Again, a battle breaks out in Arizona over the legalization of marijuana. A recently filed lawsuit seeks to stop the adult use initiative on the ballot this November. The campaign on it has included fictional information, anxiety tactics, and the like. Led by Smart and Safe Arizona and supported by various local government officials and politicians, it will do nothing to stop a legitimate conversation about the facts about marijuana for adult use in the United States.
Historic Route 66
This story is not unusual. Especially in Arizona, where the same effort caused the 2016 vote to fail. And although this last attempt was defeated, there is a lesson to be learned.
My history in making marijuana legislation and corresponding regulations spans more than a decade. As a professor of cannabis policy at the University of Denver, I had several opportunities to work with governments in the country and around the world. I have participated in countless seminars and events debating the pros and cons of legalizing marijuana.
One that particularly stood out was in Phoenix in the fall of 2016. At the time, Arizona Proposition 205, an initiative to legalize recreational cannabis use, was on the ballot. I was invited by the Phoenix Business Journal to present at a panel that discusses both sides of the issue and the effects on business in Arizona. The event was sponsored by the Arizona Small Business Association and held at the beautiful Phoenix Art Museum.
As I prepared, I learned that the opposition coalition was full of stories about how the introduction of marijuana for adult use would leave businesses with a pool of ‘stoned’ candidates, devastating to small and medium-sized businesses. There were also concerns that safety and efficiency of workplaces would be severely affected. The story was filled with supposed stories about the land of zombies in Denver after legalization for adult use.
The opposition campaign even hired former Colorado Gov. Bill Owens and former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb to take part in an advertising campaign that said the situation in Colorado was “terrible.”
The Phoenix Business Journal’s panel was very vocal against the legalization of marijuana and Jo Maguire (Jo McGuire, Inc.) was brought in from Colorado to talk about the detrimental impact that legalizing cannabis had on the state’s employers. . I ran a buzz-saw of lies and misinformation – set up like a bowling pin.
At the same time, Colorado’s economy was consistently ranked among the top in the nation and experienced an enormous economic boom – in part because of the new cannabis economy. Not to mention that troves or people flocked to Colorado as both marijuana tourists and transplants, further boosting the state’s economy. Reports from state agencies document the fact that – despite legalization – cannabis use had not increased among teens and several other metrics showed very little, if any, negative effects of cannabis legalization.
With a student of mine, I researched the impact of legalization on Colorado as a case study in a 2016 article on law from the University of Kentucky entitled “Sprung From Night Into The Sun: An Examination Of Colorado’s Marijuana Regulatory Framework Since Legalization . ”
We went too far to document the facts about legalization for adult use in Colorado and its associated effect on jobs, increased real estate, economic growth, declining unemployment, no significant increase in teen marijuana use, and much more. Despite the data on our part, the same old narrative was spun again – not legalizing on the basis of fear and falsehood.
Now, as a lawyer and academic, I am saddled with the fundamental requirement that evidence and objective facts are necessary to support a position, not one of the apparent ones binding the anti-legalization companies. They could co-opt former Colorado politicians to misrepresent facts in the above-mentioned advertising campaign. The 2016 anti-legalization campaign was funded in part by opioid manufacturer Insys Therapeutics, which provided hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Incidentally, in January 2020, John Kapoor, the founder of Insys Therapeutics, was sentenced to 66 months in prison for his role in a bribery and fraud scheme in connection with the American opioid crisis. Make all the conclusions you want about those.
Finally, Proposition 205 failed with 48.7% of the vote. The campaign to defeat it had raised more than $ 6 million. Now here we are again, four years later, and the anti-cannabis advocates are still putting in suites to prevent the adult use initiative from reaching voters in November.
Again, her narrative goes to issues of public safety and workplace. While the lawsuit was quickly settled last week against Smart and Safe Arizona by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge James Smith, the cannabis stigma fight was rewarding. Despite all the facts, and the quantitative and qualitative data indicating the multifaceted benefits of legalization, pushback remains strong.
On a clear note, the negative public perception of cannabis is aging with bilingual numbers showing the vast majority of Americans favoring legalization of one kind or another. The voting measure in Arizona itself has been against legal control and the possibility that it will continue is growing bigger and bigger. That’s great news for the Arizona economy, because its medical marijuana companies are already robust, well-executed, and profitable.
This time overheard facts and with the continuation of economic decline due to a global pandemic we can thank our lucky stars. I approach this issue not with a “dog in the hunt” mentality as a bias – let Arizonans vote as they please – but with a keen interest in election decisions about facts and evidence.
Is this an idealistic position that no longer exists in American politics? Has it ever happened? One thing is for sure: Arizona is going to lose a lot of money if all those dollars are channeled into the illegal market – largely supplied from the west, by California grass.
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