Making the case that the end of marijuana prohibition in Colorado has not really had much of an impact on much
It’s been a little more than five years since Colorado’s voters approved Constitutional Amendment 64, which legalized recreational marijuana in the state. Sales commenced four years ago this January. Although the amendment passed by a comfortable 10-point margin, the debate in Colorado has continued in the years since prohibition ended, most recently flaring up with an editorial published in the Colorado Springs Gazette. Last month, the Gazette’s editorial board referred to what has happened in Colorado as “an embarrassing cautionary tale,” before presenting a laundry list of the purported ill-effects of the change in the law.
That list included everything from the smell of burning marijuana, to increased homelessness, to rampant teen drug use, to a doubling of the number of drivers involved in fatal accidents who test positive for marijuana. This last charge is particularly puzzling as there is no reliable DUI test for marijuana, and drug tests can’t distinguish between marijuana ingested immediately before driving and marijuana ingested a month or more before driving. Not to be dissuaded by science, the editorial board went so far as to quote Marijuana Accountability Coalition founder Justin Luke Riley, who holds that legal marijuana is “devastating our kids and devastating whole communities.”
All of this is doubtlessly music to Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ ears, who is presently making noise about increasing the federal government’s involvement in the fight against legalization. Sessions is on record as saying that “good people don’t smoke marijuana.” He has also supported the death penalty for marijuana dealers, lest there be any doubt which way he breaks on matters of drug prohibition. He recently went so far as to refer to marijuana as “a life-wrecking dependency” which is only “slightly less awful” than heroin.
Between Sessions and the Colorado Springs Gazette one could be forgiven for thinking that marijuana legalization is one of the most pernicious political decisions made in the modern era. Except it isn’t. And there is a pretty significant body of evidence that indicates as much….
Marijuana opponents like Sessions are quick to identify all sorts of evils that will befall society in the wake of legalization. What opponents conveniently ignore are the myriad evils that befall society precisely because of prohibition. Today, over half a million Americans are arrested each year for marijuana possession. That’s more than are arrested annually for all violent crimes combined. Each one of those half-million annual arrests represents a family that is subjected to financial, psychic and sometimes physical harm from police, prosecutors and courts.
Enough is enough. Evidence from Colorado shows that marijuana legalization does not lead to increased teen usage, does not lead to increased homelessness, and does not lead to societal breakdown. If marijuana does destroy lives, it is only because zealots like Sessions make it so. Saving people from themselves at the cost of their liberty is, generally speaking, a bad idea. When it comes to marijuana it is an especially bad idea. And all the lies and distortions of the truth will not change that.