Rocky Mountain high: the results of legalizing marijuana in Colorado
Colorado was a US trailblazer in the legalization of marijuana. It was legalized there for medical use in 2009, and for recreational use in 2014. That means that there’s quite a bit of data now about the results in that state, and a lot of it is not encouraging:
Advocates for legalization were adamant that a major purpose was to create a regulated market that would drive out the criminal element and end the violence that drives the black market. It fact, the exact opposite has happened, with a thriving black market still dominating the trade, as has happened everywhere states have legalized marijuana, from California to Illinois…
Easier access, greater prevalence, higher psychoactive potency from increased THC, a continued criminal element, and more intensive daily use have all occurred since the experiment began. Maybe the sky hasn’t fallen, but a great deal of damage has rained down on Colorado, as measured across several indicators.
Please read the whole thing. The negative effects seem formidable, but I don’t think it’s possible to re-criminalize cannabis, nor do I think it would work to stem the tide.
Alex Berenson has written a book on this topic.
“Medical” pot will be on the ballot in NE next election. It will win.
Senator Adam Morfeld of Lincoln is one of the leaders. He is running for county attorney in Lincoln. I’ll be interested to see how much money he gets from Big Pot.
Nebraska – in my lifetime – has gone from Bedford Falls to Pottersville but our own Warren Buffett hasn’t played the role of Mr. Potter.
Legal pot and Indian casinos are coming. Both will cause lots of damage and heartache. The Dems are behind both issues. They are so happy about the new tax money which they will waste.
My body, my vice.
This is like the reverse of Prohibition. That was a public discourse dominated by the worst horror stories of alcohol abuse and drunkenness. The pro-pot debate has been dominated by high-functioning (more or less) marijuana users.
Mike
Make a criminal activity less risky and guess what happens? Crime goes up. Is that normalizing adverse/asocial behavior? Attempt to regulate a criminal activity by making it legal within a set of regulations, and, wait for it, don’t be shocked when criminals don’t comply with your good intentions. But, libertarians will be shocked too.
Plants need electrolytes. Colorado needs (even more than?) legal weed.
The “legal” pot sellers will be pressuring the police to arrest the illegal pot sellers. In addition, the state government is certainly aware of the tax revenues being lost. I find it a bit humorous to see those who not long ago promoted pot for everyone now siccing the cops on the home growers.
Tax evasion, that has never happened before. Al Capone and Eric Garner couldn’t be reached for comment.
Does the FDA ensure your legal weed is safe and unadulterated? Or is it BATF? Or the revenuers? Just asking for a friend? 🙂 🙂
No surprise there. The drug legalizers have always lacked an ordinary person’s rough-and-ready sense of how the world works. A few are libertarians on the spectrum; the rest fancy they’re better than people who rely on common sense.
while I appreciate the argument, that article is not the clearest in describing the data.
Given the low cost and ease of growing, the illegal market will always undercut the commercial market with buildings, taxes, $12 an hour workers, etc…
At one point it was shown that the base price (even for “good stuff” if grown and just bagged) would be under $25 a lb… and even then people with property and solar timing can grow it themselves…
and may i point out that with Mexico making it legal, the DEA cant fly around poisoning their crops, which in great quantity, will under price the taxable market…
“I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.” Robert Frost
Hope he stays the hell out of your way on the highway. Life and poetry sometimes collide. Life and libertarians. 🙂
It would be interesting to know how much of a hand, if any, the PRC government has in promoting the trend in legalized weed. TLC… PRC… there’s a certain symmetry there. 🙂 But I figure it would be in the CCP’s interest to keep Americans in flyover country hooked on things as much as possible – half-baked people don’t make very good workers or soldiers.
It would also be interesting to see if some sort of new temperance movement begins to, if you’ll pardon the term, germinate – this one directed at “Demon Weed”, but perhaps with a regionalist flavor as well and tied to a grass-roots reaction to the opioid phenomenon. Was it not the case that the original temperance movement had some of its greatest following in places like the Great Plains? Or am I imagining that? I admit I never studied the phenomenon in detail.
