addicting our more vulnerable neighbors to myriad pleasant-seeming vices, handing our children over to the social media dopamine machine and spreading degradation wherever casinos spring up and weed shops flourish.

With that realization, and only with that realization, will the squares get the hearing they deserve.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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Ross Douthat has been an Opinion columnist for The Times since 2009. He is the author of several books, most recently, “The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery.” @ DouthatNYT • Facebook

The Liberty Champion

The official student newspaper of Liberty University

Cons of Legalizing Recreational Marijuana Use

The legalization of marijuana, used both medicinally and recreationally, is left up to individual states to decide whether it should be decriminalizedMJBizDaily reports, “California was the first state to legalize medical marijuana in 1996. Since then, the medical use of cannabis has been legalized in 39 states and the District of Columbia. Recreational or adult use of cannabis is also legal in D.C. and 19 states.”

Despite the growing acceptance, decriminalizing marijuana should be a federal issue, and it should not be legal to use recreationally.

Although researchers differ in their stances on whether marijuana is considered a “gateway drug,” it has every ability to be one and opens the door for those who use marijuana to transition into heavier substances.

National Institute on Drug Abuse, in a research report on marijuana as a gateway drug, says, “ … a study using longitudinal data from the National Epidemiological Study of Alcohol Use and Related Disorders found that adults who reported marijuana use during the first wave of the survey were more likely than adults who did not use marijuana to develop an alcohol use disorder within three years … Marijuana use is also linked to other substance use disorders including nicotine addiction.”

Picture this: You start eating an apple every day. At first, because it’s a new addition to your diet, it’s going to taste good, and you may even look forward to eating one daily. However, the more apples you eat, the more undesirable they become — forcing you to look for alternative snacks.

Now put marijuana in the place of the fruit: The more frequent it becomes, the less satisfying it’s going to be, and the more likely you will want to try something else to experience that first-time high.

The CDC outlines the short- and long-term effects marijuana has on the brain as well as how it affects one’s mental health.

According to the CDC, the use of marijuana within 24 hours “has an immediate impact on thinking, attention, memory, coordination, movement, and time perception.” Long-term, the drug affects brain development (most notably in those who are under the age of 18) such as attention, memory and learning. 

The CDC also suggests that frequent use of marijuana can cause disorientation, unpleasant thoughts, anxiety, paranoia, depression and even suicide. Temporary psychosis and schizophrenia are also more likely to be developed by those who use marijuana. 

Most of all, as Christians, marijuana should remain a criminalized drug because it is not biblical. The Bible does not specifically reference marijuana, but it does give warning to the dangers of drunkenness — both of which have mind-altering compounds.

Ephesians 5:18 says, “And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit,” and 1 Peter 5:8 says, “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” 

Thus, like drunkenness, using marijuana inhibits your mental and physical state. It puts you in a vulnerable position that takes your dependency off God and in a temporary place where you rely on worldly things (marijuana) to feel good. But in the end, that need to “feel good” will leave you empty when the high wears off and you’re still left with the same problems as before.

Time and time again, Scripture says to flee from the flesh, for you will only find full satisfaction in life through the love of a perfect Father.

To conclude, the recreational use of marijuana has an impact on society through its ability to be a “gateway drug,” its harmful side effects and the moral issue of altering one’s state of mind.

To which are the reasons I can’t stand by its legalization — I don’t see the benefits, only the harm.

Shank is the Editor-in-Chief. Follow her on Twitter

Weed should be legalized, not gonna lie.

This is such a farce. God created this plant. You are robbing sick people of a natural remedy while pushing your religious, judgmental Perspective that is not based on science and/or any research on your part. Liberty is a joke. Non-profit making millions of dollars…. While your leader is getting drunk and pimping out young men to his corrupt wife. I feel sorry for you crazy brainwashed people. Go write about the danger of religious brainwashing.

And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. Genesis 1:29

Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. Genesis 9:3

Wait … do you get to now translate what God meant by green plant?

