Friday, November 11, 2022

Marijuana legalization advances in the 2022 elections

Time Magazine published this map under the headline "Why Marijuana Had a Terrible Night in the 2022 Midterm Elections"

It doesn't look so terrible to me, so much as increasingly inevitable. The grey states on the map (where marijuana remains entirely illegal) are shrinking steadily: it doesn't appear that opponents will succeed in making America grey again.


 "Nineteen states and the District of Columbia allow recreational use of marijuana; 13 states outlaw it entirely. The rest of the states—including Arkansas, South Dakota and North Dakota—allow its use for medicinal purposes. It remains illegal under federal law."

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It's going to become increasingly hard for States to enforce draconian laws against something that is legal in neighboring states.  That doesn't mean that legalization is always going to go smoothly--the end of Prohibition didn't end alcoholism, and the end of marijuana prohibition won't make marijuana chemically safer (in fact competition will develop strains that are chemically more potent).  But removing legal risks from what would otherwise be uncontrolled black markets, and taking them out of the hands of criminals, still seems to have momentum.

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