New Jersey paper discusses “The moral case for legal pot”

With the election of a new governor, New Jersey is an especially interesting new state to watch as a legislative debate over recreational marijuana reform heats up.   This morning the state’s leading paper, the Newark Star-Ledger, weighed in with this editorial headlined “The moral case for legal pot.” Here are excerpts:

Gov. Phil Murphy wants to legalize pot in his first 100 days in office, but needs the votes to do it — and is facing some opposition even within his own party.

It’s especially troubling to hear Sen. Ronald Rice (D-Essex), who chairs the black caucus, and a Newark bishop claim that marijuana legalization will hurt black communities. In fact, it’s quite the opposite, which is why so many black leaders and groups like the NAACP support legalization.  So let’s address the lingering skepticism.

First, there’s no evidence that legalizing marijuana for adults will “gut the best and brightest in many neighborhoods,” as Newark Bishop Jethro James put it, in a sermon he invited Murphy to attend on Martin Luther King Day. On the contrary, it’s the criminalization of marijuana that has gutted the best and brightest, as many other black leaders point out.

While blacks use pot at the same rate as whites, they are arrested nearly four times more often for it — needlessly ensnaring them in our criminal justice system.  It’s the kind of injustice that would outrage MLK.  The real moral issue is “keeping people in jail for something they can now go out and purchase legally in many states,” said Rev. Tim Jones of Bethany Baptist Church in Newark, who supports legalization.

Some legislators, like Rice, argue that instead of making pot legal and taxing it, we could simply decriminalize it — permit people to have a small amount, instead of arresting them.

This would end the arrests of pot users, but we’d still have the same illegal market. Those who sell pot in places like Newark would still get shot in turf battles between dealers and people would still buy dangerous and illegal marijuana on the streets. The city also wouldn’t have the tax revenue from controlled and regulated sales, which could be used for things like schools or anti-drug education….

It is true that after Colorado legalized marijuana, the number of young minorities arrested for pot offenses went up 58 percent. That’s disturbing, but an increase in arrests does not mean an increase in drug use by kids. On the contrary: There was a slight decrease in youth drug abuse after legalization in Colorado, research showed. So what would account for the surge in youth arrests? A shift in policing strategy, one we must prevent here….

In the end, this isn’t about big marijuana profits, as Rice and Bishop James claim.  The best argument for legalization isn’t money — it’s morality.  Prohibition taught us that making alcohol illegal caused even greater moral problems, like the rise of organized crime.  The same is true of marijuana, Rev. Jones says: “The more it’s controlled and out in the open, the better for our communities.”