The legalization of marijuana has won – Vox

The US is approaching a turning point over the legalization of marijuana: Nearly half of the country – about 43 percent of the population – now lives in a state where marijuana is legal to consume just for fun.

In the past two months alone, an eruption occurred when four states across the U.S. legalized marijuana for recreational use: New Jersey, New York, Virginia, and Monday, New Mexico.

This is a major shift that has taken place over a number of years. A decade ago, no states allowed marijuana for recreational use; the first states to legalize cannabis in 2012, Colorado and Washington, did so through voter-driven initiatives. Now, 17 states and Washington, DC, have legalized marijuana (though DC does not yet allow sales), with five enacting their laws through lawmakers, showing that even typically cautious politicians support the issue.

At this point, the issue of nationwide legalization of marijuana is more a matter of when, not than. At least two-thirds of the U.S. public support the change, based on various opinion polls over the past year. Of the 15 states where marijuana legalization has taken place on the ballot since 2012, it has been approved in 13 – including Republican-dominated Alaska, Montana and South Dakota (although the South Dakota measure is currently being held in court ). In the 2020 election, the legislative initiative in the swing state of Arizona received nearly 300,000 more votes than Joe Biden or Donald Trump.

Legalization has also created a huge new industry in many populous states, including California and (soon) New York, and the industry is going to push to continue with the expansion. One of the US’s neighbors, Canada, has already legalized pot, and the other, Mexico, is likely to legalize it soon and create an international market that would like to take advantage of American consumers.

The walls are closing this issue for opponents of legalization – and fast.

Many politicians have played it cautiously in response to these trends. While some high-profile Democrats, including Senate leader Chuck Schumer, have voiced their support, Biden is still resisting legalization. Republicans, including Trump, have been almost completely opposed.

But at this point, their refusal comes more as a last gasp than a movement that can hold back the tide of change. At some point, lawmakers will have to follow public opinion or lose an election. And the public always spoke very clearly.

What is less clear is how this will happen. Maybe it will be a slow, state-by-state fight before the federal government ends its own ban on cannabis, or maybe federal action will lead to a spate of states making it legal. What has become clear is that legalization will eventually win, and the vast majority of states, if not all, will soon join the ranks of the legislators.

Marijuana legalization is very popular

In the span of two decades, legalization of marijuana has gone from a side issue to one that embraces the vast majority of Americans.

In 2000, only 31 percent of the country supported the legalization, while 64 percent opposed it, according to Gallup’s public surveys. By 2020, the numbers had reversed: the most recent Gallup poll on the subject showed that 68 percent supported legalization and 32 percent were against it.

There are some possible explanations for browsing. The general failure of the war on drugs to stop widespread drug addiction (see: the opioid epidemic), as well as the setback of the penal policy brought about by the drug war, has made many Americans yearn for new approaches. The public has seen that marijuana is not that bad – less harmful than legal drugs such as alcohol or tobacco. The advent of the internet has probably accelerated some of these conversations as well, and the proliferation of medical marijuana may have shown more Americans that the U.S. can handle the legalization of the drug.

Gallup

Regardless, the trend toward support is found in just about every major survey on this issue, with voting groups consistently supporting a strong majority for legalization, from the Pew Research Center (67 percent in 2019) to the General Social Survey (61 percent in 2018). ).

The tendency towards legalization also occurs in the real world. Voters in Oregon rejected a legislative measure in 2012, only to approve a separate initiative two years later. Voters in Arizona said no to a legislative measure in 2016, only to approve another one four years later.

There is even solid Republican support for legalization. Gallup found that a slim majority of Republicans supported it in 2017, 2018 and 2019; a majority opposed it in 2020, but the difference was within the margin of error, and a significant minority of 48 percent still legalized it. Pew also found that a majority of Republicans – 55 percent – supported legislation in 2019.

This Republican support is also seen in the real world. In the 2020 election, Trump won Montana by 16 points and South Dakota by 26 points. In both states the same year, most voters approved legislative initiatives, with fairly strong margins of about 8 percentage points in South Dakota and 16 percentage points in Montana.

To put it another way, marijuana legalization appears on the ballot in four Republican-dominated states: Alaska, Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota. It is won in three of them, losing only in North Dakota. Marijuana legalization is 3-1 in solid red states!

There is little reason to think that any of these trends will change any time soon.

There is not much that can turn it around

There is a world in which you can see that growing support for the legalization of marijuana is suddenly collapsing. Maybe things, after legalizing Colorado, Washington or a few other states, went really bad. Teen use has increased, along with car accidents, crime, ER visits related to pots, and other bad outcomes. Voters see the error of their ways and change of course.

But that just did not happen. In the countries that are legal, things have generally gone well. In the early days, there were concerns about marijuana-rich foods, but the concerns quickly died out as regulators introduced new rules and stores strengthened their advice to beginners on how to eat food. The huge increases in all the problem outcomes that legalization opponents were warned against never materialized.

A big story here is how often politicians support flip-flops to support legalization once their state becomes legal and things basically go well. In Colorado, the then government. John Hickenlooper in 2012 said he opposed the ballot box measure, only to fully support legalization and boast about how his government applied it by the time he elected the senator in 2020. March that the one thing he would do differently, “[embrace] this position to decriminalize it earlier, if I knew how successful it was, with not really a huge increase in youth use, which was a source of concern as we debated this. ‘

There are also major forces that will continue to support legalization and encourage its expansion. The U.S. marijuana industry is now valued at more than $ 18 billion, supporting the equivalent of more than 300,000 full-time jobs, more than the total number of electrical engineers or dentists, according to the 2021 Leafly Jobs Report.

It’s now simply a big industry, for better or worse. Any politician who wants to close it can get the wrath of hundreds of thousands of people losing their jobs. And because it’s a promising industry, there’s a strong economic incentive – between additional jobs and tax revenue – for more states to pass legislation.

Not to mention the fact that this important new industry can now use its economic weight to directly support legalization measures, and make much-needed funding available to get them across the finish line. In this way, the legalization of marijuana so far at the ballot box will lead to more success.

Of course, there are still major obstacles to the legalization of nationwide. Marijuana remains totally illegal under federal law, even in states that have legalized it under their own laws. International treaties prohibit countries from legalizing marijuana for recreational purposes (although Canada, Mexico and Uruguay are legal, no one seems to really care). Most of the U.S. population still lives in a state that is not legalized, and it will take a lot of time and effort in legislatures and polls to change that.

But it is now very clear where the trends are heading. It may take a few more years to become a national reality, but the legalization of marijuana is here to stay.