OPINION

Decriminalization Of Marijuana

by JANE JUSKO STAFF WRITER

Marisa Garcia grew up in Los Angeles, California, attended Cal State Fullerton, and was arrested on a marijuana possession charge at 19. She’d stopped for gas, went inside to pay, and returned to find a police car pulled up behind hers. The car was searched, and she was arrested for a pipe containing nothing but ash. She pled guilty and paid $400 worth of court fees. This was the summer before her first semester of college, when she also learned having a drug conviction was sufficient reason for revoking federal financial aid. Her simple possession charge ultimately cost her not only court fees but thousands in tuition payments, as her sentence led to her first year of aid being revoked. Garcia’s family had to take out a line of equity on their house to finance her education.

Garcia’s story is not an outlier. Rather, hers falls on the lenient side despite the financial strain on her family—had she a second conviction, her aid would have been suspended longer, and more would have suspended it indefinitely. However, the tide is turning towards marijuana in the United States. As of 2021, more than two-thirds of US adults support legalizing marijuana, and 22 states, Washington, D.C., and Guam passed measures doing so. Last October, Joe Biden pardoned all US federal marijuana possession offenses, a major step toward decriminalization. However, marijuana convictions continue where the drug remains illegal, producing more stories like Garcia’s. The federalThe federal criminalization of cannabis has created wrongs stretching back decades only its legalization can begin to right.

The War on Drugs thrust marijuana into the spotlight as the companion to the crack epidemic of the 1980s. It didn’t take center stage until the 1990s when US drug arrests shifted from heroin and cocaine to marijuana, with marijuana offenses constituting 82% of the increase in drug arrests from 1990 to 2002. As of 2010, 52% of all drug arrests were for marijuana-related offenses. Moreover, a 2013 ACLU report found Black people were 3.73 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white people despite using the drug at similar rates. From 2001 to 2010, racial disparities in marijuana possession arrests increased in 38 out of 50 states. Trends in national attitudes towards marijuana and racial disparities in arrests saw an inverse: As one warmed up, the other doubled down.

Even these staggering statistics miss the full impact of the criminalization of marijuana. A first-offense possession charge is a misdemeanor, and it carries the possibility of up to one year in jail and a minimum fine of $1,000. It’s no small thing when the median bank account balance in the US is $5,300. . In many states, this charge also results in people’s driver’s licenses being suspended, restricting their transportation access. This, in turn, limits their access to jobs with which they might earn enough to pay off the fine. These fines increase as the sale and cultivation of even the smallest amounts of cannabis carry a fine of up to $250,000 and up to five years in prison.

Both actions are also felonies, and the consequences compound—felons in 48 states are banned from

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. . .voting, cannot sit on a jury in 43 states, and face restrictions on their access to federal assistance including Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and public housing. U.S. law pencils people convicted of felonies out of participation in democratic processes and revokes their access to government assistance. Taking these penalties in tandem with the racial disparity in arrests sheds light on the deeper, unjust impact of marijuana’s criminalization on Black Americans. Legalizing marijuana federally would reduce the number of people of color implicated unjustly in the criminal justice system.

Moreover, it remains unclear what harm marijuana causes to merit these penalties. The lifetime dependence risk of cannabis remains lower than those of nicotine and alcohol, and research has suggested marijuana lacks the effects of a gateway drug. A 2023 Journal of Health Economics study has even shown legalizing cannabis use results in a reduction in prescriptions of codeine, a common opioid, and its authors even suggest this indicates a replacement effect where the reduction in codeine prescriptions represents a reduction in its recreational use due to the legalization of cannabis.

The War on Drugs recently has, in many ways, become a War on Marijuana, but as more states continue to legalize it, this is a war marijuana seems to be winning—as of 2021, nearly half (49%) of US adults have tried cannabis. A bill to federally decriminalize marijuana has passed the House of Representatives and remains on the Senate floor; its passage would be in favor of protecting people’s rights and curtailing the harms of the War on Drugs. As data on drug use and policing reflects the disproportionate harm criminalizing marijuana has wrought on Black communities in the United States, it becomes increasingly clear the law needs to align with the growing public consensus: it’s time for marijuana to be legalized federally.