Fitting headlines mark the many challenges of the next era of modern marijuana reforms

There is so much media coverage of so many marijuana related issues that I barely have time to keep up with my reading, let alone blog about all the interesting stories.  (E.g., I keep meaning to blog about the New York Times Magazine’s CBD cover story.)  But in the last day, I saw three lengthy and connected stories that relate to the intersection of marijuana reform, politics and social justice that seems to have come now to define the realities and challenges of this space.  The headlines of the three pieces help capture the themes:

• From the AP, “Pot ‘legalization 2.0’: Social equity becomes a key question“

• From Politico, “How Democrats are failing on legalized marijuana“

• From the New York Daily News, “Let’s really talk about marijuana: I sold the stuff as a kid, and I’m proud to lead the push to decriminalize and end the stigma associated with pot records“

In addition to recommending all these pieces, I will seek to summarize them by just saying it has always been clear to me that effective and sound legal reform in this space is very, very hard and calls for lots and lots of folks working very, very hard to get it as right as possible from the outset and then continuing to work very, very hard to assess and refine reform regimes.