Category Archives: Drug Policy

Drug Policy

10 Reasons Why Marijuana Legalization Fails in Every State!

Everything said about why marijuana should be legalized is FALSE. In fact, some promises turn out to be the exact opposite of what the legalizers told you. Here are 10 reasons marijuana legalization fails:  

  1. BLACK MARKET INCREASES NOT DECREASES:  The Black Market for marijuana grows after legalization. Foreign cartels buy houses and land to grow pot. Law enforcement can’t tell the difference between legal and illegal growers. Only after utility bills reveal they’re using high powered grow lights in basements can utility companies figure it out. Even in states where home grows are banned, foreign cartels found ways to grow in national forests. If Florida legalizes, these growers will hide in the Everglades and Ocala and the other national forests. 
  2. THEY SAID REGULATION WOULD MAKE IT SAFER FOR OUR CHILDREN. Now that parents are using, adolescents frequently sell or distribute edibles found at home or obtained from others in their high schools and middle schools. Teens have always been able to access alcohol despite age restrictions, so why would marijuana be different? Regulate to keep away from your kids, the advocates argued. Since marijuana legalization, 21-year-olds have been seen going into shops and reselling to teens. 
  3. Claiming SAFE PRODUCTS THROUGH REGULATION IS a falsehood.  Legalization doesn’t stop mold, pesticides, ammonia, heavy metals and toxins from being part of dispensary marijuana. (People died from vaping lung disease traced to state-regulated marijuana shops in Oregon, California and a medical marijuana dispensary in Delaware. ) You cannot make an inherently dangerous product like THC safe.   Regulation Resistance develops in every state legislature. When sensible regulation comes before a state legislature, the cannabis industry whines and politicians cave to them.  No state regulates edibles enough to stop the large number of very small children who end in the ER from marijuana toxicity, breathing problems and the need to be intubated.  The idea of putting potency caps on THC or banning edibles are particularly problematic, as the industry refuses this regulation in every legislative session and fights for more.
  4. PUBLIC SMOKING BANS ARE A CATCH -22.  Many people who support legalization do so because they don’t want anyone arrested for smoking a joint.  After legalization, pot users enjoy their public smoking freedom.  If law enforcement started arresting them, it would defeat one purpose of legalization —  to stop arresting people.  Fines for public smoking are not enforced, even they exist.   If you ask your neighbor to stop smoking pot because your child has asthma or your mom has COPD, you can’t expect them to honor your wishes. Once a state legalizes, the rights of cannabis users take precedence over everyone else’s rights.  Law enforcement can’t do anything. Apartment smoking bans are not honored. Sometimes the only way to stop that neighbor from smoking is a lawsuit.  Secondhand marijuana smoke is more toxic than secondhand tobacco smoke.
  5. DOESN’T BALANCE STATE BUDGETS: Tax money is VERY LOW compared to what was promised. It is less than 1% of total state revenue in every state. After about 3 years the tax revenue goes way down; it went down 20% each year in Colorado since 2022.
  6. DEATHS GO UP, NOT DOWN. Cannabis legalization did not stop the opioid and other addiction epidemic in any state. In Colorado opioid deaths went way up after legalization. In California, many young teens went straight from using marijuana to buying pills online that turned out to be fentanyl. Anyone who believes that marijuana substitutes for pain medicine should be asked why our drug deaths rose after legalization. 
  7. CAN’T STOP STONED DRIVERS  –  In the states with legalization, traffic deaths have increased between 10% to 25%.  Even in fatal crashes when a driver has been using cannabis, it is difficult for law enforcement to prove impairment.  There is no uniformly acceptable test comparable to the breathalyzer used to measure alcohol, so driving stoned is much easier to get away with than driving drunk! Plus, more people are mixing alcohol and cannabis when they drive greatly intensifying the impairment.  Even worse, cannabis users often claim that they driver “better” stoned.
  8. SOCIAL EQUITY FAILS. Despite robust social equity requirements in some states, the industry is dominated by large multi-state operators. The movement is toward consolidation and monopoly, not Ma and Pop shops run by minorities. Equity owners are duped by state governments that loan them the money to start the stores even though they will make very little profit in return.  It’s a scam.  Politic explains the process in an excellent article,  Broken Promises: how marijuana legalization failed communities hit hardest by the drug war. 
  9. YOUTH USE BECOMES MORE PROBLEMATIC after legalization   The real problem is that the teens who use after legalization use the high-potency products like dabs and vapes at much higher rates than the adults. Teens who use these products are much more likely to have psychotic breaks compared to teens who used the low-potency marijuana available before 2000. Legalization is making it all that much more dangerous. Only two states enacted potency caps, which are 60 percent THC, 20x higher than the old-fashioned pot!
  10. OPTING OUT DOESN’T WORK!  So many times the towns that opted out can only maintain it with incredible effort fighting the industry again and again. Sometimes government bodies let the pot shops in without public notice, because the industry is so sneaky in the way it works the politicians.

