Expert Opinions burst stoners’ pipe dream of pot legalization!

Two recent opinion letters in major newspapers should send shock waves to Progressive voters  who value social justice and environmental issues.  They expose that marijuana legalization actually harms the promises of a more just society and a better earth. 

Kevin Sabet, PhD, President of Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM) wrote in The Baltimore Sun on June 30, 2024.  Sabet applauded Governor Moore but also said that his pardons prove that marijuana legalization is not about social justice.  (Maryland’s Governor Wes Moore recently issued 175,000 pardons for marijuana convictions, erasing the records. President Biden and other governors made similar moves in recent months.)

Sabet agrees with Moore’s pardons. However, he explains that it would have been possible without allowing the commercial marijuana industry to invade the state. (Nearby Virginia has decriminalization, without legalization.)

The major points of Sabet’s editorial are

  1. There’s a false dichotomy between the criminalization of marijuana and the legalization of today’s highly potent THC drugs.
  2. Voters — when given the choice — prefer decriminalization of marijuana to full-blown programs of legalization. In an Emerson College poll of 2022, 62% of Americans favored decriminalization of marijuana, or continued prohibition, over legalization.   The problem with most polls is that they do not allow the decriminalization option.
  3. A survey showed that 63% of Democrats and 76% of Republicans do not believe legalization has been good for the state of Maryland.
  4. Half of Marylanders oppose the opening of pot shops in their communities, and 59% oppose it in Prince George’s County, a majority-minority county.
  5. Commercial pot sales have not improved racial equity.  Black Americans continue to be disproportionately harmed by the predatory industry and its mind-altering products. In fact, Blacks were 4x more likely to have marijuana-related emergency department visits than white Americans.
  6. When it comes to youth, the harms are striking. In 2022, Black minors between the ages of 12 and 17 were 25% more likely to have used marijuana in the past month, compared to white minors. They were also 31% more likely to have a cannabis use disorder. 

The Miami Herald opinion piece tackles the environmental damage

The other excellent opinion piece was written by John Michael Pierobon, vice chair of the Tobacco Free Partnership of Broward County, and chair of the Tobacco Free Environments subcommittee of the Tobacco Free Workgroup of the Consortium for a Healthier Miami-Dade. It appeared in the Miami Herald, also on Sunday, June 30. However, it was originally published by The Invading Sea website (www.theinvadingsea.com), a source for news and commentary on climate change and other environmental issues affecting Florida.

Pierobon tackles the environmental damages of growing marijuana.  For those who cannot access his article, the major points are:

  1. Legalizing marijuana will strain local energy resources, and lead to high electricity costs and carbon emissions, ultimately producing more climate change.
  2. In Florida, marijuana would have to be grown indoors, but the indoor growing of cannabis takes up 40 times the electric power required to grow lettuce indoors. Marijuana plants require high-intensity lighting 18 hours a day.
  3. Marijuana requires much more water than other plants, at least 2 times as much as grapes.
  4. Trespass grows will proliferate, as they have in other legalization states.
  5. Marijuana plants emit toxic terpenes.  Nutrients and pesticides used for marijuana poison wildlife and animals.
  6. Open smoking of marijuana in the public – common in New York and California – will cause damage to other individuals. Secondhand cannabis smoke has the same toxic chemicals and even more than are in secondhand tobacco smoke.
  7. The cannabis industry has a plastic waste problem, and the industry is not willing to spend the money to mitigate the harms.

Both opinion pieces draw attention to the widespread failure of marijuana legalization policies.    Our country should not reschedule marijuana.