I am not a marijuana user and don’t think habitual users are high-quality conversation partners or employees. But I dislike the Legislature’s current effort to legalize marijuana.
It sets up a new industry totally dependent on government, organizes a new regulatory agency despite Republican leadership posturing as anti-regulation, imposes new taxes even as leadership boasts about low taxation, and collects even more loot to fritter around to the government education racket, which has us continually legislating to try to block their abusive practice of each new month.
It would only have taken a single sentence to achieve free trade with Mexico if that were really what people wanted; one could legalize marijuana if that were really what people wanted, with nothing but a strikethrough of existing laws.
However, I understand that when we elect a House that is only Republican when everyone shows up and stays awake, we are going to get weak gruel; and when the House Freedom Caucus resists a legislative campaign as anti-liberty, Republican leadership ironically replaces their votes with those of Democrats, and the price of their support is loot for hacks.
*****
The laws against marijuana, like the War on Drugs in general, have produced the same societal breakdown as did Prohibition for the same reason. Making a popular product illegal ensures that there are no providers except those who embrace illegality. Corporations that value reputation, purity, and correct labeling are excluded from the market. The ones that remain necessarily transact in secret, such as at midnight at highway rest stops, and provide armed enforcement where legitimate businesses use police and the judiciary. Occasionally, leaving the transaction with both the cash and the merchandise is appealing, and the life of the purchaser is irrelevant.
And the more we succeed in the War on Drugs, the more we find that the only effect of the heightened scarcity is to raise the street price. This attracts more resources to the industry on the part of those who don’t mind living outside the law, notably organized crime.
When legalizing marijuana, it depends on how you do it. Legalize by strikethrough, and you can grow it, share it, trade it, or buy it from established companies that assay and publish its potency and purity. California legalized it with rigid regulation of vendors and special new taxes. The consequence was that illegal marijuana was still a substantially better deal.
Legalization through bureaucracy also raises the risk of publicity for the buyers. New Hampshire’s legalization of medical marijuana sought to register each purchaser. If this is not included in the current push for recreational marijuana, it is certain that, when the state agent comes to the store demanding the customer list, the retailer will not say no; he could be shut down that day, and the explanation would not have to make sense. This is another inducement for buyers to stay outside the law even after legalization.
This means that, depending on what is in the enacted law and on how it is implemented, New Hampshire legalization might not end the societal harm.
*****
On 18 April, Sue Homola posted here to oppose legalization on superficial and defective grounds.
She begins by recounting the consequences of marijuana use. I was not aware that Cannabis Use Disorder was a thing, though it sounds like the same thing as Disagreeing With Me Disorder. As for her “mental health crisis,” crisis implies an effect so widespread that we must put aside the rule of law and take emergency action (like any of Joe Biden’s fake “existential threats”). It isn’t a crisis. (She doesn’t use the cliche “epidemic,” though some will, and you can’t have an epidemic where there is no contagion, and your use of a reefer in no way compels me to pick one up.)
Emergency room visits are clearly not “off-the-chart.” She cites small “upticks” but also “explosive increases” in societal malaises, a “public health train wreck.” (The public is not a body, and it does not have health.) The problem with all this is that correlation is still not causation. That marijuana is found in the bloodstreams of suicide victims does not prove that marijuana caused the suicide; more likely, an untenable situation caused the suicide, and marijuana was a mild and ineffective earlier attempt to cope. So “health professionals” in other states (translation: bureaucrats) “are sounding the alarm”? What that proves is that there are enough health professionals in state government that some have plenty of time for advocacy. We knew that already.
Continual smoking of marijuana is probably not a good idea. The problem is that that does not argue for laws against it. The annotations to our state constitution say the NH Supreme Court has often cited “police power” despite the phrase not appearing in the constitution itself. This power has nothing to do with police officers but is the notion that any government worth its salt must have the power to reorder our lives to achieve preferable results. Our dabbling with Covid should illustrate the government’s inability to measure risk, to sense when risk is just part of living on Earth, to devise optimal countermeasures, and to avoid the entire process being corrupted. (Chris Sununu, phone home.) The “police power” is essentially the cherished power to boss other people around and get them to live as though they shared our values.
(By the way, as Democrats use the “police power” to come after our cars, gas stoves, women’s athletics, and rice, it is election poison for Republicans to do likewise, albeit on a different set of issues.)
Sue Homola then trots out three legalization “myths” and for each, she has a “FACT:”.
1. Will legalization reduce black-market activity? It depends on how it’s done; see above. No one is eager to break the law if there is a reasonably good way to get what one wants legally. But the legislature’s heavy-handed approach will certainly not eliminate the black market. A lot of people are in the state in the first place to avoid taxation, and the legislature’s hunger to raise money for “education” is something I’d avoid if I needed a toke. Keeping people from finding out about your habit will likewise be furthered by buying from a pusher, despite the uncertainty as to what exactly you are getting.
2. Will the tax revenue pay for the costs of counteracting the resulting misbehavior? Sue’s “FACT:” here consists of “It is estimated” and of assertions with no sources at all. The problem is that the thing tax revenue has to exceed is government’s own hopes for mitigation programs. For example, “the need for youth mental health services”? Who can say how many millions our high schools could use to combat what they claim are the effects of marijuana use? And again, how do you measure whether the mental health problems are the result of marijuana, rather than of teaching that cross-dressing is wholesome and speaking your mind about it is not?
3. Is legalization inevitable? Sue is correct here. Although she cherry-picks five states that agreed with her and ignores the states that did not, New Hampshire remains able to decide for or against legalization. Unfortunately, New Hampshire does not have referendum, except on amending the state constitution. So, given a dodgy coalition of anti-liberty Republicans and centrist Democrats, it is not clear at all that the legislature will do what the people want.
All that is clear is that whether we sustain the laws against marijuana or replace them with a super-sized Parasite Sector, legislators will seek re-election in 2024 by wrapping themselves in Live Free Or Die.