Rick Steves: Pot is now used by Mom and Dad. And Grandma’s rubbing it on her elbows (opinion)

It has long been apparent that our nation’s marijuana laws appear to be built on lies and racism, and in violation of civil liberties. As a travel writer and television presenter, I have seen other nations – like the Netherlands and Portugal – approach the intricate issue of marijuana in a way that is arguably more effective than ours, and at a far lower cost, both in money and the toll in lives .

While it is true that marijuana, like any drug, can be harmful and abused, it is also true that we can and should have smarter policies against it, based on pragmatically reducing the harm, rather than moralizing people, overreacting and lock up.

I started talking about marijuana when I realized it was easier for me than others – I had a public platform and wasn’t worried about getting re-elected or fired for marijuana. It seemed to be a matter of good citizenship. And when I started to share what I had learned from traveling around Europe, I became more active in the matter.

Things are changing fast in the US. Since the 1990s, more than 35 states have legalized marijuana for medical use, and as of 2012, 18 states have legalized adults using marijuana for enjoyment. I co-sponsored, senior funder, and spokesperson for a 2012 bill in my home state of Washington that came to Colorado that same year to be the first to legalize recreational cannabis.

Progress has been steady over the past 10 years. At first it was the more progressive states that legalized through their initiative process. The next two were Oregon and Alaska in 2014, then California, Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada in 2016, Michigan and Illinois in 2018, and four more in 2020. In the past few months alone, parliaments have been opened in five other states, including New York including and New Mexico.

While opponents painted a bleak picture of what recreational marijuana legalization would mean for society, many proponents only predicted benefits. But there was a lot that people didn’t know. Would Teenage Use Increase? Would road safety suffer as a result? Would there be an “entry-level effect” where more people abuse hard drugs after trying cannabis? Would society have a big hemp festival?

Nobody knew for sure, because no country or state had ever done what Washington and Colorado did. Now we have a track record. Marijuana use has crept a bit into society, but according to every state’s statistics, teenage use has not. And marijuana has not become the dreaded “gateway” to harder drugs. It is now more difficult for teenagers to get hold of marijuana because it is no longer sold by criminals on the street as much as it is by legal retail outlets, strictly observing the national age limit of 21 years.

And the mysticism of sharing something illegal has lost its appeal. Pot is now used by mom and dad. And grandma rubs it on her elbow.

States also report that legal marijuana does not pose a risk to road safety. Researchers have found no significant difference in road deaths in states where medical marijuana is legal and widespread and where it is not. One clear and predictable effect of the nationwide effort to remove crime from the marijuana equation is that black markets that have long enriched and empowered street gangs and organized crime have been replaced by thriving and highly taxed legal markets that have grown to thousands of years People in rural areas occupy corners where such employment is badly needed and generate billions of dollars in government taxes.

Also consider that the illicit marijuana trafficking has resulted in large numbers of arrests and detentions over decades, costing taxpayers billions of dollars, diverting limited law enforcement resources from more serious challenges, and contributing to the disastrous mass incarceration problem facing the United States.

In Washington, where illegal marijuana once competed with apples as the main crop, marijuana is now a multi-billion dollar legal market generating $ 469 million in tax revenue in 2020, much of it for health projects and drug education and – Enlightenment is intended. Our governor, Jay Inslee – who was elected in 2012, the year we legalized marijuana and originally did not endorse that law – now sees his wisdom and is grateful that instead of chasing cannabis smokers, he is now taxing the law can companies that grow and sell it legally. And while our country is grappling with systemic racism, the racist dimension of the marijuana ban has become very evident. Wealthy, privileged, white people like me are rarely arrested for marijuana. But poor people, blacks and other people of color changed their lives forever with the 50-year-old war on marijuana. Nixon’s war on marijuana had a racist agenda from the start, and our society paid a heavy price for getting involved. With millions of black ex-criminals unable to vote because of their convictions for possession of marijuana, the status quo is rightly dubbed “the new Jim Crow”. Fortunately, in recent years states have recognized the racism built into this ban. They are working to ensure that communities of color, who paid the most expensive price for our war on marijuana, be the first to see the benefits of the newly legalized market and to transfer some of the tax revenue from new cannabis sales to the communities most devastated by our war on drugs were. We also need to clear the records of people with marijuana convictions, which the governors of Illinois and Washington have made a priority. We are now on the threshold where most of our country allows legal marijuana use (medical, recreational, or both) and Congress allows the MORE Act (Marihuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement) and Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) ) Banking Act debated.

Although marijuana is not directly legalized, these laws would bring several important changes to allow states to be more sensible with marijuana. Sensible changes include removing marijuana from Appendix I’s list of the most dangerous and strictly regulated drugs, allowing cannabis companies to use the government-regulated banking system, and deleting it – which would delete the files of people who were committed to nonviolent behavior Marijuana have been convicted of crimes and thus restore their right to vote.

The MORE Act was passed by the US House of Representatives in 2020 and is expected to repeat it at this session, while the SAFE Banking Act has already been passed by the House of Representatives and is now being negotiated in the Senate.

On July 1, Virginia became the first state in the south to legalize recreational marijuana. On this day Keith Stroup, who founded NORML 50 years ago – in the same year Nixon declared war on marijuana – will legally exercise civil liberty in the privacy of his own home; an act that he committed illegally and regularly and that he can now do legally and with great joy: he will roll a joint and smoke it.

And with Keith inhaling legally, it will be time for our government to acknowledge what more than 60% of the American population today believe and understand: that the current war on marijuana is racist, an expensive and counterproductive mistake, and it is Time has come to recognize the civil liberty of American adults to smoke weed in their own four walls without breaking the law.