Tag Archives: environmental damage

Drug Policy, Editorial, Environment

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.) Continue reading Expert Opinions burst stoners’ pipe dream of pot legalization! →

Editorial

A Founding father of legal reveals regrets

Excerpts from PERSPECTIVE, published in The Colorado Springs Gazette, April 4, 2021

Editor’s note: Robert Corry played a prominent and pivotal role in the movement to legalize marijuana in Colorado. The University of Colorado graduate and Stanford-trained lawyer helped draft groundbreaking Amendment 64 on Colorado’s 2012 statewide ballot — permitting production and retail sales of recreational pot. Corry also designed and implemented the dispensary framework for patients and caregivers under Amendment 20, enacted by the state’s voters in 2000 to allow medical use of marijuana. As a trial attorney, he represented hundreds of clients accused of marijuana-related offenses, and he litigated cases and administrative actions involving Amendment 64’s implementation. Yet, nearly a decade after voter approval of his handiwork, he now professes deep disappointment and wide-ranging regrets. In today’s Perspective, he issues a searing indictment of how legalization has turned out. He decries the legal marijuana industry’s “crony” capitalism and its cozy relationship with government. He lets on, “I wish I could be proud of what we created, but I’m not. The outcome of 64 is shameful, hurts people, and Colorado is not ‘safer.’ ”

We started with the best of intentions. Colorado Amendment 64, which I helped draft, made three Continue reading A Founding father of legal reveals regrets →