Very well written information. It will be helpful to anybody who usess it, as well as me. Keep doing what you are doing – i will definitely read more posts.

Good blog! I truly love how it is simple on my eyes and the data are well written. I’m wondering how I could be notified when a new post has been made. I have subscribed to your feed which must do the trick! Have a great day!

Nice blog post. Keep up the good work. I have just bookmarked this blog and will follow your blog for more great posts

The History of Acupuncture – simple facts with real questions. #1 – Acupuncture has been practiced in China for more than 3000 years. # 2 – Archeological Discovery – Otzi man – the tattoo marks seen on the “Ice Man”- who died in about 5300 BCE and whose body was revealed when an Alpine glacier melted. These tattoos might indicate that a form of stimulatory treatment similar to acupuncture developed quite independently of China.

# 3 – The first document of organized system of diagnosis and treatment of acupuncture is The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine, dating from about 100 BCE. # 4 – Many different esoteric theories of diagnosis and treatment emerged, sometimes even contradictory, possibly as competing schools attempted to establish their exclusiveness and influence.

# 5 – During the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), The Great Compendium of Acupuncture and Moxibustion was published, which forms the basis of modern acupuncture. # 6 – We have 361 acupuncture points in the human body, like days during the year in our planet. But John Hopkins Medicine source shows number more than 2000 acupuncture points in the human body.

Great Post! It’s important to recognize that the impact of marijuana legalization can vary based on the specific regulatory framework, public health policies, and cultural contexts in different regions. Ongoing research and monitoring are crucial to understanding the long-term effects of legalization on society.

I was struck by a car while working here in Maine as a flagger, I also got from that a traumatic brain injury. This disabling condition leaves in me a state where I can’t take any opioids or controlled pain medication. Which I researched on the reason why, it seems now I’m more at risk becoming an addict then a person without a traumatic brain injury. I made a phone call here and there and found out from the 2023 neurologist conference that was held. The safest way I combat pain is the use of Medical Marijuana. And for me and my opinion it works better than a man made opioids or controlled pain meds

I agree to an extent on this issue but what I don’t agree is how you went from stating facts to putting your opinion based on your religion, the bible may not call it by name but neither does it call by name all other ” drugs” that people use today. We are in an era where people are facing health issues one of the biggest one being cancer. Wouldn’t you consider big pharmaceuticals who sell drugs such as Tylenol, Advil etc. to also have what you called a “getaway ” based off they too have side effects that and are temporarily to feel good and wear of. “Takes your dependency off God and in a temporary place where you rely on worldly things (marijuana) to feel good. But in the end, that need to “feel good” will leave you empty when the high wears off and you’re still left with the same problems as before.” This prescribe medication weren’t and are not at all perfect look at the side effects they cause in the long run such as liver issues. I think if you do a little more research you will find how people have found marijuana beneficial to there health needs. One cant deny marijuana is based plant and is better then taking pharmaceutical now those are killer drugs.

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Why We Shouldn't Legalize Marijuana

Senior Legal Fellow and Deputy Director, Meese Center

Marijuana is an addictive, gateway drug. It significantly impairs bodily and mental functions, and its use is related to increased violence. These are facts.

Yet proponents of legalizing the drug studiously deny or downplay the well-documented dark side of marijuana trafficking and use. Instead, they promise benefits ranging from reduced crime to additional tax revenue.

Marijuana advocates have had some success in arguing that marijuana is a “soft” drug, similar to alcohol, and fundamentally different from “hard” drugs like cocaine or heroin. To equate alcohol with marijuana, however, is both uninformed and misleading. Their similarities run only skin deep.

A glass of wine with dinner, for example, has been shown to actually improve health. Not so with marijuana. Though it may have some palliative effects, marijuana has no known general healthful properties.

