By Luke Phillips, Contributing Writer
Years after major reform led to the legalization of marijuana in Colorado and Washington, the nation-wide legalization of the drug remains a popular topic of conversation. Leading up to legalization, there were many expectations of certain legal and societal effects it may have. Conservatives and progressives both weighed in on the upcoming policy and upon the enactment of legalization. Some expectations came to fruition, while others were utterly debunked.
An argument often heard against the legalization of marijuana is the impairment of drivers on the road and the difficulty of testing on site whether a driver has consumed marijuana. In the years since legalization, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and the Highway Loss Data Institute found that Colorado saw a 14 percent increase in traffic incidents and an overall increase in drivers claiming cannabis usage before or while operating a vehicle.
Conversely, along with legalization came fewer traffic stops leading to car searches, especially in minority populations, and fewer traffic-related arrests. Criminality dropped in both states after the legalization of marijuana, while cannabis-related arrests only continued to increase, according to Citizens Against Legalizing Marijuana (CALM).
The biggest concern for many is the commercialization of marijuana. Major corporations, much like those in the alcohol and tobacco industries, are liable to market marijuana to the addiction-prone populations of America and prey upon the uneducated. Tobacco and alcohol corporations, before government restrictions on marketing and advertising, knowingly targeted Americans in high-stress occupations to produce addictive cycles in the lives of their buyers.
News of tobacco and alcohol advertising strategies was met with public outrage and sparked a movement towards heavy government restrictions. Rationally, many fear this same thing will happen with the commercialization of marijuana.
Addiction has claimed the lives of countless of Americans and has ruined marriages, careers, relationships and lives. Many would make the claim that marijuana is not addictive. Although the drug may not be physically addictive in the same way nicotine is, any escape from reality has the potential to drastically take control of an individual’s life. Science has proven the medical merits of marijuana treatments in patients with specific illnesses, but the wide-scale legalization and commercialization of marijuana would not benefit the nation as a whole.