I have to agree with funsize that the way the article laid out its quantitative arguments was disappointing, especially considering that it comes from an organization with the word ‘Institute’ in its name, which should have suggested a higher standard of data presentation. On a qualitative level, the essay brings up many points worth considering, but yes, it would have been nice to have the data cleaned up. Well, perhaps next time.
@Philip Sells:
The PRC and the Sacklers, both Alien Interests have no deep and abiding interest in the health and well-being of Flyover Americans. Then again neither do the American Coastal Elites.
I doubt there’s much PRC interest in Weed apart from keeping it out of China and possibly manufacturing of implements.
Friend of mine ran an export side business out of Shanghai 15 years back exporting wholesale pet shop supplies and hydroponics kit. Pretty soon it was all hydroponics equipment. Whoever was buying at the other end wasn’t doing it to grow a few carrots for the kitchen.
Read an article about the same time claiming that an area the size of a large kitchen table in Amsterdam could produce US$40K/month given the right hybrids and the right hydroponics mix and the optimal glow lamp and CO2 arrangements.
Legalised and heavily taxed and regulated Marijuana is just another boondoggle. Good way to grow some agency empires and extract more rents.
“I don’t think it’s possible to re-criminalize cannabis”
Maybe the govt could hire social media Influencers to convince people to avoid the stronger potency variants.
I recall an article back a couple years ago where MoDo of the NYT tried pot in Colorado. She pretty much panicked and people laughed at her.
With alcohol, there are “curb-side” tests for intoxication. With THC or weed, there is nothing practical to use as a test or a standard for a test and stoned drivers are a hazard to the rest of us. Maybe those using should have to surrender their car/license. I am not interested in being a victim of your “vice”. Just sayin’.
Well it probably wasn’t MoDo’s Grandmother’s Pot. Race may be a social construct, but rapid genetic changes are big business in the pot-growing world.
My political Bildungsroman goes something like:
1986: Not bad, that Peggy Noonan
2000: WTF is wrong with Maureen Dowd’s Hormones?
2021: Drown them both in a bucket.
I see pot legalisation as a useful Shibboleth for smoking out incurable Libertarians. Tag and release. For now.
Are “social media Influencers” akin to “cultural strategists” or “movement makers?” So many new titles for the recent graduates of the schools of left activism.
Found the below on a search of the word “Wakanda” which came up in a recent thread and I had no clue what it was. My age and disinterest in current movies is showing.
“In anticipation of the film, Wakanda Dream Lab—a collective of cultural strategists, artists and movement makers—tapped into people’s interest in the film to close the gap between on-screen and real-life issues impacting our communities.”
om and Mike-SLO,
“The inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way” is not a license to take others to hell with them.
@geoffb:
Re: Wakanda
Memes, Sir… Memes.
I was a bit behind the times, too, until the Meme Lords took over my head. Now it’s all Sunny Uplands!
Social Media Influencer: That’s any THOT with a smartphone 🙂 Some get paid more than others for doing more than others.
Geoffrey Britain:
That wasn’t a stanza in the poem, or your quote from Frost. Life is complicated like that, something about societies having to draw boundaries; or was it walls and neighbors?
@Zaphod:
Thanks. I’ll stay in my beloved Michigan where the skies are always a lovely shade of grey, all day.
geoff, how can you say that about Michigan?! I know the lake effect has its days, but it’s really not that bad. In fact, some of my most treasured pictures are of the splendid Superior shoreline in the shining sun.
@Philip Sells:
Surely you speak of Lake Equality, Citizen?
“The negative effects seem formidable, but I don’t think it’s possible to re-criminalize cannabis, nor do I think it would work to stem the tide.”
_________
I don’t make any predictions, but it COULD happen. It’d take a while, but social pressure and propaganda do work. Look at tobacco. Or for that matter, the whole galaxy of “gender”. Would you have believed, a generation ago, that parents would actually have their children mutilated to accommodate a fad? Well, that has happened.
Again, I have no idea if it will happen.
Why is anyone surprised re: black market for weed.
After all, there is one for cigarettes; the higher the cigarette taxes, the larger the black market for them.
Want the black market for weed to dry up? – eliminate all taxes, and govt. rules and regulations. Of course, this will cause the prices to crater and “encourage” greater use of marijuana.