Instead, clinical studies reveal that long-term, moderate consumption of the drug impairs short-term memory, slows reaction time, increases the risk of heart attack, and can result in birth defects, strokes, and damage to the respiratory system and brain.

Lacking curative or preventive powers, marijuana — unlike alcohol — is usually consumed to the point of intoxication. Prolonged use has a negative effect on cognitive ability that persists beyond the period of intoxication.

What about addiction? Legalization advocates note that alcohol and tobacco are addictive, yet legal. Yes, but marijuana is more likely to cause addiction. One study found that more than 30 percent of adults who used marijuana in the course of a year became dependent on it, exhibiting compulsive behavior and signs of withdrawal.

But think of the benefits to society, pot proponents then argue. Legalizing marijuana would slash drug-related crime, they assert. Yet if and when states legalize marijuana, local demand will increase. Meanwhile, some reputable growers, manufacturers, and retailers will refuse to produce or distribute the drug because of standing federal laws and the tort liability that attend to such a dangerous product. The vacuum will be filled by illegal drug cartels and a black or gray market.

Furthermore, the National Research Council has concluded that the “long-term use of marijuana may alter the nervous system in ways that do promote violence.” No place serves as a better example than Amsterdam. Though often touted as a well-functioning city with a relaxed attitude toward drugs, Amsterdam is also one of the most violent cities in Europe. In California, as well, the areas around cannabis clubs have experienced exponential increases in crime rates.

Pot pushers also offer pie-in-the-sky economic arguments on behalf of their cause. Taxes collected from marijuana sales will easily outweigh the social costs of legalization, they say.

In encouraging Californians to vote for the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) predicted a billion-dollar windfall for the state in tax revenues and enforcement savings. A RAND Corporation study subsequently found these projections were riddled with unfounded assumptions. To date, no realistic cost-benefit analysis has been done, yet proponents keep repeating these groundless claims.

Finally, regardless of state law, marijuana remains illegal under federal laws, which states have no authority to allow their citizens to contravene.

Legalizing marijuana is not the answer. Rather, sound national drug policy includes international cooperation, research, strengthened law enforcement, treatment, and prevention and education. When President Ronald Reagan adopted a similar strategy, illegal drug use by young adults dropped by more than 50 percent.

Thus, the best option going forward is for states to commit to a comprehensive, unified approach aimed at preventing illegal drug use and reducing the number of drug users.

No state will likely be allowed to legalize marijuana on its own due to negative cross-state spillover effects. Yet even if a state could do so, legalizing marijuana would serve little purpose other than to worsen the drug problem.

Charles “Cully” Stimson is a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation.

First appeared in The Daily Caller

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Most Americans Favor Legalizing Marijuana for Medical, Recreational Use

Legalizing recreational marijuana viewed as good for local economies; mixed views of impact on drug use, community safety, table of contents.

• The impact of legalizing marijuana for recreational use
• Partisan differences on impact of recreational use of marijuana
• Demographic, partisan differences in views of marijuana legalization
• Views of marijuana legalization vary by age within both parties
• Views of the effects of legalizing recreational marijuana among racial and ethnic groups
• Wide age gap on views of impact of legalizing recreational marijuana
• Acknowledgments
• The American Trends Panel survey methodology

Pew Research Center conducted this study to understand the public’s views about the legalization of marijuana in the United States. For this analysis, we surveyed 5,140 adults from Jan. 16 to Jan. 21, 2024. Everyone who took part in this survey is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP’s methodology .

Here are the questions used for the report and its methodology .

As more states pass laws legalizing marijuana for recreational use , Americans continue to favor legalization of both medical and recreational use of the drug.

An overwhelming share of U.S. adults (88%) say marijuana should be legal for medical or recreational use.

Nearly six-in-ten Americans (57%) say that marijuana should be legal for medical and recreational purposes, while roughly a third (32%) say that marijuana should be legal for medical use only.

Just 11% of Americans say that the drug should not be legal at all.

