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Topics Drug Policy. So some experts, even those who favor legalization, prefer the alternative approaches to reform that RAND detailed.
Supporters of legalization say prohibition has failed to significantly reduce access to and use of marijuana, while wasting billions of dollars and resulting in hundreds of thousands of racially skewed arrests each year. Legalization, by comparison, would allow people to use a relatively safe substance without the threat of arrest, and let all levels of government raise new revenues from pot sales and redirect resources to bigger needs.
A report by the American Civil Liberties Union found that there are several hundred thousand arrests for marijuana possession each year. These arrests are hugely skewed by race: Black and white Americans use marijuana at similar rates, but black people were 3. They just want to get a bag of chips and relax. Alcohol is a much bigger problem. At the same time, prohibition has failed to notably reduce marijuana use. The war on drugs was originally intended to take down the supply of illegal drugs, increase prices as a result, and make drugs less affordable and generally less accessible.
Meanwhile, drug prohibition has created a lucrative black market for drug cartels and other criminal enterprises. Through legalization, criminal groups lose much of that revenue, as sales transition to a legal market, crippling resources these organizations use to carry out violent operations around the world. Federal legalization would also let the federal government tax sales to fund new programs, including treatment for people with drug use disorders. Previous estimates put this in the billions, if not tens of billions, of dollars for all levels of government — not nothing, but also not that much.
More broadly, the legalization movement falls into a broader shift against the harsh criminal justice policies that came out of the war on drugs. And, of course, some people just want to be able to toke up without the government getting in the way. Opponents of legalization worry that fully allowing recreational marijuana use would make pot far too accessible and, as a result, expand its use and misuse.
Among alcohol users, for instance, the top 10 percent of users consume, on average , more than 10 drinks each day. Marijuana users exhibit similar patterns. For the marijuana industry, that makes the heaviest users the most lucrative customers.
But I think we have a horrible history of dealing with these kinds of things. Drug policy experts say there are alternatives to commercial legalization, like putting state governments in charge of marijuana production and sales, which could tame the for-profit incentive and give states more direct control over prices and who buys pot.
But legalization opponents worry that any move toward legalization will inevitably attract powerful for-profit forces, especially since the marijuana industry has already taken off in several states. When I look at how things are set up in states like Colorado, where the marijuana industry gets a seat at the table for every state decision on marijuana policy, it troubles me.
Given these concerns, opponents favor more limited reforms than legalization. Other critics of legalization support legalizing marijuana for medical purposes but not recreational use. SAM, for instance, broadly agrees that current drug and criminal justice policies are far too punitive and costly.
But while they may support some reforms, they feel that legalization simply goes too far — and could lead to worse consequences than the alternatives. In total, millions of people across the US report wanting to quit marijuana and being unable to despite negative consequences. The most thorough review of the research yet, from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine , linked marijuana use to a variety of other potential downsides, including respiratory issues if smoked , schizophrenia and psychosis , car crashes, lagging academic and other social achievements, and lower birth weight if smoked during pregnancy.
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