The game-change moment for marijuana

Election Day may shape up to be a watershed moment for efforts to end marijuana prohibition, with five states voting on marijuana legalization and four more on medical marijuana. The results are expected to have major ramifications for marijuana law reform in states across the U.S., at the federal level, and even internationally.

“California’s looking good, so is medical marijuana in Florida, and I’m confident we’ll prevail on legalization in other states as well,” said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance.  “We’re fast approaching the day when Americans will look back on the marijuana wars of recent decades the same way we now look back on alcohol Prohibition – as a costly, foolish and deadly mistake.”

{mosads}Tuesday’s election could be a game-changer for national marijuana policy. Just last week, President Barack Obama said federal prohibition is “not going to be tenable” if California and other states legalize marijuana. Hillary Clinton said states should decide the issue, and promised to reschedule marijuana. Even among Republicans, support for marijuana reform is rising, as medical marijuana amendments routinely passed the Republican-controlled House and Republican-controlled Senate Appropriations Committee over the past three years, while an amendment to end federal marijuana prohibition outright failed by just nine votes last year in the House.

The election will also have international ramifications, as momentum grows to end marijuana prohibition in Europe and the Americas.  Over the past two years, Jamaica has enacted wide-ranging marijuana decriminalization; Colombia and Puerto Rico issued executive orders legalizing medical marijuana; and medical marijuana initiatives have been debated in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Italy. In 2013, Uruguay became the first country in the world to legalize marijuana on a national level, and Canada’s governing Liberal Party has promised to do the same.

The most significant ballot initiative this year is California’s Proposition 64, which along with legalizing the adult use of marijuana and enacting across-the-board retroactive sentencing reform for marijuana offenses, establishes a comprehensive, strictly-controlled system to tax and regulate businesses to produce and distribute marijuana in a legal market. Experts are calling Prop. 64 “the new gold standard” for marijuana policy because of its cutting edge provisions to undo the most egregious harms of marijuana prohibition on impacted communities of color and the environment, as well as its sensible approaches to public health, youth protection, licensing and revenue allocation.

The Drug Policy Alliance and its lobbying arm, Drug Policy Action, played key leadership roles in the California campaign — co-drafting the initiative, coordinating the political mobilization, social media, public relations and more, and raising over $5 million to fund the effort.

By shifting away from counterproductive marijuana arrests and focusing instead on public health, states that have legalized marijuana are diminishing many of the worst harms of the war on drugs, while managing to raise substantial new revenues. A recent Drug Policy Alliance report found that Colorado, Washington, Alaska and Oregon have benefitted from a dramatic decrease in marijuana arrests and convictions, as well as increased tax revenues, since the adult possession of marijuana became legal.  At the same time, these states did not experience increases in youth marijuana use or traffic fatalities. 

Davies is the director of communications for the Drug Policy Alliance. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, BBC.com and CNN.com. Follow him on Twitter @jagdavies

The views expressed by Contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.