At least some able-bodied Americans may soon be able to score a bag
of weed legally without having to fake a knee injury. In November,
voters in
three states could approve ballot measures to legalize marijuana, and not just for medical purposes – for
getting-high purposes. Then again, they might chicken out, like
California voters did in 2010. But sooner or later, and probably sooner, a state will go green.
About
half of America
will be fine with that. Support for legalization is (no other way to
put it) higher than ever, and rising. That's partly demographics – the
young are more into pot than their elders, who aren't sticking around.
But it's something else, too: The status quo, people are starting to
notice, is a total disaster.
The prohibition on marijuana – a relatively benign drug when used
responsibly by adults, and a teddy bear compared to alcohol and
tobacco – has done an impressive job of racking up
racially-biased
arrests; throwing people in jail; burning up police time and money;
propping up a $30 billion illegal market; and enriching psychotic
Mexican drug lords.
But it hasn't stopped Americans from smoking a ton of weed. We're up to 20-30 million users, 6
billion joints a year – and rising. And teenagers, who ideally
shouldn't be toking up on a regular basis, say pot is
easier to get than beer.
"There's that Talmudic principle that a law that's not obeyed is a bad
law," says Mark Kleiman, a drug policy expert at UCLA and co-author of
the new book
Marijuana Legalization: What Everyone Needs to Know. "And I think we're pretty much at that point."
So, let's try another approach, right? Legalization could come in
many forms, but all would involve tradeoffs. And no doubt there are all
sorts of ways to screw it up. But more power to the first state to give
it a shot.
When that happens, expect one of two things – either: the federal
government, in deference to democratic principles, will decline to
enforce its ban on marijuana, creating space for the state to be a
"laboratory of democracy," working out its new policy by trial and
error, learning as it goes, creating a trove of hard-earned lessons to
guide the states that (inevitably) will follow; or: the federal
government will bide its time and then come down hard, busting growers
and retailers, seizing land and property (or, just as effective,
threatening to), going after banks that serve pot businesses, and doing
whatever else it takes to shut down the state's legalization push.
True, the feds would be within their rights to crack down. A state can legalize all it wants, but – incredibly
– happy-go-lucky marijuana will still be a Schedule I substance, right
up there on the federal shit list with heroin, LSD, and "ecstacy" –
substances defined as having a "high potential for abuse" and "no
currently accepted medical use."* And, no, this isn't some quaint,
disregarded artifact from olden times: A personal stash can get you a
year in federal prison, a single plant up to five.
And don't be surprised if Washington
does crack down. As a candidate, "
Choom Gang"
alumnus Barack Obama talked a good game about bringing some sanity and
proportion to drug enforcement. But during his term, federal prosecutors
(who, in another complication, have wide discretion to pursue their own
agendas) have
cracked down hard
on medical pot providers in states like California where it’s legal.
The administration says it's surgically targeting front operations
supplying recreational use, but it sure doesn't look like that on the
ground. "Obama has been a terrible disappointment," says Keith Stroup,
founder of the drug law reform group NORML.
But maybe the federal government will do the right thing and lay off.
"There's a strong argument for trying it at the state level and for the
feds getting out of the way," says Kleiman. "That seems unlikely, but
I'd love to be proven wrong." (If the president in January 2013 is
zero-tolerance drug warrior Mitt Romney, run for the hills.)
We might not have long to wait to find out. Of the three states where
legalization is up for a vote in November – Colorado, Washington, and
Oregon – Colorado "is definitely the best shot so far," says Steve Fox
of the Marijuana Policy Project, a national lobby group that's kicking
in about $1 million to support the measure. Under
Amendment 64, the
state would treat pot like alcohol – licenses for producers and
sellers, 21-plus age restriction for buyers, and tax revenue government.
Should it pass – and one poll has support up by
61-27
– "We're hoping the federal government will not impose its will," says
Fox, "and that there'll be an adult conversation about what Colorado has
decided to do."
A lot depends on how things play out on the ground, which is hard to predict. A few things we can
assume: the price of pot will plummet, since marijuana is incredibly
inexpensive to produce if you don’t have to dodge the cops or schlep it
up from Mexico. Consumption will surge, though by how much is hard to
say (the consensus guesstimate predicts a doubling or tripling). Beyond
that, nothing is clear.
Amendment 64 leaves a lot of the policy details to the state
legislature, and one of its first tasks will be to figure out how big of
a tax to slap on. It has to be large enough to generate revenue –
Amendment 64 wisely stipulates that the first $40 million generated will
go to public school construction! – but not so large that
buyers prefer to take their chances on the (untaxed) black market.
Another challenge: How do you do a better job than current policy of
reducing teen use? Or combating abuse and dependency – a problem for
only 2-3 percent of users, but not something you can ignore. And how do
you prevent neighboring states, if not the entire country, from getting
buried under mountains of cheap Colorado weed? If the state looks like
becoming the nation's grow house, the feds will probably land hard.
