Marijuana Grand Prize wins: Three more states vote in favor of legalization

No tipping point

Nationwide, support for marijuana has never been stronger. Seventy-two percent of Democrats and a slim majority of Republicans – 51 percent – support legalization, according to Gallup.

Strong public support and successive waves of state-level legalization during the election years led many policy analysts to argue that marijuana had reached a critical point in the United States.

Two-thirds of the United States has legalized some kind of marijuana. After that, one argues, its national expansion is inevitable.

As policy researchers on marijuana, we are questioning this story.

Our research indicates that advances in marijuana for medical purposes may well slow down after this latest round of successful voting initiatives. Marijuana for recreational purposes may continue to expand in states with marijuana for legal purposes, but will eventually come up against a wall.

Our warning is about the particular way in which the legalization of marijuana took place in the United States: at the ballot box.

Voting initiatives have power

Until now, all the laws on marijuana for recreational purposes were adopted through a voting initiative, not the state legislative process. Seven of the first eight medical marijuana laws – those of California, Alaska, Oregon, Washington, Maine and Nevada – were also passed by way of a vote.

Such direct initiatives – where citizens can put politics to the vote for approval – are a powerful, albeit nontraditional, form of decision-making in the United States.

Rather than relying on lawmakers to draft and pass laws on some – often controversial – issues, balloting initiatives mobilize public opinion. They have been used to legalize or restrict same-sex marriage, limit taxation and spending, raise the minimum wage and much more. Some are funded by wealthy individuals with specific business interests.

Even in states where voting initiatives have little hope of success, they can be an important factor in policy change.

In Ohio, in 2015, marijuana advocates spent more than $ 20 million to legalize both medical marijuana and recreational marijuana. The vast majority of Ohio voters said no, but the campaign revealed widespread support for a marijuana policy for medical purposes.

The Marijuana Policy Project, a rights organization, has announced that it will put marijuana for medical purposes on the Ohio ballot in 2016. In response, the Ohio legislature quickly adopted and developed its own legislation on marijuana for medical purposes.

In Utah, where governor Gary Herbert opposed the expansive proposal for medical marijuana passed Tuesday, lawmakers have already pledged to replace the initiative and pass marijuana law more acceptable to conservative lawmakers and the Mormon Church influence.

The limits of direct initiative

The voting initiative is so powerful. But our analysis suggests that its potential to liberalize access to marijuana in the United States is almost untapped.

Of the 17 US states that still have no form of legal marijuana, only five – Idaho, Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska and Missouri – allow direct initiatives.

The others are mainly conservative countries such as South Carolina and Alabama, where legislatures have indicated their reluctance to relax restrictions. If voters in the country wanted marijuana for medical or recreational purposes, they would not be able to bypass policy makers to get the problem dealt with.

The legalization of marijuana will not end at the mid-term in 2018. Recreational marijuana still has room to expand into the 22 – soon to be – 24 states that have marijuana for legal purposes .

The story shows that once people become familiar with marijuana for medical purposes – seeing its effects on patients and tax revenues – full legalization often follows.

In our analysis, it is highly unlikely that the remaining 13 states will liberalize access to marijuana without a significant push from the federal government.

It's unlikely, but not impossible, under the Trump administration.

Federal law still considers marijuana as an illegal Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act, which means that, for the US government, this plant has no medical value.

The Obama administration has taken a non-interventionist approach to legalizing states, allowing them to experiment. But Attorney General Jeff Sessions has asked Justice Department lawyers to fully enforce federal law in the legal states responsible for marijuana.

Quietly, however, the Trump administration has also solicited public comment on the reclassification of marijuana. And the president himself has sometimes signaled his support for the idea of ​​leaving marijuana to the states.

If the sessions leave the Trump administration, as rumor has it, the DOJ's position on marijuana law enforcement may change.

And the Democrats, who took control of the House on Tuesday, have already indicated that they could push for marijuana to be removed from Schedule I as early as next year.

This article is an updated version of an article originally published on October 31, 2018.

Daniel J. Mallinson, Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Administration, School of Public Affairs, Pennsylvania State University, and Lee Hannah, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Wright State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Daniel J. Mallinson

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Daniel J. Mallinson

Lee Hannah

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Lee Hannah