Anyone notice there is no black market for toilet paper even though there is always a great demand for it. It’s too cheap and abundant for any black market to be profitable.
om,
Thank you for pointing out the obvious.
Of course driving under the influence of anything that lowers our alertness is a potential threat to others. Should we ban the liquor industry? Over consumption of alcohol results in more deaths when driving.
It would be for the greater good to do so, yes?
Life is indeed complicated and society seeking a balance between liberty and personal responsibility is optimum.
Geoffrey Britain:
The obvious was hiding I’m plain sight? Glad to have helped you to find it. I’d never heard of the ethanol consumption and automobile problem, if only I got out more or knew some history (sarc). For it is perfectly obvious that not enough men, women, children, and cute small animals are killed by weed-impaired drivers (sarc).
Once marijuana usage gets up around tobacco usage it will become obvious that the health effects are similar: lung cancer due to tars and particulates, heart disease due to CO… Of course, THC is not as addictive as nicotine, but it damages the brain.
Not that legalizing drugs and prostitution in Europe did not eliminate the black market in either. And it can’t because the black market provides goods and services the legal market can’t or won’t.
A few years ago I visited pot stores in Seattle and Colorado. The observed customer base was about 65 percent women; half of the gals were 20-something, and the rest middle aged. I was told by one of the budtenders that the younger gals want the stimulating varieties for getting frisky. The older gals want the soothing blends for anxiety.
Every single woman I know over the age of 40 uses weed in one form or another. All the gals who disdained it before because they didn’t like smoking are happily munching the edible versions.
I visit Mexico fairly often. I have a good friend there. We were discussing drugs. I told him I’d been offered coke, Xanax, various opiates, all at nice prices. But, I said, no one had offered me pot.
He said that America weed is so much better that no one bothers. In Mexico, you plow a field, throw in some seed and pray for a good yield of good weed. In the US, they can grow exactly the strain they want with the strength they want, indoors easy peasy.
om,
Snark is poor rebuttal but excellent for assuaging the ego.
Had to point out the obvious to you it seems. Does someone have an ego problem? Who can judge that?
@Philip Sells:
As a life long troll I find the UP to be a beautiful ‘nother world.
@Zaphod:
What else would you call such a lake containing a Royal Island?
Most recently, I imagine Covid and the associated greater and extended unemployment benefits increased demand.
Without the social welfare state long in place now more generally, I imagine demand is greater than it would be without it.
I would add that things like minimum wage laws and unions have long helped make drug dealing perhaps a better paying alternative for many African Americans and others who might otherwise take an entry level job.
Consider what is happening in large American cities today.
Liberals talk about systemic racism, yet could not be more ignorant about reasons given for enacting minimum wage laws during Woodrow Wilson’s administration more than a century ago, things like eugenics, a “living” wage and good jobs available for others, the kind of right people.
See the book Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics, and American Economics in the Progressive Era, by Thomas Leonard, or before the book, and before he was at Princeton, academic articles written by him when he was still at Duke.
In events over the last decade or more, I’ve noticed that Jeff Bozos and his associates at the Washington Post never bring up this history — and the role of Woodrow Wilson, his Labor Secretary and former associate at Princeton, and well known progressive-era economists from that era, involved in this reform movement.
* “the right kind of people,” particularly white, sufficiently high perhaps that mother might stay home with the kids instead of work.
Sterilization might be considered for others.
I believe it is around then that Justice Holmes in a well-known Supreme Court case said something like ‘three generations of idiots is enough’.
Pot legalization here in WA has been about the same as CO. Nothing really good about it except a few less people getting charged with drug crimes. One large issue here is that pot shops deal in cash. So, they are frequently burglarized. The thugs know where the cash is – in the the pot stores. Several cases of daylight smash and grab type burglaries. Pretty dangerous for all involved. The tax revenue to the state has not been as large as expected either. I would rate the experience here as a bad thing overall as well.
J.J.
And to show the wisdom of some of our WA state agencies, the WA Dept. Of Health was giving away joints to encourage people to get the WuFlu vaccine. Did they have drive-through window service; dose, doobie, and drive?
