Recreational Marijuana Case Study

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The prohibition of recreational marijuana has been a growing topic of public discourse in the United States over the past few decades. The use of recreational marijuana was legal in the United States, until the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 ("Marijuana Timeline"). After the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act, all transfer and possession of the plant was made illegal, starting the prohibition of marijuana that still stands today in most states. In 1996 with the passage of the Compassionate Use Act, the state of California became the first state to legalize the use of marijuana for medical treatment (California Legislature "Code Section"). Then, in 2012, with the passage of Amendment 64, the state of Colorado became the first state to …show more content…
Major public-health benefits from the decriminalization of recreational marijuana includes "increased product quality and fewer emergency room episodes" (Mark Anderson 7). The emergency room visits stem from the consumption of marijuana that has been "laced with chemicals, such as phencyclidine (PCP) and embalming fluid" (Mark Anderson). The legalization of recreational marijuana in the state of Colorado in 2013 through the passage of Amendment 64 (Colorado NORML), uses "RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology combined with serialized item tracking"(Marijuana Inventory "Regulatory Features") to create a "surveillance system where the municipality has real-time visibility at any given time into the inventory" (Marijuana Inventory). With tighter regulations controlling the consumption and selling of marijuana, consumers have peace of mind and no longer have to worry about receiving and consuming laced marijuana. This increase in product quality by regulating and tracking the marijuana from the planting to the selling of that plant, eliminates the opportunity for an unauthorized person to come into contact with the plant and, in turn, contaminate it with harmful, or even lethal chemicals. Now that the government knows the location of individual plants with the use of RFID, it becomes extremely difficult to illegally transport …show more content…
Lachenmeier and Rehm find that "alcohol, nicotine, cocaine and heroin fall into the 'high risk' category with MOE (Margin of Exposure) < 10" (Comparative Risk Assessment), and "the rest of the compounds except THC fall into the 'risk' category with MOE (-- removed HTML --) 10,000" (Comparative Risk Assessment), which puts it in into the low-risk category. On top of this, Mark Anderson finds that drivers under the influence of Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) tend to drive slower and take fewer risks than drivers under the influence of alcohol, who tend to drive faster and take more risks. (Mark Anderson 4-5). While driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol is illegal, drivers under the influence of marijuana are two times more likely to be involved in a traffic accident, while those under the influence of alcohol are nearly twenty-five times more likely to be involved in an accident (Peck "The relationship"). Marijuana is nowhere near as toxic or harmful as alcohol or nicotine, both of which are legal drugs. It takes one thousand times the exposure of THC to become as dangerous as alcohol or nicotine,both of which are legal drugs. On top of this, the fact that the MOE (margin of exposure) of nicotine and alcohol are both comparable to cocaine and heroin is alarming in itself. Drivers that are under the influence of marijuana are less likely to be
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