Opinions about marijuana legalization have changed little over the past five years, according to the Pew Research Center survey, conducted Jan. 16-21, 2024, among 5,14o adults.

While a majority of Americans continue to say marijuana should be legal , there are varying views about the impacts of recreational legalization.

About half of Americans (52%) say that legalizing the recreational use of marijuana is good for local economies; just 17% think it is bad and 29% say it has no impact.

More adults also say legalizing marijuana for recreational use makes the criminal justice system more fair (42%) than less fair (18%); 38% say it has no impact.

However, Americans have mixed views on the impact of legalizing marijuana for recreational use on:

• Use of other drugs: About as many say it increases (29%) as say it decreases (27%) the use of other drugs, like heroin, fentanyl and cocaine (42% say it has no impact).
• Community safety: More Americans say legalizing recreational marijuana makes communities less safe (34%) than say it makes them safer (21%); 44% say it has no impact.

There are deep partisan divisions regarding the impact of marijuana legalization for recreational use.

Majorities of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say legalizing recreational marijuana is good for local economies (64% say this) and makes the criminal justice system fairer (58%).

Fewer Republicans and Republican leaners say legalization for recreational use has a positive effect on local economies (41%) and the criminal justice system (27%).

Republicans are more likely than Democrats to cite downsides from legalizing recreational marijuana:

• 42% of Republicans say it increases the use of other drugs, like heroin, fentanyl and cocaine, compared with just 17% of Democrats.
• 48% of Republicans say it makes communities less safe, more than double the share of Democrats (21%) who say this.

Sizable age and partisan differences persist on the issue of marijuana legalization though small shares of adults across demographic groups are completely opposed to it.

Older adults are far less likely than younger adults to favor marijuana legalization.

This is particularly the case among adults ages 75 and older: 31% say marijuana should be legal for both medical and recreational use.

By comparison, half of adults between the ages of 65 and 74 say marijuana should be legal for medical and recreational use, and larger shares in younger age groups say the same.

Republicans continue to be less supportive than Democrats of legalizing marijuana for both legal and recreational use: 42% of Republicans favor legalizing marijuana for both purposes, compared with 72% of Democrats.

There continue to be ideological differences within each party:

• 34% of conservative Republicans say marijuana should be legal for medical and recreational use, compared with a 57% majority of moderate and liberal Republicans.
• 62% of conservative and moderate Democrats say marijuana should be legal for medical and recreational use, while an overwhelming majority of liberal Democrats (84%) say this.

Along with differences by party and age, there are also age differences within each party on the issue.

A 57% majority of Republicans ages 18 to 29 favor making marijuana legal for medical and recreational use, compared with 52% among those ages 30 to 49 and much smaller shares of older Republicans.

Still, wide majorities of Republicans in all age groups favor legalizing marijuana at least for medical use. Among those ages 65 and older, just 20% say marijuana should not be legal even for medical purposes.

While majorities of Democrats across all age groups support legalizing marijuana for medical and recreational use, older Democrats are less likely to say this.

About half of Democrats ages 75 and older (53%) say marijuana should be legal for both purposes, but much larger shares of younger Democrats say the same (including 81% of Democrats ages 18 to 29). Still, only 7% of Democrats ages 65 and older think marijuana should not be legalized even for medical use, similar to the share of all other Democrats who say this.

Substantial shares of Americans across racial and ethnic groups say when marijuana is legal for recreational use, it has a more positive than negative impact on the economy and criminal justice system.

About half of White (52%), Black (53%) and Hispanic (51%) adults say legalizing recreational marijuana is good for local economies. A slightly smaller share of Asian adults (46%) say the same.

Criminal justice

Across racial and ethnic groups, about four-in-ten say that recreational marijuana being legal makes the criminal justice system fairer, with smaller shares saying it would make it less fair.

However, there are wider racial differences on questions regarding the impact of recreational marijuana on the use of other drugs and the safety of communities.