Looking beyond this year, bear in mind that there’s more than one way
to "legalize" pot. Colorado is going with the alcohol model, but there
are other approaches, some more plausible than others. At one end of the
spectrum there's full commercial legalization, where anyone can freely
produce, distribute, market, sell, or buy pot, just like any other
commodity (think: tomatoes) subject to certain regulations. Hard to see
that flying politically. At the other end, there's "decriminalization,"
where you eliminate or reduce penalties for possession (say, to the
level of a minor traffic violation), especially for first-time
offenders, but retain the ban on production, distribution, and sale;
fourteen states, including California and Massachusetts, have already
gone this route, and some major politicians, like
Mayor Rahm Emanuel in Chicago and
Gov. Andrew Cuomo
in New York, have lately come around to the idea. Other options
include, on the production side, restricting the industry to nonprofits,
or membership-based "clubs," or allowing profit-making but limiting or
banning marketing and advertising.
There are tradeoffs: Legalize commercially, whether fully or on the
alcohol model, and you add to the sum of freedom and pleasure in the
world, wrestle an industry away from violent criminals, generate useful
tax revenue, and spare a lot of people jail time and criminal records.
But brace yourself for a huge upsurge in use and, possibly, a marketing
blitz aimed at teens (see tobacco) and the "heavy" users who consume
most of the product and therefore supply most of the profits (see
alcohol); and say hello to a well-funded pot lobby bent on blocking
regulations it doesn't like (see tobacco and alcohol).
Decriminalize, and you save a lot of cop time and money and, again,
human misery. But you’re leaving a lot of tax revenue on the table and,
incoherently, nudging people to buy what's illegal to produce and sell.
Voters will have to weigh these and other factors and decide whether
the (not-fully-knowable) benefits of legalization outstrip the
(hard-to-anticipate) costs. No plausible scenario is all upside; but it's hard to see how we could make things worse. "We
don't say there are no negative consequences to marijuana use, but
there are much more effective ways of dealing with those," says Jill
Harris of the Drug Policy Alliance, a group that advocates for more
liberal drug laws. "It's just that the consequences of marijuana
prohibition are just so much more severe that we feel it's worth the
tradeoff."
Beau Kilmer, a researcher at RAND and co-author of Marijuana
Legalization, says whatever a given state decides to do, lawmakers
should make sure to give themselves an "escape clause," like a sunset
provision that makes the laws go back to what they were after a certain
number of years unless the voters or legislature decide to extend them.
"There's no reason to believe they'll get it right on the first or even
second try," he told me. But once the pot industry develops some
lobbying muscle, the policy will be much harder to tweak. With an escape
clause, he says, legislatures will be able to overcome the lobby "just
by sitting still."
Of course, the federal government might decide not to tolerate legal marijuana under any
circumstances, and all this will be moot. The only way to take the feds
out of the mix is to change federal law, and only congress can do that.
But don't expect too much there. Last year, Reps. Barney Frank and Ron Paul introduced the first-ever
federal legalization bill. It’s not going anywhere anytime soon; another Frank bill, the
Medical Marijuana Patient Protection Act,
which would leave enforcement of medical pot to the states, has been
kicking around the Hill since 1997, but has never made it to a vote.
"Congress is several years behind the general public on this," says Rep.
Jared Polis, a Colorado Democrat and a co-sponsor of both bills. But
even congress is starting to come around. When he first came to
Washington, in 2009, there were only "a handful" of lawmakers prepared
to stand up for more liberal drug laws, says Polis. Today, most
Democrats are on board.
The GOP, not so much. "I've been very disappointed with my fellow
Republicans on this issue," says Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California, a
co-author of the Frank-Paul bill and a rare pro-pot conservative. "I
know that if this was a secret ballot, a majority of them would be
voting on my side." Rohrabacher says a lot of his
states-rights-and-small-government-minded colleagues agree that
marijuana enforcement is a huge waste of tax dollars, but they're not
willing to go there. "They’re are just terrified that in an election
next time around there’ll be ads run against them about how they’re
doing the bidding of the drug dealers."
So don’t look to Washington D.C. for action on this any time soon.
Legalization, when it comes, will come at the state level. There's no
guarantee it will happen this year, but there’ll be more initiatives on
state ballots in 2014, and 2016, and beyond. Most pot activists and
policy analysts I spoke to put the timeframe for legalization at 5-7
years, tops. "We’re guaranteed to win in the end because we’re winning
the hearts and minds of the American public," says NORML’s Keith Stroup.
And then? "If we get state-level legalization and it doesn't turn
into a total clusterfuck, we'll see more acceptance," Kleiman told me.
In any event, he says, something's got to give. "Prohibition is falling
apart, about the way alcohol prohibition fell apart. Legalization is
eventually going to be a recognition of the facts on the ground."
Cee Lo Green is adding another title to his already impressive
résumé. The platinum-selling artist, Grammy winner, Las Vegas
showman, actor and coach on NBC's "The Voice" has been appointed
chief creative officer of Primary Wave Music, the management,
marketing and music publishing company with which he signed in 2010.
