Well, it sounds like you want to treat it like a legal product.
Or a better way forward, which is just decriminalize it.
This looks like a debate.
It's illegal!
That's not true.
But it's not.
Yes, these two advocates fundamentally disagree
about a major policy issue.
I support the legalization
and regulation of cannabis for adults.
I oppose legalization of cannabis.
We could have just had them show up and fight it out.
That's how these things usually go.
"No, I think..."
But when you watch people argue
are you judging content or style?
And how do you know if they're even telling the truth?
So we wanted to try something different.
We asked both Paul and Will
to send us five facts about cannabis legalization
that their opponent would have to concede are true.
They fact checked each other.
We fact checked them, too.
And after going back and forth on the exact phrasing
we landed on 6.
Do you both agree that these are true?
Yes. Yes, I do.
They'll each present their facts and get to respond
to the other's facts with a footnote.
Okay, here we go.
National polls consistently show...
that a majority of the American public support
legalizing marijuana.
In 1969, a minority supported legalization.
Today, it's nearly 70%.
As more states have adopted legalization
support among the public has risen in parallel.
There's no buyer's remorse.
My footnote to that would be
these polls often give what we believe
to be a false dichotomy of choice.
If I have to choose
between arrest and incarceration or legalization
I'm going to choose legalization as well.
But when we dig a little bit deeper and there's some
national polls from Emerson that show that support
for legalization falls well below 50%
when people are presented with other options
such as decriminalization
and the medicinal use of the cannabis plant.
Well, let's talk about those polls, Will.
Even when you provide more choices
the most popular choice is legalizing marijuana by adults.
My name is Will Jones.
I'm the director of community engagement and outreach
at Smart Approaches to Marijuana.
I really believe that we can explore better policy options
when it comes to marijuana policy than either criminalization...
or commercialization.
Decriminalization removes penalties
for the personal possession and use of marijuana.
Legalization and commercialization would allow for businesses
to market and sell marijuana.
And so that's the primary difference between the two.
A recent study reported
higher rates of fatal car crashes in states
that had legal recreational marijuana.
We have to look at, what are all the areas
of society and of public health and safety
that are going to be impacted
through legalization and commercialization?
In fact, the study you cited looked at a subset of states.
Even the authors of this study acknowledge...
it may have nothing to do
with the change in the status of marijuana at all.
That there's a number of different confounders.
Fortunately, we have real world experience in this country
reducing rates of drunk driving.
I am confident that we can continue
to reduce rates of drug driving.
When you commercialize something, you have advertising.
You have marketing.
That increases use.
That's what it's supposed to do.
And when you have more people using,
that percentage of people that use irresponsibly
is going to represent a larger number of people.
Do we know whether use of marijuana goes up
after legalization?
It tends to go up in people
that are about 26.
And so, yes.
The vision here is that we can craft policy with marijuana
where we don't create something that
creates a negative public health impact
that we then have to address
with massive campaigns afterwards.
My name is Paul Armentano.
I always believed strongly in civil liberties.
In a world that doesn't just accept alcohol
but celebrates the use of alcohol.
It is unjust to be ruining people's lives
over their use of a plant.
Police in the United States
still make hundreds of thousands of low level marijuana arrests every year.
Over 90% of those arrests are for simple possession.
And the results of these arrests are significant.
People lose their jobs.
People lose their professional licensure
their right to vote
to possess a gun
subsidized housing.
In some states, they even lose the right to adopt a child.
And those arrested disproportionately are young people
poor people and people of color.
So I agree 100% that
there is systemic inequality and injustice
in the way that the enforcement of marijuana laws
has been carried out in our country.
But when we look at the data from states that have legalized
we see that systemic inequality in law enforcement
even around the laws of legalization, continues to exist.
We still continue to see disparities.
Absolutely.
Nobody ever said legalizing cannabis was going to end
systemic racism or even racism in policing.
But it certainly removes a major tool from that toolbox.
And we've seen in states that have legalized
total arrests for marijuana dropped significantly.
A 2017 survey found that
81% of marijuana business owners in the U.S. are white.
This is a huge contrast to the people
that are most often talked about when we hear
about marijuana legalization, which is entrepreneurs of color
and reinvesting in communities harmed by the war on drugs.
