{"id":1560963,"date":"2024-03-19T06:00:48","date_gmt":"2024-03-19T06:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/?p=316570"},"modified":"2024-03-19T06:00:48","modified_gmt":"2024-03-19T06:00:48","slug":"lessons-from-legalization-the-problem-isnt-cannabis-its-capitalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2024\/03\/19\/lessons-from-legalization-the-problem-isnt-cannabis-its-capitalism\/","title":{"rendered":"Lessons From Legalization: The Problem Isn\u2019t Cannabis, It\u2019s Capitalism"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair<\/p><\/div>\n

The United States government is likely to\u00a0end the designation of marijuana as a dangerous narcotic<\/a> sometime this year, potentially marking one of the biggest federal decisions on the classification of the drug in decades. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration determined that marijuana is less harmful than, say, opioids and other substances, prompting the Biden administration to announce it would \u201creschedule\u201d cannabis from a Schedule I\u2014which is what the most dangerous drugs are classified as\u2014to a Schedule III drug, commensurate with anabolic steroids and ketamine.<\/p>\n

The move is long overdue, especially in light of the disproportionate criminalization of Black and Brown users and sellers of the drug. According to the\u00a0ACLU<\/a>, \u201cMarijuana use is roughly equal among Blacks and whites, yet Blacks are 3.73 times as likely to be arrested for marijuana possession.\u201d While there have been many benefits stemming from legalization, there has been one negative impact: the enrichment of those who were privileged to begin with, rather than those who were most impacted. This is less the result of legalization than of ongoing inaction on righting racial inequities in our justice, legal, and economic systems. <\/p>\n

There are steps that the government could take to remedy such inequities\u2014if it wanted to. The trouble is that those in power have instead sought to demonize marijuana, its users, and its impacts, resisting the dissemination of justice at every step. <\/p>\n

When California voters\u00a0approved<\/a>\u00a0the legalization of recreational marijuana in 2016, the federal Drug Enforcement Agency under then-President Barack Obama denied a petition to reschedule marijuana at the federal level,\u00a0saying<\/a>\u00a0the drug \u201clacks an acceptable level of safety for use even under medical supervision.\u201d Still, states were already responding to a\u00a0sea<\/a>change<\/a>\u00a0in public opinion and were slowly legalizing cannabis. <\/p>\n

But naysayers, seeing the writing on the wall, made unfounded\u00a0fear-based<\/a>claims akin to a modern-day version of \u201creefer madness<\/a>,\u201d drawing deceptive parallels to already legal but harmful substances such as tobacco and alcohol. It isn\u2019t surprising that such scare tactics can be traced back to\u00a0racist beliefs<\/a>. <\/p>\n

With 40 states and the District of Columbia having\u00a0legalized<\/a>\u00a0cannabis use, in a trend that seemed unthinkable a decade or so ago, the panic-driven predictions about the drug\u2019s dire impacts on individual health and behavior have proven to be\u00a0false<\/a>. It wasn\u2019t cannabis that ruined people\u2019s lives. It was the criminalization of cannabis that did so. <\/p>\n

Now, many of those who were arrested and convicted of marijuana-related state-level offenses are slowly seeing their records being expunged as states enact laws in line with legalization. The\u00a0Last Prisoner Project<\/a>reports that \u201c24 states have enacted cannabis-specific record clearance laws, and 10 states have enacted cannabis-specific resentencing laws.\u201d In\u00a0California<\/a>, a majority of those impacted have seen their records cleared. <\/p>\n

Cannabis taxes<\/a>\u00a0are also boosting state revenues. But that hasn\u2019t stopped the naysayers from casting a negative light on legalization. While California now rakes in about $1 billion per year from marijuana sales,\u00a0headlines<\/a>\u00a0about falling revenues resulting from lower prices and reduced use are increasingly common. In other words, there were initially fears that too many people would start using marijuana if it were legalized. And now there are worries that too few are using it. <\/p>\n