Relevant to what I posted above:
https://fee.org/articles/states-ending-ultra-generous-welfare-are-doing-better-in-one-big-way-new-data-show/
Included is a U.S. map of states that “plan to or have ended benefits early.”
Also note the point about small businesses, which generally cannot afford to pay as much as larger businesses. In the inner city, besides greater difficulty finding an entry level job for some, a direct effect, consider also a predictable effect on small business creation (legal ones that is) and longer-term, competitive effects.
Relevant also is both the Quotation of the Day and Bonus Quotation of the Day, for June 30, 2021, from Thomas Sowell:
https://cafehayek.com/
Happy 91st Birthday from me as well, Professor Sowell!
Since there are so many people willing to take me to Hell with them, I’d go with medical oil and only by ingestion. Cheech and Chong are only funny “on screen”. A friend lost a “long time” to a 5X “alky” after his family loaned him a car since he couldn’t get past the “puffer” ignition. Our state will do nothing about it. You know, alcoholism is a “disease” and they are “family”.
THC isn’t “volatile”, so maybe, a breath test for THC that would not respond to blood levels. Save the blood test for the deranged fools.. As I recall, there used to be a list of conditions and medications that warned of driving or using heavy machinery. Put some teeth into that “recommendation”! One friend “might” benefit from cannabinoid therapy but then they’d better bum rides, hitch, or get a bus pass.
I recall adolescence as being difficult enough, without making worse trouble easy to find.
I am told that my own actions will determine the precise part of Hell that I have earned. The “wrong-place-wrong-time” doesn’t appeal to me. Nor does “highway hamburger”.
Don’t get me started on cocaine, opiates, and “bath salts”.
Since it is virtually impossible to force mental illness treatment and there is no treatment for “stupid”, I am rather partial to a therapeutic “time out” in state custody. “Inside”, they can’t harm me or mine. I am deaf to the complaints of “family”. “Family” provided the car to a repeat alcoholic that led to one dead and one maimed in the next county. The Prude family (Rochester) did nothing for their “mental” family member who eventually died, almost naked in the snow, of a (probable) PCP overdose.
If “they” stayed home and watched the TV test pattern, it would be different than when “they” go for a drive (and they always do) and try to kill me or mine.
om, yeah, what won’t they do to get people vaxed? Also on tap – get a shot and have a free beer. Well, it’s The People’s Republic, what can we expect?
What a bunch of propaganda nonsense. OMG, mj use is up! Yeah, it’s LEGAL. Where are the hand wringing propaganda reports about alcohol (also legal) use ?
When you lead with the worst effect being that OMG, people are using the legal substance, you’re given away the ghost right out of the chute.
The actual effects of marijuana use in people is orders of magnitude less than alcohol. Maybe the Hudson Institute could do some research into that.
Meanwhile, there is no current way to test for someone being actively impaired by pot, so claiming that marijuana related anything is increasing is a complete red herring. You have no idea what is or isn’t marijuana related because you cannot test for it in a meaningful way. Like claiming that teen suicide is somehow related to the fact that 1/3 of such people have tested positive means… ? It means nothing. Are you actually trying to claim that pot CAUSED these kids to commit suicide ?
Please, stop the gaslighting FFS.
What we discovered after the legalization, which we hadn’t really anticipated, is that one of our sons is highly allergic to the smoke, and even the vapors arising from smoker’s clothing.
The first he noticed it, back when the legislation was new, was while working as a clerk at a retail store heavily patronized by the artistic creators and vendors that are quite numerous in Denver. It was very clear to him who had been indulging prior to coming shopping.
In his next job (before it tanked due to Covid), he had to get a protective hood with air filters to wear when one of his co-workers was working the same shift in a not very large space.
He now works in a “clean facility” for medical device manufacturing, which helps, but they have to shut off their swamp cooler on nights that the neighbors are out in the yard toking.
Another friend had to move out of her apartment because of the neighbors. She wasn’t allergic, but she just hated the smell.
I would hope that some activist group might force some “safe space” legislation, but there’s no money in it for anyone, as the pot growers don’t have the accessible deep pockets of the tobacco industry.