Cannabis has a complicated history in the United States.
It is only through enlightenment that this scourge can be wiped out.
They both smoke pot. That's jive talk for marijuana
People who push drugs must be put in jail for a minimum of 50 years.
Someone caught, even with a small amount, can be sent to prison.
President Carter today came out for an end to all federal criminal
penalties for the possession of up to one ounce of marijuana.
Marijuana could very well be the most dangerous threats to an entire
generation of Americans of any drug that we know.
I experimented with marijuana at the time or two, and I didn't like it and
didn't inhale and never tried it again.
Sentiment about cannabis in the U.S.
is tied up in feelings about public health, race, crime and morality.
And that complicated relationship makes the rapid change in public
sentiment toward decriminalizing and legalizing the drug even more
surprising. Every ballot initiative involving the decriminalization or
legalization of marijuana passed in the 2020 election.
Voters in New Jersey, Arizona and South Dakota chose to legalize marijuana
for adult recreational use.
South Dakota and Mississippi voted to legalize medical marijuana use.
That means 15 states, along with the District of Columbia, have legalized
marijuana for adult recreational use.
And 36 states and D.C.
permit medical use of the drug.
Now, a third of the country lives in a state where medical marijuana is
legal, with eight Republican senators representing legal cannabis states.
Additionally, the Democratic controlled House of Representatives just
passed the Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment and Expungement Act or the
MORE Act. The bill would legalize marijuana at the federal level and
implement sweeping regulations and reforms surrounding the drug.
The 2020 election and the House vote reveals something important about the
shift in the marijuana debate.
Marijuana may be one of the few truly bipartisan issues in the United
States right now, with 91 percent of Americans saying it should be legal
for medical use, including nearly six in 10 Americans favoring
legalization for both medical and recreational use.
Despite the long road marijuana had in the U.S..
Legalization advocates think the government may be on its way to be
scheduling the drug after 50 years of it being criminalized at the federal
level. Here's how the U.S.
ended up with a web of contradictory marijuana policy and where the law
might be headed from here.
There has been a lengthy history of cannabis in the United States that has
generally followed two tracks, medical and recreational.
By the late eighteen hundreds, there were a wide number of medicinal uses
for cannabis. People used it as a pain reliever to treat nausea and even
to soothe the gums of teething babies.
Its role as a recreational substance is about 100, 120 years old when
migrants fleeing the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz in Mexico came to the
U.S. and started settling along the U.S.
Mexico border.
The migrants were able to recognize cannabis use as a recreational
substance, which was very different than how Americans had been using the
drug. And of course, this becomes immediately an issue because it is a
minority population that is currently being demonized during this period.
Nearly every state west of the Mississippi River past anti marijuana
legislation, and by 1933, about 30 states had outlawed marijuana for
non-medical use.
Congress passed the first federal law that addressed recreational marijuana
use in 1937 called the Marijuana Tax Act.
It didn't specifically outlaw cannabis.
Instead, it required anyone who grew distributed or used marijuana to
register with the federal government and pay a small tax.
What essentially that allowed the federal government to do was to collect
the names and identifying information of everyone who is involved in the
cannabis trade, making it easier to keep an eye on them and essentially
allow the government to survey their activities.
In the 1940s, World War II made hemp patriotic.
The military needed it to create rope and other useful materials.
With the end of the war, measures to crack down on weed ramped up again.
And with the counterculture of the 60s, it became a symbol of protest.
When Richard Nixon entered the Oval Office in 1969, he made drug
prohibition one of his main priorities, culminating in the Controlled
Substances Act of 1970, which created a scheduling system for drugs.
The system is based on two criteria the drugs, medicinal value and the
drug's potential for abuse.
Schedule one drugs are considered to have no medical value and high
potential for abuse.
The legislation gave the control of determining which schedule drugs
should fall under to Nixon's attorney general, John Mitchell, rather than
to a doctor such as the surgeon general.
When Nixon and Mitchell, both of whom were adamantly opposed to marijuana
use because they saw it tied to the counterculture civil rights movement
and the uprisings of the 60s when they tried to put cannabis into Schedule
one, they had a hard time convincing Congress that that was where it
should go in order to reach an agreement with Congress.