Colorado, the\u00a0first<\/a>\u00a0state in the nation to have legalized marijuana for recreational use, is seeing a similar sort of disappointment such as\u00a0this local CBS story<\/a>\u00a0headlined, \u201cShortfall in marijuana sales tax revenue in Colorado will impact Aurora homeless\u201d\u2014as if cannabis taxes were responsible for creating and sustaining a homelessness crisis rather than predatory capitalism. (According to the\u00a0Common Sense Institute<\/a>, there is increased homelessness in Aurora because \u201c[h]ousing affordability in Colorado has plummeted, overall price levels are at record highs due to inflation, and the state\u2019s housing inventory is dangerously low.\u201d) <\/p>\n

What\u00a0is<\/em>\u00a0critical to examine in terms of a disappointing result of legalization is the disproportionate enrichment of the privileged few, instead of those who were historically harmed by prohibition. The vast majority of cannabis sellers are\u00a0white<\/a>\u2014the same demographic that was spared the worst impacts of cannabis criminalization. <\/p>\n

This is unsurprising given the persistence of a\u00a0racist criminal justice system<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0racial wealth gap<\/a>\u00a0in the U.S. Without intentional intervention to ensure that those most harmed by prohibition would benefit the most from legalization, the chips fell where they always do when it comes to American capitalism\u2014in the laps of the already privileged. <\/p>\n

Even in states like\u00a0Illinois<\/a>, where legalization was enacted with an eye toward righting racial wrongs, cannabis sales have not substantially helped to erase the racial wealth gap. According to Jocelyn Mart\u00ednez-Rosales writing in the\u00a0South Side Weekly<\/a>, \u201clegalization\u2026 has not led to substantial gains for the Black and Brown communities most affected by its criminalization.\u201d <\/p>\n

Just as homelessness in Colorado is the result of predatory capitalism and an unwillingness by elected officials to financially intervene in order to house people, the financial benefits of cannabis legalization can, and will, remain inequitable without concerted intervention. <\/p>\n

One model for effective intervention is the Illinois city of Evanston, famous for being the first in the nation to enact a program of\u00a0reparations<\/a>\u00a0for its Black residents in the form of cash for\u00a0homeownership<\/a>, and eventually for the development of Black-led businesses. <\/p>\n

Those reparations, introduced by then-Alderwoman Robin Rue Simmons<\/a>in 2019, were specifically aimed at undoing historical harm. Rue Simmons said, \u201cWe all know that the road to repair and justice in the Black community is going to be a generation of work. It\u2019s going to be many programs and initiatives, and more funding.\u201d Evanston\u2019s reparations are funded in large part by marijuana sales taxes, because, according to the\u00a0city council<\/a>, \u201c[T]here is no more appropriate place to use the sales tax from that industry.\u201d <\/p>\n

When cannabis tax revenues weren\u2019t enough to fully fund Evanston\u2019s intended reparations, instead of throwing their hands up in the air and accepting this as inevitable, city officials simply\u00a0added a second dispensary\u2019s tax revenues<\/a>\u00a0to make up the shortfall. <\/p>\n

Imagine if we applied such an approach to all social ills. For example, Aurora, Colorado could simply decide not to tolerate the fact that so many people remain unhoused and find other sources of revenue to make up for the shortfall in cannabis taxes. <\/p>\n

Taking that approach to its logical conclusion, local, state, and federal officials could intervene wherever predatory capitalism and racist criminal justice systems devastate communities of color and others. <\/p>\n

There are many lessons to be learned from our collective evolution on the issue of marijuana, the most important being that social and economic inequities are not hard to tackle if there is political will. The problem is not (and never was) marijuana. It is (and always was) racial capitalism. That\u2019s something the Biden administration would do well to keep in mind as it takes the next step toward easing federal restrictions on marijuana. <\/p>\n

The post Lessons From Legalization: The Problem Isn\u2019t Cannabis, It\u2019s Capitalism<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The United States government is likely to\u00a0end the designation of marijuana as a dangerous narcotic sometime this year, potentially marking one of the biggest federal decisions on the classification of the drug in decades. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration determined that marijuana is less harmful than, say, opioids and other substances, prompting the Biden More<\/a><\/p>\n

The post Lessons From Legalization: The Problem Isn\u2019t Cannabis, It\u2019s Capitalism<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":340,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1560963"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/340"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1560963"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1560963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1564606,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1560963\/revisions\/1564606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1560963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1560963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1560963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}