It was just over a year ago that laws
went into effect in Colorado legalizing the recreational use of marijuana, and similar laws
became effective in Washington State six months later. More than 20 states have legalized the medicinal use of marijuana, and efforts are underway to increase that number. Last November, voters in the District of Columbia tried to follow suit, but their successful ballot initiative
was effectively blocked by a rider to the Congressional budget proposal that kept the government open.
This thrust and parry is characteristic of the debate over marijuana prohibition, but advocates of legalization are slowly but surely winning the hearts and minds of Americans.
Click through the Orange Haze and I'll tell you why there's no going back.
This last year has marked what I believe is the point of no return in the political landscape surrounding legalized marijuana for three reasons.
First, barring some sort of unforeseen catastrophe linked to marijuana use, public opinion supporting legalization is unlikely to change. This week marks the one-year anniversary of the first time that a majority of Americans favored legalizing marijuana. A year later now, a poll last week revealed a still-growing number of Americans supporting legalization. Interestingly, the sea change affects even some conservative states long opposed to such measures. For example, a Virginia poll this month found that majority of voters now support decriminalization of marijuana (60%) and even more (74%) support its medical use.
Colorado provides the best example of the sea change washing over the nation’s opinions, both in terms of the raw data and the maneuvering of opposition forces. Two reports out this week—one from a pro-legalization group and one from an opposing group—offer seemingly contradictory conclusions from the first year of data from the Centennial State.
The Drug Policy Alliance paper reports that citations for marijuana possession in Colorado have dropped from 9,011 in 2010 to a projected 1,464 in 2014, per Colorado judicial data. The Smart Approaches to Marijuana report, meanwhile, notes that citations for public marijuana use in Denver jumped from 184 in 2013 to 668 in 2014.
http://www.denverpost.com/...
The supporters argue that the decreased number of citations for possession is a good thing, saving precious law enforcement, judicial and administrative resources for more important tasks. Opponents argue those costs are offset by the increases associated with more citations for public marijuana use. Supporters have the better argument, because the cost savings from fewer possession citations will continue indefinitely; public use citations, on the other hand, will undoubtedly decrease as marijuana users learn what is permitted by the new laws and what is not.
Last Monday, CNBC’s Marijuana Country went back to Colorado to take a look at a year of legalization. Harry Smith noted that the new boom in “edibles” (such as packing marijuana into candy) may lead to problems when children find it, but also chronicled families that have moved to Colorado because it is the only place to get the drugs they feel provide a last, best hope for their children’s medical conditions.
True not all Americans are down with the changing times, as “
Senior citizens, Republicans and Southerners” in large numbers still oppose legalization. Just 500 miles west of Virginia,
Indiana Republicans won’t even bring a Democratic decriminalization bill to the floor. Texas cops
cited or arrested more than 70,000 people for marijuana possession in 2012 alone. Republican attorneys general in
Nebraska and
Oklahoma are suing Colorado over its marijuana laws, arguing that pot is flowing across their borders, taxing their law enforcement agencies and overcrowding their jails.
Such opposition, though, is waning statistically if the polls are to believed, and perhaps more reflective of national public opinion than state demographics is the about-face executed by the federal government during Barack Obama’s second term. In an August 29, 2013 memo, the Justice Department instructed its attorneys not to prosecute marijuana crimes in states where legislation or ballot initiatives legalized the use of marijuana. While possession is still illegal under federal law, the Justice Department will look the other way.
The second reason the genie is out of the bottle is that the medical establishment is pulling the scientific justification for such Draconian marijuana laws. In 2013, CNN’s popular medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta famously changed his mind about the drug, arguing for relaxed criminal treatment and more medical research. Similarly, the American Academy of Neurology recently released a position paper in support of "efforts to conduct rigorous research to evaluate the long-term safety and effectiveness of marijuana-based products." Finally, the Journal of the American Medical Association reports that those states that have legalized medicinal marijuana have “significantly fewer deaths from prescription painkiller overdoses each year.” Even the most strident “Senior citizen, Republican or Southerner” will be hard-pressed to hold their own in an argument against board certified neurosurgeons urging medical treatment.
Finally, the most persuasive reason there’s no going back is, quite frankly, that business is booming. In February 2014 the Treasury Department effectively gave a green light to banks to do business with marijuana traffickers—something that would have been illegal under Reagan-era “war on crime” statutes. (Not entirely surprisingly, House Republicans backed the Administration’s relaxation of the banking restrictions.)
Just recently, in December last year, the Justice Department announced it would no longer prosecute federal laws regulating the growing or selling of marijuana on Native American reservations—even in states where such activities are illegal under state law. This directive clears the way for casinos to sell marijuana.
Big Green promises to be big business. Hydroponic companies, vaporizer producers, research houses, edible cannabis kitchens, even vending machine distributors are all cashing in on the medical marijuana phenomenon. Just one such promising company is Aquarius Cannabis, a company helping launch brands, many of whom are planning an IPO in the burgeoning marijuana industry.
What caught my eye about Aquarius is that its business model does not include the sale of cannabis. According to CEO Michael Davis and President Don Grede, Aquarius works with legally compliant organic produces to establish a consistent cannabis brand—the way Driscoll’s does with its berries. They seem to want to take on a ‘lobbying perspective’ in much the same vein as other ‘substances’ like tobacco and alcohol, but without the kill rate those two consumer staples carry.
The value of companies like Aquarius, according to the finance website Benzinga.com, increased by more than 50% in 2013 and according to Forbes, by more than 140% in 2014. These three factors—public opinion, medical favor and money—mean legalized pot is here to stay.