They said they would form a commission to study marijuana in the U.S..
Nixon and Mitchell subsequently classified marijuana as a Schedule One
drug alongside heroin, LSD and ecstasy, while the commission, which came
to be known as the Shafer Commission, set about studying marijuana.
The report ended up contradicting that decision, determining after a two
year examination of marijuana users that the drug did not cause the
concerned side effects such as a lack of motivation or increased
aggression. Nixon refused to accept these findings and kept marijuana
classified as a Schedule one drug.
But the commission's report didn't go unnoticed.
It became available to the public, and many activists took it upon
themselves to work to decriminalize the drug at the state level.
Between 1973 and 1978, a dozen states across the country decriminalize
marijuana, essentially making possession of up to an ounce of cannabis,
the equivalent of a parking violation.
But the decriminalization came to a crashing halt in 1978 when concerned
parents began pushing back.
As decriminalization spread across the country, so too did additional
industries that aided in the consumption of this decriminalized drug
paraphernalia magazines, movies, music.
So a lot of the products were available to children.
And that was the crux of the problem.
In the late 90s, public sentiment surrounding marijuana use began to turn.
In 1996, California became the first state to legalize cannabis for medical
use, and in 2012, Colorado and Washington became the first states to
legalize marijuana for adult recreational use.
15 states and D.C.
have followed suit since then, culminating in the major wins for the
legalization movement in 2020.
The conflict between federal and state laws pose challenges to cannabis
businesses operating legally at the state level.
One of the biggest issues for businesses is a lack of access to banking
services, as well as the inability to get loans.
Anyone running a legal cannabis business, according to state law, is still
considered a criminal at the federal level.
That means banks, including state chartered ones, are at risk of federal
regulators deciding that the financial institutions are violating money
laundering laws. This means multimillion dollar businesses have to
function largely as cash only enterprises.
A big shift for the cannabis industry came when the Justice Department in
2013 issued what is referred to as the Cole memorandum.
The memorandum provided a set of criteria for states operating
recreational and medical cannabis programs, such as preventing diversion
to the black market and protecting minors and other vulnerable populations
from accessing cannabis products.
The Department of Justice had a policy that if states could meet these
standards, it would not enforce federal marijuana law in those states.
In January 2018, Attorney General Jeff Sessions during President Donald
Trump's administration rescinded the Cole memorandum.
After the recession of the Cole memorandum, every single U.S.
attorney in each state actually still abided by that same criteria that
was included in the Cole memorandum because it was good policy and it made
sense and it just wasn't feasible to enforce federal
law in the way that anyone in the Trump administration had threatened to
do. The criminalization of cannabis has led to a large number of people
being charged and incarcerated for possession or trafficking of the drug.
Pew Research Center found after analyzing data from the FBI that four in 10
U.S. drug arrests in 2018 were for marijuana offenses.
A 2020 ACLU analysis of FBI crime data found that despite an increasing
number of states legalizing or decriminalizing marijuana, law enforcement
made at least half a million marijuana arrests in 2018, more than for any
other drug. The report also found that Black Americans were nearly four
times more likely than white Americans to be arrested for marijuana
possession, despite the two groups using the drug at the same rates.
Between 2010 and 2018, marijuana arrests in the United States trended
downward slightly but rebounded at several points.
As of 2018, the national downward trend appears to have leveled off, even
as the number of states that have legalized or decriminalize marijuana has
increased. Maritza Perez is the national affairs director for the Drug
Policy Alliance, a nonprofit that advocates for complete legalization of
marijuana. It continues to be one of the main drivers of drug arrest -
marijuana possession, that is, and marijuana use.
It continues to be a driver of deportations.
So it's a major criminal justice issue that really has lifelong
consequences for people with convictions.
But some have expressed concerns around legalization for recreational use.
Kevin Sabet is the president and CEO of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, a
nonprofit organization that opposes the commercialization and non-medical
legalization of marijuana.
So I think there's been a false dichotomy over the last 20 or 30 years that
pits legalization against incarceration or the war on drugs, as if those
were the only two options we have for drug policy or for marijuana policy.
