The Case for Cannabis

The other day, a classmate asked me, “so is Washington State, like, crazy now that weed is legal?” Although I joked that Seattle seemed more overcast than normal, truthfully, little has changed since Washington voters passed Initiative 502 last November. That’s not to say that marijuana consumption is not prevalent: percentage-wise, far more Washingtonians smoke marijuana than Netherlanders. But, the same can be said about the adult population in nearly every state. In 2012, more than 17 million Americans admitted to smoking marijuana, and the Pew Research Center recently estimated that 48 percent of adult Americans have consumed cannabis. Despite trillions of dollars in taxpayer money spent fighting marijuana consumption, cannabis prohibition seems to have worked as ineffectively as alcohol prohibition in the 1920s.

Just as alcohol prohibition led to organized bootlegging, cannabis prohibition has empowered a system of underground, violent drug cartels that the Justice Department estimates operates in more than one thousand American cities. “Competition over the profits to be made from this illicit industry has led to the deaths of tens of thousands of individuals in [Mexico], and an ever-increasing amount of violence spilling over into the United States,” said former American Immigration and Customs Agent Jamie Haase. Moreover, these same drug cartels ferrying marijuana across the border also provide the vast majority of hard drugs in circulation within the United States. Legalization cripples these drug runners and could effectively prevent imported drugs like cocaine and heroin from entering our borders. In Washington and Colorado, where marijuana is now regulated and grown domestically under state supervision, dangerous synthetic marijuana use, drug-related crime, and hard drug consumption are already declining.

From an economic perspective, cannabis legalization will redirect the billions of dollars now empowering drug cartels towards state governments. According to a 2010 study conducted by the conservative Cato Institute, marijuana legalization would generate $8.7 billion in annual state tax revenues. Washington alone estimates that marijuana taxation will generate $1.9 billion over the next five years. And the economic benefits of legalization are not limited to taxation; American hemp and medicinal marijuana-related industries gross nearly $100 billion annually, and are expected to provide over 100,000 new jobs in the next five years. Most importantly, however, legalization will save Americans $150 billion on annual policing and court costs. Every year, nearly 800,000 people are arrested for marijuana possession, and as Sen. Rand Paul opined over the summer, “there are a lot of young people who [smoke marijuana], and in their thirties, they grow up and quit ... I don’t want to put them in jail and ruin their lives.”

Finally, while prescription drugs are blamed for over 100,000 deaths annually, countless medical studies have failed to identify a single death, disease or deleterious health trend caused directly by marijuana use. Moreover, the vast majority of doctors now believe that cannabis provides massive benefits for patients suffering from cancer, HIV/AIDS, Alzheimer’s disease and numerous other ailments. Over three million Americans with chronic health conditions use medicinal marijuana annually, and almost unanimously report benefits to their health and comfort. Marijuana is also comparatively non-addictive, with a 1999 Federal Institute of Medicine study showing that “fewer than 10% of those who use marijuana meet the clinical criteria for dependence, while 32% of tobacco users, and 15% of alcohol users do.”

Certainly, cannabis legalization facilitates increased consumption among adults, but rest assured that legalization almost certainly minimizes marijuana abuse among teenagers. Growing up just outside of Seattle, far more of my high-school peers smoked than drank because it was easier to get marijuana from a neighborhood dealer than to pay someone with a fake ID to purchase alcohol. With hundreds of licensed and regulated marijuana distribution centers set to replace individual dealers over the next year, under-age Washingtonians will undoubtedly have a harder time getting ahold of the drug in the future. This is in line with historical trends: young Americans consume far less alcohol per capita today than in the 1920s and American tobacco use continues to decline. And though many misconceive that marijuana is a gateway drug whose legalization could encourage hard drug abuse, the Drug Enforcement Administration concedes that 90% of marijuana users have not tried other illegal drugs. Marijuana, we must recognize, is not a gateway drug, but a terminus.

This editorial does not seek to encourage or promote marijuana use; it remains an addictive drug requiring caution and moderation. But the many social, economic, and medicinal benefits provided by cannabis legalization are undeniable. The drug war begun forty years ago cannot be won, just as alcohol prohibition was doomed to fail. The majority of Americans now support cannabis legalization, and our generation has become its greatest advocate. I predict that when our children are our age, they will ask us what Middlebury was like during the cannabis prohibition era.