This last month saw two significant items come up on the primary ballot in my home state of Illinois. One was a non-binding ballot question concerning whether or not the state should develop a plan to legalize marijuana for recreational use; the other asked whether or not the governor should strategize a way to deal with the increasingly urgent issue of opioid addiction. Both passed by wide majorities; whether or not any action is ultimately taken depends largely on who will win the race for governor later this year — libertarian conservative billionaire Bruce Rauner, who currently holds the chair as a Republican, or neoliberal centrist billionaire J.B. Pritzker, who is challenging him as a Democrat.
Similarly, these issues were in the news when it came to national politics as well. Cro-Magnon attorney general Jeff Sessions reiterated his intention to use federal force against states that have already legalized marijuana for medical or recreational use, a move that is controversial even in conservative circles, and Donald Trump, the president of the United States and a man who, like many of his ultra-wealthy peers, spent much of the 1980s in a cocaine fog, announced his enthusiasm for a plan, inspired by murderous Philippine strongman Rody Duterte, to punish opioid traffickers with death.
The odd dichotomy at play here, with the states increasingly open to marijuana legalization and sensitive to the human carnage wrought by opioid addiction while the federal government takes a hard anti-legalization stance and prioritizes punishment over treatment, is one of the paramount contradictions of our time. Sessions’ stance is particularly telling, as he has often been a loud voice in defense of the right of the states to make their own legislation in defiance of sweeping federal regulation; as is often the case, the conservative position on states’ rights only applies to laws that hurt people, and never to laws that help them. Trump’s casually brutal attitude is meant to invoke the Reagan era, but he courts only time and not mores and seems instead like a third-world martinet.
I have been an advocate of marijuana legalization for my entire life. I’ve made no secret of the fact that my personal values are entirely self-centered in this regard: I like to get high, and I don’t think it’s anyone else’s business, particularly in reference to a harmless, natural drug that is nonaddictive and has far fewer negative effects than alcohol and tobacco. I don’t have any medical conditions that require the kind of treatment that can come from the use of marijuana, and I don’t want to muddle my own enjoyment of getting stoned with anyone else’s legitimate needs. However, it is beyond question that medical marijuana is useful, effective, simple, affordable, and with extremely little downside. I personally know many people who have benefited from treating a wide range of health issues with marijuana, and I know many more who could do the same if it were legal where they live. In particular, I know a lot of people who suffer from conditions for which they are prescribed opioids; the negative effects of that family of drugs makes medical marijuana much more appealing, but not only can they not get any, they can’t even have an honest conversation with their doctors about it (that is, if they can afford to see a doctor in the first place).
It would be painfully naïve to lay all this at the door of the Trump administration, of course. Marijuana prohibition, like most other problems in America, comes from our distinctive combination of moralistic grandstanding and runaway neoliberalism, sprinkled with a strong dose of racism. Since marijuana cannot be copyrighted, trademarked, or put under the control of a single corporate provider, it does not have the favor of our economic elites — unlike pharmaceutical drugs, which we dispense like party favors and incentivize through our for-profit health care system. Drug prohibition is strongest in the South and Southwest, where religious fervor (however hypocritical) is the strongest and racism is most open. And the entire history of marijuana prohibition is inextricably tied to the punishment of black Americans (and, more recently, to the need to keep our for-profit prison system provided with endless free labor).
This is why even the states that have passed recreational marijuana laws have a lot of work to do. No state should be allowed to enact a program of cannabis reform unless it is accompanied by a comprehensive slate of legal reforms as well: anyone arrested under anti-marijuana laws must have their records expunged, anyone serving time for marijuana-related crimes must be freed, and anyone who has convictions for marijuana-related crimes must be given preferential treatment in working for or starting recreational marijuana businesses. We should also divert part of the enormous state profits from legal marijuana into a fund that rehabilitates and stabilizes the lives of those punished for such crimes — a reparations program similar to that proposed in Portland and already extant in Oakland — and focus our attention on a similar path for those punished for other drug crimes. Otherwise, all we will accomplish is the creation of new white millionaires who become rich and powerful off of the suffering of people of color.
The world is changing. I am in California, and I was able to take advantage of their new recreational laws to purchase marijuana legally, safely, and in a way that enhances the state’s tax coffers. There are ways to accomplish these goals in every state, with provisions that strengthen communities of color that we have spent a century destroying with prohibition and that give them revenue that we have spent just as much time slowly starving and strangling them out of. There are options available to us that allow local control (allowing states to source product locally, keeping huge international conglomerates from dominating the business) but give federal standards a chance to regulate for safety and make sure the money is being accounted for responsibly. The votes in every state that has proposed legalization make it clear that this is the will of the people, but they will not see it come to pass as long as the process is subject to the moral pandering of the Bruce Rauners of America or the opportunistic profiteering of its J.B. Pritzkers. We could have that, but they playin’.