Use of other drugs

Nearly half of Black adults (48%) say recreational marijuana legalization doesn’t have an effect on the use of drugs like heroin, fentanyl and cocaine. Another 32% in this group say it decreases the use of these drugs and 18% say it increases their use.

In contrast, Hispanic adults are slightly more likely to say legal marijuana increases the use of these other drugs (39%) than to say it decreases this use (30%); 29% say it has no impact.

Among White adults, the balance of opinion is mixed: 28% say marijuana legalization increases the use of other drugs and 25% say it decreases their use (45% say it has no impact). Views among Asian adults are also mixed, though a smaller share (31%) say legalization has no impact on the use of other drugs.

Community safety

Hispanic and Asian adults also are more likely to say marijuana’s legalization makes communities less safe: 41% of Hispanic adults and 46% of Asian adults say this, compared with 34% of White adults and 24% of Black adults.

Young Americans view the legalization of marijuana for recreational use in more positive terms compared with their older counterparts.

Clear majorities of adults under 30 say it is good for local economies (71%) and that it makes the criminal justice system fairer (59%).

By comparison, a third of Americans ages 65 and older say legalizing the recreational use of marijuana is good for local economies; about as many (32%) say it makes the criminal justice system more fair.

There also are sizable differences in opinion by age about how legalizing recreational marijuana affects the use of other drugs and the safety of communities.

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9 facts about Americans and marijuana

Most americans now live in a legal marijuana state – and most have at least one dispensary in their county, americans overwhelmingly say marijuana should be legal for medical or recreational use, clear majorities of black americans favor marijuana legalization, easing of criminal penalties, concern about drug addiction has declined in u.s., even in areas where fatal overdoses have risen the most, most popular, report materials.

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Reason Why Marijuana Should Be Legal

Introduction.

• Why Marijuana should be Legalized
• Arguments Against Legalization

Why Marijuanas Should Be Legal: Essay Conclusion

Works cited.

Of all the illegal drugs in existence, Cannabis Sativa (most popularly known as marijuana) is the most commonly used substance (Iftikhar et al. 7699). The World Health Organization documents that 2.5% of the world’s population indulge in the usage of this drug, therefore making it the most popular psychoactive substance.

Despite this apparent popularity of the drug, it remains illegal in many countries, including the USA. Recent scientific research has revealed that the effect of marijuana on a person’s health may not be as potent as previously thought. With this revelation and the increased use of the drug among the population, there have been calls for the government to consider legalizing this popular recreational drug.

Calls for legalizing marijuana have been countered by vocal opposition from people advocating for the drug to be kept illegal since it has many adverse effects. This “Why Marijuanas Should Be Legal” essay will set out to argue that marijuana should be legal since the harmful effects of this substance are not as dire, and legalization would result in many benefits for society. The argumentative paper will rely on research to reinforce this claim.

Why Marijuana Should Be Legalized

Marijuana is a favored recreational drug, which means that its commercial significance is high due to the high demand for the product. Under the current situation where the drug is deemed illicit, the government cannot benefit monetarily from commerce with this drug. This is an essential consideration since data on the prevalence of Marijuana indicates that the US is still the world’s largest single market for the medication (Hammond et al. 221).

The government could gain much revenue if the drug were legal and taxes imposed. As it currently stands, the sale of the drug only benefits players in the black market who produce and sell the product. These players are primarily criminals who have become very powerful from the money obtained from commerce in marijuana.

Houston, who is an outspoken advocate for the legalization of Marijuana, confirms that marijuana is the cash cow that has made the Mexican drug cartels such a formidable force. By making the drug legal, the government would benefit from revenues obtained from its sale as well as remove the monopoly held by the criminal gangs, thus making the country safer.

The government uses significant amounts of resources in enforcing its laws against marijuana. Maintaining the status quo of marijuana as an illegal substance is an expensive operation, and the taxpayer bears the financial burden.

