Pubdate: Wed, 20 Nov 2013
Source: Reason Online (US Web)
Contact:  2013 The Reason Foundation
Website: http://www.reason.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2688
Author: Jacob Sullum

ANOTHER CHANCE TO LEGALIZE POT IN CALIFORNIA

If Medical Marijuana Is De Facto Legalization, Why Not Make It Official?

Possessing up to an ounce of marijuana in California is an 
"infraction" punishable by a $100 fine. In other words, state law 
treats pot smoking as a transgression akin to jaywalking or fishing 
without a license. Yet growing and selling marijuana are felonies 
that can send you to prison for years.

If consuming marijuana is not a crime, how can it be a crime merely 
to help someone consume marijuana? That is a question voters will 
confront next fall if the California Cannabis Hemp Initiative 
qualifies for the ballot.

The initiative, which would eliminate all state and local penalties 
for producing, possessing, and distributing marijuana, instructs the 
legislature to regulate cannabis "in a manner analogous to, and no 
more onerous than, California's beer and wine model." That is similar 
to the policies approved last fall by voters in Colorado, where the 
legalization initiative was known as the Regulate Marijuana Like 
Alcohol Act, and Washington, where the state liquor control board 
will license pot shops that are scheduled to open next year.

The Colorado and Washington initiatives both received about 55 
percent of the vote, and recent polling in California indicates a 
similar level of support. All three states have had medical marijuana 
dispensaries for years, and that experience on the whole appears to 
have been reassuring.

The main criticism of the dispensaries-that they cater largely to 
recreational consumers who fake or exaggerate symptoms to get the 
requisite doctor's notes-actually counts in favor of broader 
legalization. If medical marijuana is a charade that amounts to de 
facto legalization, what is there to fear from making it official?

States that allow medical use do not seem to have suffered as a 
result. In fact, Montana State University economist D. Mark Anderson 
and University of Colorado economist Daniel Rees find that enacting 
medical marijuana laws is associated with a 13 percent drop in 
traffic fatalities, possibly because more cannabis consumption means 
less alcohol consumption, which has a much more dramatic effect on 
driving ability.

Anderson and Rees also consider the impact of legalization on pot 
smoking by teenagers. Looking at data from the Youth Risk Behavior 
Survey from 1993 through 2011, they see "little evidence of a 
relationship between legalizing medical marijuana and the use of 
marijuana among high school students." Narrowing the focus to 
California after medical marijuana dispensaries began proliferating, 
they find "little evidence that marijuana use among Los Angeles high 
school students increased in the mid-2000s."

The two economists' conclusion suggests that Californians need not 
worry that repealing pot prohibition will trigger a cannabis 
catastrophe: "We expect that the legalization of recreational 
marijuana in Colorado and Washington will lead to increased marijuana 
consumption coupled with decreased alcohol consumption. As a 
consequence, these states will experience a reduction in the social 
harms resulting from alcohol use. While it is more than likely that 
marijuana produced by state-sanctioned growers will end up in the 
hands of minors, we predict that overall youth consumption will 
remain stable. On net, we predict the public-health benefits of 
legalization to be positive."

That prediction hinges on the assumption that marijuana and alcohol 
are substitutes, meaning that an increase in pot smoking will 
accompanied by a decrease in drinking. Writing in the same issue of 
the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, RAND Corporation drug 
policy expert Rosalie Liccardo Pacula and University of South 
Carolina criminologist Eric Sevigny say the evidence on that point 
"remains mixed." If marijuana and alcohol turn out to be complements, 
they warn, the costs associated with more drinking could outweigh the 
benefits of legalization.

Yet Pacula and Sevigny acknowledge that the hazards associated with 
marijuana itself pale beside the cost of treating its production, 
sale, and use as crimes. Which brings us back to the question of how 
using force to stop people from obtaining marijuana can be morally 
justified, especially in a society that tolerates a much more 
dangerous intoxicant.

This article originally appeared in The Orange County Register.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom