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Why Federal Legalization of Cannabis Is Finally Here

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2022/09/06/why_federal_legalization_of_cannabis_is_finally_here_148146.html

If weed fails in the Senate, and no one hears, does it make any noise? On July 21, 2022, the three most ambitious U.S. senators ever to pay attention to cannabis sheepishly launched federal cannabis legislation into the future, with the introduction of the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act.

The landmark announcement drew surprisingly little fanfare. Senators Schumer, Wyden, and Booker seemed resigned. The cannabis cognoscenti immediately denied the infeasibility of the timing and the impossibility of getting to 60 votes in a bitterly divided U.S. Senate.

Then, the seas started to change in Washington. After months of gridlock, Congress passed, and the President signed, four major laws – including Democratic shibboleths like gun control, prescription drug reform, and environmental policy. Instantly, the priority level for cannabis reform rocketed toward the top.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s poignant words ring true, “We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action.”

It’s time for the legalization of a $60 billion U.S. industry that is fully legal in Canada and headed there in most free economies. The current U.S. industry conditions are so untenable, dangerous, and fundamentally inequitable that zero logical explanations remain for maintaining the status quo.

Part of the problem is Cannabis Derangement Syndrome (CDS), a power so strong that national politicians cannot hear past their vocal minorities. After six more voted yes in 2020, we now stand at 39 states that have legalized at least medical cannabis.

Somehow, CDS even unites the left and the right in the anti-progress side of the debate. In her recent op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal entitled “Cannabis Contributes to Violence,” Allysia Finley relies heavily on implication with her attempts to blame cannabis use for two of the recent mass shootings perpetrated by young men with mental illnesses.

“Isn’t pot supposed to make you mellow? Maybe if you smoke only a joint on occasion,” she argued. “But youth nowadays are consuming marijuana more frequently and in higher doses than their elders did when they were young. This is leading to increased addiction and antisocial behavior.”

In fact, today’s youth are using cannabis far less frequently than older generations did. According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the prevalence of cannabis use in the United States peaked in the late 1970s, when more than one-third of high school seniors (37% in 1976) and one in eight Americans over 12 years old (13% in 1979) reported past-month use. Only 10% of today’s 12-to-17-year-olds have used cannabis in the past year, a far cry from the monthly usage of their elders.

According to the NSDUH in 2020, roughly one in five American adults regularly consumes cannabis. Now, we have 57 million people who smoke or vape tobacco, 139 million adults who drink alcohol regularly, 50 million cannabis users, and 72 million gun owners. And just about all Americans regularly consume unhealthy products like salty snacks, sugary treats, and caffeine.

90,000 Americans die every year due to alcohol poisoning, and countless more lives are affected by chronic alcoholism. To date, there are zero reported cases of death by cannabis overdose. Further, contrary to popular belief, crime, car accidents, fights, and hospital visits linked to cannabis use are so rare that CDS statistics focus on artificially high growth when nominal numbers are tiny.

Today’s CDS sufferers resemble the Temperance Movement, the female-led organization responsible for the disastrous legal policy known as alcohol prohibition, that was ascendant during the early 20th century. Blaming alcohol use for the actions of their abusive husbands might have made sense then, but cannabis is hardly a similar problem.

With so many people who enthusiastically enjoy cannabis, why do our national legislators singularly fail to regulate and tax this vice? The primary beneficiaries of the current non-policy are Mexican cartels and local organized crime, while the victims include small-time cannabis felons who cannot vote or get food stamps, along with the 50 million Americans who enjoy getting high instead of drinking or taking prescription drugs.

And anyone daring enough to dive into the business of cannabis can consider themselves victims of the most insidious tax laws since the Boston Tea Party. Since cannabis businesses traffic in Schedule 1 drugs, the IRS only allows cost of goods deductions from their federal income tax calculations. The federal government is underhandedly stealing billions of dollars from a fledgling industry in no position to afford it.

According to the latest Pew polling, fully 90% of Americans believe that at least medical cannabis should be legal, and if you add up the electoral college votes, legal cannabis states beat the rest by a whopping 420 to 96.

Ronald Reagan famously asked, “If not us, who? If not now, when?”

Legalize cannabis now.