Green documents that the US government spends billions of dollars annually to enforce prohibition efforts on marijuana (6). This money that would otherwise have been spent on more socially constructive purposes is currently being used to fund operations ranging from the carrying out of drug raids, arrests, and prosecution of drug offenders.

The expenses do not end there, as more money is needed to maintain the convicted offenders in the country’s already overstrained penitentiaries. Making marijuana legal would mean that the government would save all the money that it currently spends on enforcing the law against marijuana. This would be a prudent step since, as it is, the efforts by the government, while prohibitively high, do not appear to have significantly reduced marijuana consumption in the country.

An obvious merit of the legal industry is that it is bound by government control, which ensures that the products sold are safe for the consumer. The government can also monitor the production process and issue guidelines to ensure the consumer is not exposed to unnecessary risks.

Since marijuana is illegal, its production and distribution are unregulated, which means that the quality of the product is unguaranteed. Part of the contamination also comes from the pesticides used on the plant. Legal crops have strict government controls on pesticides, which minimize the risks to the individual. Montoya et al. reveal that since marijuana is an illegal drug, there are no guidelines or controls for its cultivation, and it is not known whether the pesticides used are safe for humans (4).

In addition to this, the illegal status of marijuana means that most of it is grown indoors to reduce the risk of discovery by law enforcement. Indoor-grown marijuana is perceived to be more contaminated than marijuana grown naturally since indoor cultivation involves the use of additives to maximize yield (Montoya et al. 4).

Legalization of marijuana would give the government greater control over the product, which would make it safer for the user. Currently, the market is unregulated, and dealers are constantly increasing the potency of the drug to attract more customers. The potency of marijuana is changed by altering the primary active chemical in marijuana, THC, which is the component that causes the mind-altering effects of marijuana intoxication.

Montoya et al. attribute the increased potency to the popularity of indoor cultivation, which involves the practice of cloning from a variety of cannabis with high THC content (2). The more potent marijuana is, the higher the increase of cannabis-related harms such as psychotic and anxiety effects. Legalizing the drug would make it possible for the government to monitor the content of the drug just as the alcohol content in beverages is monitored. This would reduce the health risks that result from highly potent marijuana.

Marijuana has scientifically proven medical benefits for its consumers. Marijuana has been documented to improve symptoms associated with multiple sclerosis. The efficacy of marijuana in this area has been so significant that pharmaceutical companies have begun using Sativex, a derivative of cannabis, in the care of people with multiple sclerosis (Baratta et al. 3).

Clinical trial research on the therapeutic role of marijuana in pain management has shown that the drug demonstrated significant pain relief and induced relaxation, hence relieving anxiety and depression (Baratta et al. 2). These findings are corroborated by reports by the WHO, which indicate that cannabinoids alleviate symptoms such as nausea and vomiting in chronically ill patients. Making marijuana legal would ensure that it is more readily available for the sick, who would exploit it for its curative properties.

Arguments against Legalization

Despite all the advantages that can be gained from legalizing marijuana, there are critical adverse effects that opponents of legalization point to. The most significant of these claims is that marijuana results in adverse physical and mental effects on the user. Hammond et al. state that heavy marijuana use impairs a person’s ability to form memories, and users who have taken high doses of the drug may experience acute psychosis (9).

Montoya et al. proceed to state that contaminated marijuana has the potential to cause lung disease and respiratory problems (4). Considering these adverse effects, proponents of legalization assert that it would be reckless for the government even to consider making marijuana legal. While it is true that marijuana can have adverse effects, these extreme effects are mostly restricted to heavy users and those users who consume contaminated or high-potency marijuana.

A primary concern of the public is the link between drug use and involvement in crime. Opponents of legalization state that marijuana would result in citizens, especially the youth, engaging in criminal activities as a result of drug use. This stereotypical view is unfounded, as research indicates that marijuana use does not play an essential role in fostering a general involvement in crime.

A study conducted by Lu et al. on the association between cannabis use and subsequent criminal charges on an individual suggested that marijuana was associated with subsequent criminal activity (565).

