Federal pot reform efforts should look to Oklahoma
Pot’s back on the ballot again. For the second time in our nation’s history, federal weed legalization, otherwise known as the MORE Act, has passed the House of Representatives. And despite congressional partisanship, the fight against prohibition continually defies political polarization when brought to the people via ballot initiative — everywhere from liberal Massachusetts to conservative South Dakota.
Oklahoma was one of the trailblazers. Back in 2018, Oklahoma voters likewise took to the polls and established the most permissive medical marijuana program in the country. Doctors were empowered to prescribe the drug for essentially any reason — thereby permitting, as then-Gov. Mary Fallin fretted, “basically recreational marijuana.”
True recreational marijuana will have to wait until after the 2022 midterms, provided state questions 819 or 820 survive legal challenges and voters’ discretion. In the meantime, Oklahomans should celebrate the laissez-faire ethos driving their present experiment in personal freedom.
After all, Oklahoma dispensary licensing is as close to undiluted free market as American marijuana markets get — including relatively few criteria such as a flat $2,500 application fee, residency requirements and a 7% excise tax, alongside some other qualifications and quality control measures.
Most states drown pot growers and sellers under outrageous license fees, local bans on store locations, high taxes and burdensome environmental regulations. Together, these factors help drive up marijuana prices in places like deep blue California, though Connecticut and Arkansas also notably suffer from expensive start-up processes that can reach $10 million and $100,000 in respective upfront costs for dispensaries.
Not Oklahoma. Oklahoma, by comparison, has flung open the flood gates to at least 12,000 licensed businesses in the marijuana industry — thanks to a bunch of benefits like its aforementioned regulatory structure and cheap farm real estate values barely over half the national average per acre.
Sane economic policies produce tangible benefits, and regarding weed. 2021 metrics show around $150 million in medical marijuana licensing and tax revenues for the state and at least $900 million in sales (all over the course of a single year). Thus, legal weed serves both public and private interests so long as the law approaches taxes, fees and regulation with caution and common sense.
Moreover, these numbers provide a clear picture of the actual demand for pot when both producers and consumers can more or less freely enter the market without excessive barriers in the way.
That’s why Gov. Kevin Stitt’s recent insinuation that Oklahoma is worse off by refusing to mimic California and Arkansas’ weed regulations is entirely off the mark.
Consumer desires to purchase pot at affordable prices simply can’t be legislated out of existence. And when politicians fail to acknowledge reality, they keep the disastrous “War on Drugs” clinging to life.
To this end, Stitt promises tough-on-crime Oklahoma drug busts that would fit right in with 1990’s policing rhetoric, and other states seem to share his vision. Colorado’s Bureau of Investigation, for instance, created an Illicit Market Marijuana Team in 2018 despite the drug’s legalization six years prior.
Rather than blame legal growers for organized crime or rally against weed altogether, anti-pot proponents could stand to wake up, look at the calendar and realize that the tide of public opinion turned against prohibitionists a long time ago.
It’s simply more productive, and more respectful of the voters’ will, to focus on deregulatory efforts. Lower the costs of doing business such that legal and illicit marijuana prices come close to matching, and a realistic path toward encouraging participation in the legal market should emerge.
For this reason, conservatives and liberals alike can find value in considering the Oklahoma model as a solid-but-imperfect launching pad. A healthy industry — especially one inclusive of minority groups and low-income communities — will never exist if prospective business owners can’t navigate regulatory and financial hurdles.
Unfortunately, amidst GOP politicians’ broad skepticism of legal pot, additional congressional demands to ban flavored and candied marijuana products, and a proposed federal tax scheme which might further impact the desirability of legal weed relative to illicit weed, laissez-faire is categorically off the table for now.
Still, federal marijuana reform efforts would be best if they found some inspiration in Oklahoma.