That's a great idea.
But that's not the reality of how it's panning out at all.
The other concern is that the placement
of marijuana businesses is disproportionately
in communities of color
just like we see with liquor stores.
We all want to see greater inclusion
in the commercial marijuana industry.
Of course, one of the reasons we don't have that diversity now
is because the federal law treats cannabis
as a Schedule I controlled substance...
which means that banks and other financial institutions
will not provide lending, will not provide loans
to these would-be entrepreneurs
to allow them to get their foot in the door.
In fact, we have a potential fix: the Safe Banking Act.
But your organization, Will, opposes
that change in federal policy
which would help remedy this very situation.
Yeah, and I think that's because the Safe Banking Act
would open the floodgates to huge tobacco companies
and alcohol companies totally taking over the industry.
And it's a great idea that we want to have smaller
entrepreneurs get into this.
But we know how business works in the US.
We know how capitalism works. On multiple fronts
we're going to continue to see this inequality exist.
Decriminalization leaves the unregulated marketplace intact.
And it continues to perpetuate police interaction
with the community.
It shouldn't have to perpetuate law enforcement.
I think that we can craft decriminalization in a way
that completely removes it
from the criminal justice system
and treats it more as a health issue.
I think like Portugal has done a great job at de-stigmatizing use
and for people to have problematic use to have services
provided for them.
When you say that decriminalization
perpetuates law enforcement contact with marijuana users and sellers
can you explain why that would be?
If it's not a crime, why are the police involved?
Because marijuana is illicit.
Which means it's contraband.
So if the police encounter somebody
possessing or using cannabis
they have a legal responsibility to interact, to seize that cannabis.
They also can continue
to search individuals, pull them over, frisk them
because they claim they smelled cannabis
because, again, cannabis itself
is an illicit substance, not a legal one.
And if a decriminalization law
allows for that, then it's a poorly crafted decriminalization law.
Will, it sounds like you want Washington DC.
People can possess marijuana.
They can grow marijuana.
But there's no regulated commercial market
for people to obtain marijuana.
And that's why we have unregulated shops
gifting marijuana products, selling unregulated products.
Is that a preferable policy to one
where the commercial market is licensed and regulated?
I do think it's preferable
but I think that is because the shops came into place
with the understanding that eventually it would be commercialized.
Even more ideally:
We create a new world, a new concept where it's like
Hey, grow this yourself.
Or if you want to have it and share it with friends, do that.
But this is not something that we're going to allow industries to sell.
Big tobacco and alcohol companies
have invested billions of dollars
into the cannabis industry and are lobbying for legalization
at the federal and state levels.
And this is especially concerning
because we know the track record that these companies
have of addiction-for-profit
whether we're talking about alcohol or the tobacco industries.
It raises some concerns for public health
that I think are very important.
Certainly there are commercial interests.
But to imply that they are the ones driving this train
is simply disingenuous.
This is an issue that was largely pushed on the grassroots level...
20, 30 years ago.
And it remains the grassroots level
that's pushing this issue today.
Not corporations, not big business
but in fact, the people.
Whoever has pushed this for 20 years, at the end of the day
there's big tobacco and alcohol companies
standing by, ready to profit off of that.
And that's a big concern.
I think Will's proposed solutions
policies like decriminalization, don't go far enough...
because at the end of the day
if we don't want criminal entrepreneurs
being the ones providing cannabis
if we want purity of products
if we want products that are labeled and regulated...
then we have to have legalization.
Because we can't impose regulations and rules
on a decriminalized substance.
What this discussion has showed is that we need to move
past the punitive policies that we've had for marijuana
in the past years in our country
while still avoiding the excesses of commercialization.
What you see from continued habitual use for heavy users
that's where you start to see the negative public health costs
whether that's on driving
or whether that's on mental health, whether that's on youth use.
We have to move forward in a way that isn't going to allow
for the exploitation of vulnerable communities
by addiction for profit companies.
Let's cut.
So that's it.
That's our take on a debate.
Big thanks to Paul Armentano and Will Jones
for participating in this experiment.
If there are other topics you'd like to see
please let us know in the comments.