However, the authors noted that the bulk of this involvement was in various types of drug-specific crime, such as possession and distribution of the drug. Marijuana does not, therefore, result in general crime involvement, and a considerable proportion of its users only get into the penal system because of the use or possession of drugs.

A common argument raised by proponents of legalizing marijuana is that its legalization would result in a phenomenal increase in the number of users. This reasoning is based on the assumption that, at present, many people who would be users of marijuana are deterred because of the legal action, such as jail time that they would suffer if they consumed the product.

Houston suggests that this argument is not based on facts since the rate of marijuana use in the Netherlands (a country reputed for its relaxed laws on marijuana, which permit the purchase and consumption of regulated portions of the drug) is significantly lower than in the US where prohibitive laws against the drug are in place.

Marijuana consumption is pervasive in the US, and this drug has become the favorite recreational drug despite measures by the government to curb its supply and discourage its usage. This has resulted in the issue of whether to legitimize marijuana or not being heavily debated in the country.

From the arguments given in this paper, it is clear that many benefits will be reaped from the legalization of marijuana. These advantages include increased access to the drug for people who require it for medical purposes, a regulated market that would make the product safer, and the financial gains that the government would achieve through taxation and savings from the money that is currently used to enforce the law against marijuana.

While proponents of legalization point to the adverse effects of the drug, this paper has shown that many research findings available today indicate that the adverse effects of marijuana are mild and that the drug has functional medicinal properties.

This paper set out to argue that the government should legalize marijuana. To this end, the paper has engaged in discussions about the merits and demerits of such a move. Overall, evidence suggests that making marijuana legal would benefit society more than having it classified as an illegal substance.

Citizens who are keen on bringing about development should, therefore, petition the government to legalize the drug so that society can enjoy the benefits stated at the same time avoiding the enormous costs incurred by efforts to keep the drug illegal.

Baratta, Francesca, et al. “ Cannabis for Medical Use: Analysis of Recent Clinical Trials in View of Current Legislation. ” Frontiers in Pharmacology , vol. 13, May 2022.

Green, Jesse. “ Federalism, Limited Government, and Conservative Outcomes: The Republican Case for Marijuana Legalization .” Social Science Research Network , Jan. 2023.

Hammond, Chris, et al. “ Cannabis Use Among U.S. Adolescents in the Era of Marijuana Legalization: A Review of Changing Use Patterns, Comorbidity, and Health Correlates. ” International Review of Psychiatry , vol. 32, no. 3, Feb. 2020, pp. 221–34.

Iftikhar, Amna, et al. “ Applications of Cannabis Sativa L. in Food and Its Therapeutic Potential: From a Prohibited Drug to a Nutritional Supplement. ” Molecules , vol. 26, no. 24, Dec. 2021, p. 7699.

Lu, Ruibin, et al. “ The Cannabis Effect on Crime: Time-Series Analysis of Crime in Colorado and Washington State. ” Justice Quarterly , vol. 38, no. 4, Oct. 2019, pp. 565–95.

Montoya, Zackary T., et al. “ Cannabis Contaminants Limit Pharmacological Use of Cannabidiol. ” Frontiers in Pharmacology , vol. 11, Sept. 2020.

World Health Organization (WHO). Management of substance abuse: Cannabis . Jan. 2010. Web.

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Five Reasons Why We Should Legalize Cannabis

Cannabis use in the United States has had a long and complicated history. For decades, people who used cannabis were subject to social ostracization and criminal prosecution. However, attitudes toward cannabis have been evolving in recent years. An increasing number of states have started to legalize cannabis for medical or recreational use. This shift in policy has been driven by a variety of factors including changing public attitudes and the potential economic benefits of legalization. In this article, we will explore the potential benefits of legalizing cannabis in our country.