IF STATES CAN’T GET LEGALIZATION RIGHT, the national government will not get it right.  As Bill Gates said, “It’s fine to celebrate success, but it’s more important to heed the lessons of failure.  Let’s cut our losses now.  For more information, read: 

Wall Street Journal:  How New York and California Botched Marijuana Legalization,  April 28, 2023, by Zusha Elinson and Jimmy Vielkind

Washington Post:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/01/14/marijuana-smell-lawsuit/ 

New York Times:  As America’s Marijuana Use Grows So do its Harms: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/04/us/cannabis-marijuana-risks-addiction.html  

Donna Shalala in the Miami Herald:  Why Marijuana Legalization is Bad Policy for Florida:  https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/article293034334.html 

Charles Fain Lehman:  The Real Problem with Legal Weed: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/03/magazine/marijuana-legalization-new-york.html 

Politico: Cannabis was supposed to be a tax windfall; the reality is different: https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2019/10/14/marijuana-tax-revenue-001062/ 

How marijuana failed inner city communities with its broken promises.   

Drug Policy, Politics

Michigan Changes Gun Laws to Accommodate Marijuana Legalization

On May 22, 2023, tragedy struck in Michigan — two-year-old Kiare McCoy shot and killed himself after finding a loaded gun.

The gun belonged to Markus Nevills Jr., who had placed it between the back of a couch and a cushion.  He admitted to being zoned out and high on marijuana at the time.  Police arrested Nevills, the mother’s ex-boyfriend.

On May 15, 2024, Cortez Guy, another two-year-old shot and killed himself while under the care of his father.  The father, Omar Guy, and his two cousins were smoking pot in the home when the toddler accessed the gun.  “According to a search warrant, there was a strong odor of marijuana throughout the house, and investigators determined the three men had been smoking marijuana.”  All three were charged on five counts, including involuntary manslaughter, felony gun possession while under the influence and violation of Michigan’s safe storage laws.

While advocates congratulate Michigan for growing a larger marijuana program than California, who is measuring the collateral costs?   Is there any such thing as a safe way to legalize pot?

Poppot warns that child deaths increase when parents smoke pot: violence, guns, hot cars, drownings and fires. Michigan changed its gun laws to accommodate this problem.

New Gun Laws Went into Effect in February

On February 12,  2024, the new gun storage laws went into effect.   The law requires that firearms be locked when it is “reasonably known that a minor is or is likely to be present on the premises.”

After Ethan Crumbley, 15, shot and killed four classmates and wounded seven others at Oxford High School in 2021, the desire to hold parents accountable for underage shootings began. Crumbley admitted to using a gun kept unlocked in his home that had been purchased for him by his father. However, his parents, marijuana smokers who grew pot at home, should have known that Ethan was depressed and could not be trusted with it. James and Jennifer Crumbley, were convicted of involuntary manslaughter and individually sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison.

Mother in Virginia Shooting Charged

The Crumbley case was similar to a case in Virginia, where a first grader accessed the mother’s gun and shot his teacher.  The woman was a marijuana user who lied about her pot use on her gun application.  For this reason, the Department of Justice filed charges against her.  “Investigators later found nearly an ounce of marijuana in Taylor’s bedroom when they searched her home less than two weeks after the shooting as well as evidence of frequent drug use…” 

Like the Crumbleys, the father of the Georgia shooter, Colin Gray, has been charged of involuntary manslaughter.  Earlier reports refer to the father as frequently being “high.”  The son, Colt Gray, allegedly shot and killed two teachers and two students at Apalachee High School.  Read Medical marijuana should not be allowed to own guns.

Toddler lost her eye under father’s care

One week after the new law went into effect in Michigan, a father who allowed three-year-old Skye McBride to access a gun was charged with breaking the law.  The toddler, Skye, shot herself in the eye, but survived. After months of hospitalization and treatment, she returned home.

While it’s not clear if Skye’s father used pot, it’s clear that increased access to pot necessitated changing gun laws.

Pot-using parents forget more often than non-drug using parents. They forget to lock up their edibles as well as their loaded guns.   An easier solution would be to NEVER legalize pot.

Once a state legalizes pot, law enforcement is less likely to report when a crime scene involves marijuana use.

 

Drug Policy, Politics

Choose Your Evil: Trump or Harris

Trump or Harris?  On Monday, September 30, Kamala Harris confirmed what we’ve known all along: she supports nationwide marijuana legalization.

Last month Donald Trump announced that he will vote for Amendment 3, the ballot to legalize marijuana in Florida. He’s making an obvious attempt to bring young voters into his camp.  Neither of the two major party candidates care about the message that legalizing marijuana sends to our kids.  Our response is similar to what Pope Francis said of the candidates: “Choose the lesser evil.”
 Continue reading Choose Your Evil: Trump or Harris →

Drug Policy, Uncategorized

National Academy of Sciences Report Reveals that Legalization isn’t Working

On September 26th, the National Academy of Sciences presented its latest report on marijuana. A distinguished group of scholars and panelists, which included Dr. Steven Teutsch of UCLA, Neuroscientist Yasmin Hurd of the Icahn School of Medicine and Rosalie Pacula of USC, went public in a webinar.

The panel implied that states have done a terrible job of legalizing marijuana, particularly in terms of public health.

