Final Report - CARICOM Regional Commission on Marijuana 2018 Waiting to Exhale

benefits that may surpass the resultant costs, there is no guarantee that others may realize the identical outcomes.

Savings and additional revenues may be significant, depending on the model of liberalization used, costs will also vary by the country and model. In the case of model 1 additional costs tend to be the lowest and so are the benefits in terms of savings and additional revenues. Models 2 and 3 have been shown to result in the highest benefits alongside the highest costs. Moreover, each model points to a different objective, model 1, decriminalization of marijuana possession, seeks to reduce the long-term legal fallouts of consumption of small amounts of marijuana, for the user, including youths. It also aims to improve resource allocation efficiency among law enforcement and the judicial system by no longer arresting and charging most marijuana users (most marijuana-related arrests and subsequent charges are for marijuana possession, see section 7 above). Whereas models 2 and 3 also achieve similar objectives, these models go a step further by including a revenue-raising component and greater freedom to grow, use and distribute marijuana. Model 2 allows for greater direct government control over the process than model 3. In each case, the impact on each of the variables of interest will be different.

Moreover, the region must decide on which objective is of interest to it, if any and adapt the appropriate model. In fact, as the literature disclosed, many of the countries and states that have legalized marijuana, started with some iteration of model 1 and have, over time, graduated to models 2, in the case of Uruguay, or model 3. This, therefore, highlights the point that countries need not have static objectives or feel compelled to move from its current state to a state of full legalization. In fact, Anderson and others (29) made a similar suggestion in their work on marijuana laws and their impact on traffic fatalities and alcohol consumption, where they stated that the movement from a state of illegal marijuana to one where marijuana is fully legalized, may be ill-advised, due in part to the predicted impact on price and marijuana use prevalence.

Furthermore, individual country experiences, as observed from the literature, show that after any of the legislative changes, marijuana use is likely to increase. Again, this increase tends to vary depending on the model implemented. In model 1 that change ranged from 0.03% within the first 6 years of the legislative modification, to 10% after 20 years of the implementation of the new marijuana legal framework. In the case of model 2, overall prevalence (last year use) increased 7.5 percentage points and among youth, the figure moved from 8.4% in 2003 to 17% in 2014, one year after legalization. In model 3 regular marijuana use among persons, age 18-24 increased from 11% in 2011 to 15 % in 2015, two years after legalization.

What is more, there may be a need to be extra vigilant with respect to preventing the use of marijuana while driving, much like it is done with alcohol. The country experiences show that after legalization, there was a marked increase in the number of traffic fatalities where the driver tested positive for recent marijuana use, increases that have reach as high as 300%. It is however worth noting that this increase, if not laced in the right contest can be misleading, in that marijuana stays in the system long after the immediate effects have subsided, so that a person testing positive for marijuana in the blood may not have used marijuana in days and may therefore not have suffered from impaired driving abilities at the time of the accident. This figure may thus be reflecting an increase in the number of persons using marijuana, but not necessarily an increase in the number of persons driving under the influence of marijuana.

Furthermore, implementation and enforcement costs may be significant, depending on the model used. These costs are likely to be lowest under model 1 and highest under model 2, where there is greater government intervention. Therefore, authorities may have some degree of control over these costs by adjusting the level of government involvement in the market.

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