Maddy writes:
Oklahoma voted on Tuesday to reject a ballot initiative that would have legalized recreational marijuana. The state has already legalized medical marijuana but chose not to take it any further. . . .
More drugs? No thanks, we have enough problems already.
Since I voted for the losing “yes” side (i.e., I voted to legalize the use of recreational cannabis) in yesterday’s referendum, it’s probably worth briefly explaining why.
State Question 820 would have legalized recreational cannabis for Oklahomans age 21 and older. It would have created an excise tax on sales and directed the revenue toward police, education, and the state’s general fund. And it would have required “resentencing, reversing, modifying, and expunging certain prior marijuana-related judgments and sentences unless the State proves an unreasonable risk to a person.” You can read the official ballot language here.
First, I voted for the yes position because I supported what would have been a modest course correction in favor of respect for the rule of law. Oklahoma already has an extremely permissive medical-marijuana regime (voted through in a similar state question in 2018). The result has been the widespread opening of medical-marijuana dispensaries on every corner — by some estimates the state has more dispensaries than gas stations — and the ubiquitous issuing of medical-marijuana licenses to the public. Now, I’m sure that there are some citizens out there who have a legitimate need for medical pot, but, anecdotally at least, everyone I know who regularly uses cannabis already does so recreationally in all but name. Who would have thought that there were so many young Okies with severe glaucoma or chronic back pain?!
Was there a growth in the use of cannabis after the 2018 medical legalization? Maybe. Probably. I for one have my doubts that the statistical evidence on this question is very accurate. More likely, in my view, is that the medical-marijuana regime brought a good deal of the black market (again, for adults) out into the open.
A legal recreational regime would have dispensed with the absurd pretense that the current system is primarily about “medicine,” and it would have probably gone at least a little bit further down the path of obviating the need for the black market in cannabis.
Second, I voted for recreational marijuana because I fail to see why a state should use its police powers to try to control the growth and adult consumption of what is, after all, a naturally growing plant. I am not a user of marijuana — medical or otherwise — and I think the overconsumption of cannabis is dumb, enervating, and likely to make you a pretty unoriginal and uninteresting person, but I’m not sure what the distinction is, in principle, between smoking tobacco to get a buzz, drinking a beer to get a buzz, and toking up to get a buzz. I’m all for the appropriate control of the consumption of such substances, but in a properly functioning society, that control would be better handled by families, churches, peers, and even employers than through the heavy hand of the government, which, by the way, has proven itself totally incompetent at undertaking such things.
The government’s role here should be limited to the prosecution of crimes such as driving under the influence of intoxicating substances and the trafficking of hard, manufactured drugs such as fentanyl. (I can make a distinction between life-destroying hard drugs such as fentanyl and life-diminishing drugs such as cannabis because I am a thinking adult and can use the powers of discernment and rational thought.)
Life is imperfect. People are imperfect. They often make dumb decisions or act on bad habits.
The passage of State Question 820 might have brought more cannabis into our lives, or it might not have. It might have brought some tax revenue into the state’s coffers, or it might not have. But whatever the case, the use of cannabis in Oklahoma would have been less absurd, more honest, and more in the open.