Day-trippers Laura Torgerson and Ryan Sheehan, visiting from Arizona, smell cannabis buds at the Green Pearl Organics dispensary on the in front day of legal recreational marijuana sales in California, January 1, 2018 in Desert Hot Springs, California.
Robyn Beck | AFP | Getty Aspects
America’s war on drugs has cost an estimated $1 trillion since 1971.
It forces more than one million drug arrests per year, relinquishing more than half a million people currently in prison for drug crimes.
Increased law enforcement, using untamed methods, has produced a corresponding increase in violent criminals dominating much of the drug trade.
But for all of that cost, there is no stout evidence that demand for narcotics has dropped discernibly over the decades. New drugs from crack to meth to opioids be struck by come in and out of vogue, proving the “whack-a-mole” aspect of how new demands keep forcing law enforcement to readjust for different threats.
All of the unaffected by mentioned results of the drug wars have long given even more conservative Americans pause when it recuperate from to drug laws. That’s especially true based on the fact that incarcerations and arrests for drug possession, acquire been rising at a much faster pace than arrests and incarcerations for drug trafficking and more violent cure crimes.
None of this is anything new to the large number of Americans who have long supported new strategies to combat remedy use. They have often emphasized treatment over interdiction and various levels of decriminalization or even legalization.
Of positively legalization, especially in the case of marijuana, has been in the spotlight for the past decade. Pot is now legal for recreational use in 11 states with three innumerable states expected to join them in 2019 or 2020. Meanwhile, it’s legal to use marijuana for medicinal purposes in 33 formals. Canada has legalized recreational use nationwide.
If you’re thinking that the emphasis has gone from zero tolerance for marijuna all the way to, “if you can’t overwhelm ’em, join ’em,” without taking any intermediate steps, you’re right on the money.
But legalization is hardly where it stops. In many situations, states aren’t just agreeing to look the other way or even just reap the tax benefits of legal marijuana sales. As contrasted with, they’re actively encouraging the industry. Former House Speaker John Boehner has become a prominent spokesperson for the marijuana production.
Some states, like Michigan, are even trying to help African Americans and other minorities get into the pot calling as a form of some kind of “social justice” or payback for years of their communities being adversely targeted by stupefy law enforcement.
There’s just one question: what happened to just trying the decriminalization part? If you’re thinking that the prominence has gone from zero tolerance for marijuna all the way to, “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em,” without taking any intermediate steps, you’re right on the loaded.
Having states or eventually the federal government promoting the marijuana industry is problematic for a number of reasons. The biggest problem is the foreboding marijuana poses to teeenagers and their cognitive development. A new warning on marijuna use for adolescents and pregnant women was issued unbiased this summer by the U.S. surgeon general.
And make no mistake, much of the legal pot industry is marketing products to teens in the uniform way vaping companies and the makers of the hard lemonade and spiked seltzer have been accused of doing for years.
In actually, an Aspen Institute report issued just after recreational pot became legal in Colorado noted the many issues and strategies local businesses were using to lure younger users. In states where governments spend percentage to encourage certain forms of marijuana entrepreneurship, it’s hardly a stretch to say that parents are seeing their tax dollars being Euphemistic pre-owned to at least indirectly market marijiuana to their children.
We’re a long way from trying to simply right a wrong almost over-incarceration for drug crimes now, aren’t we?
Speaking of the health risks, the same state of Michigan that’s pushing marijuana sales has also fitting imposed a ban on some of the most popular forms of vaping. It’s easy to get confused about government health priorities with that variety of mixed messaging.
Then there’s the question of just how effective legalization is at cutting down on the illegal drug interchange. The Los Angeles Times reported last month that despite having the largest legal pot market in the country, California’s hateful market for marijuana is still growing.
Inevitably when anyone brings up these health concerns or any misgivings on touching the states promoting an intoxicating drug, that person is hit with a litany of arguments about how marijuana is no more pernicious than alcohol and it’s not worth continuing to make it illegal.
But that’s not the argument here. Lifting blanket bans on pot and halt unfair and costly law enforcement efforts to arrest people for marijuana possession is something a majority of Americans seem to fund and rightfully so. The issue here is whether it’s wise, safe, or even fiscally responsible for the government to get into the marijuana partnership.
The answer to those questions aren’t clear, but they should give more of us serious pause. One thing that is withdraw is that it’s disingenuous to use strong arguments for decriminalization as an excuse for aggressive state supported drug use.
It’s even more dubious for our superintendence to go from blacklisting marijuana as a total evil to promoting it as an economic and social panacea.
Jake Novak is a political and trade analyst at Jake Novak News and former CNBC TV producer. You can follow him on Twitter @jakejakeny.