This specific report involved health policy and health equity, as opposed to the 2017 NAS Report on the health effects of cannabis and cannabinoids.   We caution that the copy available to the public is a prepublication copy.

In short, the committee was asked to assess the regulatory framework for cannabis.  The 312-page report was divided into six chapters. The webinar panel reported on Chapters 2 through 6, saying that cannabis is “very challenging to regulate.”

The committee was critical of the 2018 Farm Bill which allowed growing hemp with .03 percent THC.  This bill resulted in producers converting hemp into other types of THC (Delta-8 THC, Delta-10 THC which we’ve written about previously.)  A panelist stated:   “Each hybrid has unique and inconsistent effects.”  The implication was that Congress should close this loophole quickly.

Should the federal government step in?

It seems as if Committee Chair, Dr. Steven Teutsch, believes that the federal government needs to step in and regulate the state  legalization programs.

How is it possible that the federal government would be able to regulate cannabis while state governments have failed?  (Although the press sometimes reports of failures, the overwhelming bias of the press is to laud the effort and talk about the potential for tax money.)

During the question-and-answer period, someone asked what other countries do, wondering if other places have been more successful.

The answer came back. Uruguay does the best job in terms of regulation for public safety because the market is centralized and the government controls the market.

We note that Uruguay has a population of 3.4 million, fewer people than most states!  It’s no comparison for the United States.  Because the US is a capitalist country, the safety nets provided by Uruguay will never be imitated in the United States!

Health Impacts Covered in the Report

Panelists noted lots disturbing trends: higher potency, new products and more pregnant women using cannabis, with dispensary workers recommend cannabis to pregnant women.  Increases of use were most remarkable the categories of young adults, males, American Indians/Native Alaskans and those below the poverty line.

As the cannabis industry hoped, daily marijuana use surpassed daily alcohol use in 2022. There were approximately 17.7 daily or near-daily users of marijuana compared to 14.7 daily drinkers of alcohol.  Although far more Americans report drinking alcohol, the frequency of use is less among drinkers than cannabis users 

Chapter 6 covered harmful health impacts of legalization with descriptions by Laura Stack of Johnny’s Ambassadors and Aubree Adams of Every Brain Matters.  Both women lived in Colorado at the outset of cannabis commercialization, and their families suffered because of it.  Stack “highlighted the alarming ease with which teens can access high-potency cannabis, using medical marijuana cards obtained without legitimate medical conditions.” (p. 224) Laura Stack’s son Johnny lost his life in a suicide due to psychosis related to his cannabis use. She’s written two books about it, but the story is not unique or unusual in this new cannabis landscape.

Gabriel Mondragon, who has schizophrenia related to cannabis use and his genetics also spoke to the committee. “The committee heard from more than 20 people, all of whom expressed concerns about the increased cannabis use that follows policy changes and the health impacts of this increased use.” (p. 225)

Social Equity isn’t working either

Since so many believe that millions are in jail for simple marijuana possession alone, the jail argument and its disproportionate effects on minorities motivate voters.

Social equity is a recent aim of legalization programs, as the earliest programs didn’t try to solve that problem.  The report said, “While these initiatives hold promise for mitigating the harms of cannabis prohibition, challenges remain in implementation and effectiveness.”

It also stated that “The data needed to evaluate whether changes in cannabis policy have reduced inequities associated with criminal justice entanglement are lacking.” (p. 209)

In other words, the social equity arguments and claims for legalization haven’t made a difference.  Arrests for cannabis are down in legalization states, but minorities are still arrested at higher rates than whites.

Remember what Hillary Clinton said

 In 2015, Hillary Clinton was asked about marijuana legalization.  She replied that the states are “laboratories for democracy” and suggested a wait-and-see attitude.  Well, now the country seems to be recognizing what we’ve always known all along:  Marijuana legalization is FAILED POLICY!

Although this report recommends federal leadership to clear up the many problems, we do not believe it’s possible.  There’s no roadmap to making a program that has failed consistently start working successfully.  The committee’s recommendations can be found in a summary on pp 4-16.

The bigger the state, the bigger the failure in the US.

(Of course, each state program is different, and all state marijuana programs are inconsistent with federal law.)

California and New York are perhaps the two biggest failures – and the two largest states to legalize pot!

California Governor Gavin Newsom was Lieutenant Governor when California voted to legalize cannabis in 2016. He led a blue-ribbon committee of scholars and scientists to study how to best legalize in California. Backed by the ACLU, the California model hasn’t worked.  Despite the best intentions, California still struggles to control its illegal market.  After 8 years, 70-80% of all sales are still illegal.  (Californians would probably vote to undo legalization if the ballot came up again, but such ballots are very expensive.)

New York’s model of legalization, implemented by the state legislature also failed badly.  Florida, the nation’s 3rd most populous state, could end up with the same issues as New York, if Florida’s legalization ballot, Amendment 3, passes this year.

Americans should learn how to cut their losses and go no further into the tangle of cannabis problems.  We don’t need a bureaucracy of public health experts to attempt correcting something that can’t be corrected.