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 which is to stop arresting people. If fines are maintained for public smoking,  they’re not enforced.   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 needs to be asked why our drug deaths went up, not down since 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.