1. Legalization for the Environment

Legalizing cannabis can have significant benefits for the environment. When cannabis is grown illegally, it is often done in environmentally damaging ways, such as using chemical pesticides or clearing primary forests to make room for crops. Legalization could allow customers to support more environmental growers. This will incentivize more responsible growing practices, such as the use of organic farming methods or the use of renewable energy sources to power indoor grow operations. In addition, the culture of growing cannabis can help to discover and preserve precious marijuana seeds , increasing biodiversity and facilitating a deeper understanding of cannabis plants and their cultivation.

2. Legalization for Justice

Where cannabis is illegal, people are being arrested and charged for possession or sale, which leads to costly court cases and a burden on the criminal justice system. Legalization would free up law enforcement resources to focus on more serious crimes and simultaneously reduce the number of people incarcerated for non-violent drug offenses. This could help to reduce the overall prison population and save taxpayers money.

In addition, legalization can have significant benefits for justice and equity, particularly for marginalized communities that have been disproportionately affected by the criminalization of cannabis. Communities of color have been particularly affected by the war on drugs, with Black Americans being nearly four times more likely to be arrested for cannabis possession than white Americans, despite similar rates of use.

By regulating cannabis cultivation and sales, legalization can help to eliminate the black market and reduce the involvement of criminal organizations in the cannabis industry. This can lead to safer communities and reduced drug-related violence in communities that have been most affected by the criminalization of cannabis.

3. Legalization for Public Health

Cannabis has been shown to have many beneficial and therapeutic effects on both physical and mental health. However, people may be hesitant to seek medical marijuana treatment due to fear of legal repercussions if cannabis is illegal. Legalization can allow more people to enjoy better health outcomes. It can also promote the safer use of cannabis by educating the public on appropriate cannabis use and providing quality control measures for cannabis products. Legalization can also lead to increased research into potential medical applications of cannabis and could lead to the development of innovative treatments.

Another potential perk of cannabis legalization is that it could reduce the use of more harmful drugs. In the absence of cannabis, people may turn to more dangerous drugs like heroin or fentanyl to manage chronic pain or other conditions. By legalizing cannabis, we can provide a safer alternative for these individuals and could reduce the overall demand for these more dangerous drugs. States that have legalized cannabis found a decrease in opioid overdose deaths and hospitalizations, suggesting that cannabis are an effective alternative to prescription painkillers.

4. Legalization for the Economy

The legalization of cannabis can generate significant tax revenue for governments and create new economic opportunities. When cannabis is illegal, it is sold on the black market, and no taxes are collected on these sales. However, when it is legal, sales can be regulated, and taxes can be imposed on those sales. In states that have legalized cannabis, tax revenue from cannabis sales has been in the millions of dollars , with California registering a whopping $1.2 billion in cannabis tax revenue in 2021. This impressive income can be used to reduce budget deficits, fund various public services such as education and healthcare, and create new opportunities for investment in projects that revitalize the economy.

Aside from tax revenue, legalizing cannabis can create new jobs. The cannabis industry is a rapidly growing industry, and legalization could lead to the creation of new jobs in areas such as cultivation, processing, and retail sales. This can help to reduce unemployment and create new gainful opportunities for people who may have struggled to find employment in other industries. Legalization can also lead to increased investment in related industries, such as the development of new products or technologies to improve cannabis cultivation or the creation of new retail businesses. There are now several venture capital funds and investment groups that focus solely on cannabis-related enterprises.

5. Legalization for Acceptance

Finally, legalization could help reduce the stigma surrounding cannabis use. Before cannabis legalization, people who use the plant were often viewed as criminals or deviants. Legalization can help change this perception and lead to more open and honest conversations about cannabis use. Ultimately, legalization could lead to a more accepting and inclusive society where individuals are not judged or discriminated against for their personal and healthcare choices. By legalizing cannabis, we can harness the power of a therapeutic plant. Legalization can heal not just physical and mental ailments of individuals but also the social wounds that have resulted from its criminalization.

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