Support seen growing for marijuana in U.S.
HELENA, Mont. — Recreational marijuana initiatives passed in four states this year, from liberal New Jersey to conservative Montana and South Dakota. The results prove how broadly accepted marijuana has become throughout the country and across party lines.
Fifteen states have now broadly legalized it, while 36 states allow medical marijuana.
In South Dakota and Montana — where Republicans swept to victory in the key races — recreational marijuana passed with at least 16 percentage points more support than Democrat Joe Biden received. South Dakota also approved medical “pot,” which outpolled Biden by 34 percentage points.
Voters in Mississippi overwhelmingly approved medical marijuana this month, giving the drug another foothold in the South.
“We’ve waged a war against this plant for a century, and by any reasonable metric, that war has been an abject failure,” said Matthew Schweich, deputy director of the Marijuana Policy Project, which favors legalization. “All it’s done is incarcerate millions of Americans, it has perpetuated racism in this country and perhaps the worst injustice of all is that it’s deprived us of medical marijuana research.”
Marijuana is still illegal at the federal level, hurting veterans who can’t be prescribed medical “pot” at Veterans Affairs clinics, he said.
They “come home with chronic pain, and we’re pushing them to opioids,” Schweich said. “That’s crazy. That’s unpatriotic and it’s a disgrace.”
Support for legalization was around 25% in 1992 when then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton tried to avoid answering questions about whether he had used marijuana before finally saying in a television interview that he had experimented with the drug, didn’t like it and “didn’t inhale.”
In early 2019, Sen. Kamala Harris was asked about her prior marijuana use during a radio interview and acknowledged: “I did inhale.”
Brendan Johnson, a former U.S. attorney in South Dakota who supported the state’s marijuana initiatives, said the campaign focused on the fact that in recent years 10% of arrests in the state were for marijuana, and most were small amounts.
“We have a real problem here where we have criminalized an entire generation of South Dakotans, and we’re paying a price,” Johnson said.
Advocates’ next goal is to get marijuana removed from a federal list of illegal drugs with no accepted medical use and high potential for abuse. The listing prevents labs from researching potential medical remedies using marijuana.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., told lawmakers last week that he would hold a vote in December on a bill that would decriminalize cannabis, create a process to expunge nonviolent “pot” convictions and remove the drug from the Controlled Substances Act. It’s not clear if the bill could pass both chambers.
The outcome of two runoff elections in Georgia could determine how the issue might fare in the Senate, where Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has impeded its progress.
Other states are expected to consider marijuana legislation next year, which could put more pressure on Congress to act.
Supporters argue that the industry creates jobs and raises tax money to help prop up governments that are hurting because of business closures tied to the covid-19 pandemic.
But some oppose broad legalization.
Republican Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota argued that marijuana leads people to use other, more-addictive drugs, while law enforcement officers and prosecutors in Montana asserted that legal “pot” would lead to more drugged driving and other crimes, while exacerbating mental health issues.