And I think the reality is there are far more innovative, cost effective,
interesting policies that frankly are much more in the middle and don't
fall into the trappings of either, you know, criminalizing especially
certain groups that are disproportionately affected or on the other hand,
glamorizing, normalizing and commercializing today's very high, potent
marijuana, you know, sold by Big Tobacco, Big Alcohol and Big Pharma.
And we all sort of know how that movie ends with those industries.
Why would we want to have marijuana follow the same suits?
We think that in order to really have a framework around drug policy that's
built in equity, you need to account for the legalization component
because legalization often means that you're regulating the drug.
So decriminalization is great at the start.
But, you know, I think full legalization is really how we get issues
surrounding equity. I personally believe our goal should be to discourage
use, not encourage use.
It's hard to discourage use if there's a pot shop on every corner and
selling really nicely looking glamorous items that promise the world in
terms of how they make you feel, etc..
I think people need to realize that the interest that big tobacco and big
alcohol have in the marijuana industry.
This isn't about Cheech and Chong or mom and pop stores.
This is about a major industry that is being taken over by the alcohol
industry and by the tobacco industry.
So I just don't see how this is going to be helpful for anybody when these
big interests take over.
The needle has moved enough on public opinion that the House of
Representatives made the historic move toward legalizing marijuana at the
federal level with the passage of the more act, the more act would not
only remove marijuana from the list of controlled substances, but would
also address criminal justice reform by allowing the expungement and
resentencing of marijuana convictions.
The legislation would also tax the marijuana industry in order to fund
social programs that would invest resources into communities that have
been most impacted by marijuana prohibition.
And the taxes would also provide support to underrepresented communities
trying to enter the cannabis industry.
Even if marijuana legalization and decriminalization seem like bipartisan
issues at the ballot box, Republican and Democratic lawmakers in
Washington still seem far apart on the issue.
The MORE act passed in the House along party lines, with five Republicans
voting in favor of the bill and six Democrats voting against it.
To me, I don't really take that as an indicator of, you know, Republicans
being against the policy itself.
I think a lot of them behind closed doors will say that they think that we
need to legalize marijuana.
I think the problem with many Republicans in terms of MORE Act
specifically, they are reluctant to impose a five percent and then eight
percent tax. And then there are various aspects of the bill that they
would want to amend because it provides too much regulatory oversight by
the federal government. The MORE Act couldn't be passed during the regular
session of Congress because it's so controversial.
So it was passed during the lame duck session, but I don't really see this
as having much momentum going forward with the new Congress.
There are still many Democrats that are uneasy with the idea of the MORE
Act. And I think there are ways where we can decriminalize marijuana
without opening up with the MORE Act to do, which is create a new huge for
profit industry.
It was pure, unadulterated, for profit, really irresponsible and reckless,
full legalization of high THC products.
So I don't really see it going forward further than it already has.
The MORE Act is not expected to be taken up by the Senate this term.
But Perez still thinks the passage of the bill in the House sets a
precedent for policy advocacy going forward.
We knew that this would you know, there's no way that this is going to go
through the Senate this year. But that wasn't the goal.
The goal was to have a marker bill where the House of Representatives had
to take a vote on this issue and we can see where they landed.
Also, we wanted to just let it be known that if it's not the MORE Act, if
it's less than that, like it's just not a marijuana bill that Congress
should be wasting their time on.
President elect Joe Biden and Vice President elect Kamala Harris might
disagree on marijuana policy.
Biden has said that he is in favor of decriminalizing the drug and has
embraced legalization for medical use.
He has not come out in favor of legalizing marijuana for adult recreational
use at the federal level and prefers to reschedule the drug rather than
descheduling it entirely.
Harris, however, sponsored the MORE Act in the Senate and has taken a much
more progressive stance on marijuana legalization.
When Joe Biden picked Kamala Harris, I know that he knew what she stands
for. He strategically made that pick because I think that he feels like he
has a lot of work to do, at least on the criminal justice end, given his
background on those issues, as I do think that she could perhaps push him
on this issue, if not at least begin to educate them.