I know the president has bigger problems (they always do) but he should find a way to implement a sensible federal marijuana policy, because what he has been doing is inadequate and has caused a lot of injustice. It’s particularly troubling coming from a former member of the Choom Gang.
In the new issue of the Washington Monthly there is extensive coverage of the challenges associated with the legalization of marijuana.
Here’s editor in chief Paul Glatris, explaining:
In a devastating critique in the Washington Monthly, two experts who have advised Washington State on its marijuana legalization, Mark Kleiman and Jonathan Caulkins, warn that the current approach being taken by that and other states will lead to a public health disaster. It will result in a marijuana market dominated by large commercial interests whose profits will come not from occasional pot smokers but from habitual daily (even hourly) users. We’ll see marijuana commercials on Super Bowl broadcasts, pot brownies at 7-Eleven checkout counters, a vast increase in abuse, minimal tax revenues, and government regulators too weak to do anything about it.
This dystopia can be avoided, say the authors, by cutting out the corporate sector and limiting marijuana sales to government or nonprofit stores. But that won’t happen unless the federal government takes charge of the legalization juggernaut, and soon. Also, as Jonathan Rauch argues, the biggest threat to marijuana legalization is bad implementation of the kind we saw last fall with health care exchanges.
I guess they are thinking of something like Pennsylvania’s state-run liquor stores. It’s hard for me to envision state-run pot stores, but maybe it’s possible.
I think President Obama should, at a minimum, ask the Department of Health & Human Services and the Federal Drug Administration to do a new study and make recommendations on whether or not marijuana should remain as a Schedule One drug. Presuming that the study justifies lowering the scheduling classification, he ought to go ahead and approve that. And he needs to have his pardon pen ready, because he needs to rectify a whole lot of bad arrests that have taken place on his watch.
at some point i’m gonna be “do potheads ever do anything other than bitch?”
come on.
we had to put up with years of their babbling about “zomg help cures cancer man!” “hemp makes you good at math! no really man!” and all
the shit’s legal. have a fucking coke and a smile whiners. sheesh
I don’t smoke pot.
You should know as well as anyone that it’s not just “potheads” who care about pot laws – it’s a social justice, racial justice, and economic issue as well.
And you should also know – because you live here – that the way WA State is trying to implement I-502 has, so far, been a perfect clusterfuck.
And I don’t smoke pot, either.
Agreed. Going so unregulated is a mistake for just about anything, and going from one extreme to another may compound the problem.
However it is my understanding that you can’t even do legal studies on a schedule one drug.
It’s supposed to be handled by the FDA and the DEA.
That’s why, from a statutory point of view, Obama shouldn’t just declare pot in a different schedule. There’s a process he should go through, and it’s the same as for any other drug. But he can ask for a review.
We don’t need any studies of the drug before legalization. It’s already known that it has some of the same negative properties as alcohol and tobacco. Behaviorally not anywhere near the violent and destructive consequences of alcohol consumption. As for the physical health consequences, not as bad as alcohol and tobacco but whether that “not as bad” is by a small or large amount isn’t yet known and will require legalization to study it.
Legislating that marijuana must be sold in dispensaries selling little else is stupid. It’s also stupid to begin and end the government oversight at the retail point of sale. Take what has worked well for alcohol and tobacco production and regulation and don’t repeat the mistakes. The latter includes dirt poor tobacco farmers, and alcohol and tobacco production and distribution barons and corporations.
(And PA can add a new product line to its state liquor stores.)
It’s hard for me to envision state-run pot stores, but maybe it’s possible.
Well, just envision a medical cannabis dispensary. They aren’t state-run, of course, but they are sanctioned by the state under certain conditions, and the main condition is no profiteering. That’s basically how it works in California right now. The idea that it’s for medical use may be a pretense for a lot of users, but the medical marijuana regime does at least keep out the profiteers.
Kleiman sees an addict around every corner. His schtick is growin quite old. On MJ, the fewer regulations the better, in general. I’m not saying an anarchist free for all a la California, but labeling shouldn’t be complicated, addiction is extremely low, and state owned stores are bad news. It’s also bad to liberalize them once state owned — lots of lost tax revenue — but I see no upside of making them state owned. I prefer the “tomatoe seed model” to legalization than the Byzantine promotion-lite model of kleiman.
Prohibition-lite.
Good post. It is a transition that effects a lot of people and now is the time to sort out how to do it wisely.
I found Kleiman’s apparent faith in Congress a little disturbing though:
I’m a divorce attorney in Washington. One of my clients believes he’s going to get rich as a marijuana distributor. Color me skeptical.
There’s a lot of folks like this. And they’ve already lost a shitton of money buying the few desirable real estate holdings eligible for either production or retail facilities, while the liquor control board dithers on and continually postpones its regulations.
Know who’s swooping in – with cash – and buying those distressed properties and license applications? The Russian mob. Seriously. Oh, and the state legislature is trying its hardest to force medical marijuana patients into the much more expensive and limited commercial market, because tax revenues. (Prescription medications are supposedly tax-exempt, but never mind that.)
It won’t be long before the huge chains ala Costco, the force behind dismantling the state liquor store system a couple of years ago (which would have been the logical place for initial distribution), start to get in on the action. Big fish eating smaller fish eating smaller fish. The tobacco companies – among many others – are watching CO and WA carefully. Their market is shrinking; they’ve been waiting for this for years.
There is a huge market and a lot of money completely up for grabs. That inspires a lot of ruthlessness, which will be tremendously ugly without pretty firm and clear-headed regulation. That’s pretty much the opposite of what’s happened so far.
Marijuana isn’t as cheap to grow, harvest, and cure as tobacco, but in a legalized and regulated environment, the cash crop price of marijuana wouldn’t be 800 times that of tobacco.. (Tobacco $2.05/poundNot even close to the recent $1,000/pound price that has upset growers.
Consumers should want growers to do well but they also should expect regulators to protect them from price goughing by growers, distributors, retailers, and taxing entities.
DC just officially decriminalized it today.
http://dcist.com/2014/03/dc_council_passes_marijuana_decrimi_1.php
I dunno about reclassification any more. I really support regulized legalization.
I think there was a good WaMo article recently talking about the problems with rescheduling… as I recall pointed out that schedules II-V are all for drugs that are a single compound in an FDA-approved formulation. Fitting marijuana into that scheme is kind of a square peg-round hole problem.
Kleiman, State Laboratories, and Advertising for Addicts
As usual, with Mark, it’s a mix of some very good material and some unsupported nonsense that is just there to support his personal nanny-state preferences for public policy.
snip
Legalization isn’t happening at the state level because states didn’t want the federal government to do it. Legalization is happening at the state level because there was no other choice. The federal government was simply not doing its job, and instead was stonewalling to try to prevent the necessary systems from being developed, even going so far as to systematically lie to the public and to block research.
Too much good to really snip here. I encourage you to read the entire thing.