Marijuana Policy Project

Common sense assumes progress to be a series of linear steps, but in a small variety of circumstances doing partially what ought to be done completely is in fact worse than doing nothing at all.

The decriminalization of marijuana is just such an issue. While the recent legislation to reduce the schedule of penalties involved with marijuana possession — introduced by two Nashua representatives and one Keene representative — no doubt has ultimate good intentions in mind, its immediate effect would be to exacerbate the class-based drug problem endemic in New Hampshire and across the country.

The heart of the problem lies in the fact that marijuana users, largely middle-class and educated, already face fairly trivial penalties for possession, and when they do face them, they have access to lawyers and connections with which to ease the blow.

At the same time, marijuana producers and distributors, largely poor and marginalized, face onerous penalties that amount to a stripping of the basic qualities of citizenship.

The demand by middle-class users props up an illegal network of supply, which the poor turn to out of desperation and lack of alternatives.

The members of the General Court may or may not be marijuana users, but almost certainly none of them find themselves driven to marijuana distribution out of economic immiseration.

If the marijuana penalty schedule were to be reduced at the low end while remaining strict at the high end, it would only boost demand for a product that is still illegal to sell, luring more desperate members of society into an economic nexus that offers greater and greater returns while still carrying the same sacrifice of rights under the law.

Ironically, the same social classes who come out loudest in favor of the decriminalization are the same ones that demand that the people who grow their coffee, bag their groceries and paint the walls of their yoga clinics are treated justly.

Yet they are perfectly willing to participate in an economic trade, which forces its producers into the most extreme marginalization.

Decriminalization is a process whose social effects demand an all-or-nothing treatment.

This partial solution, upon critical examination, can only be judged misguided at best and destructive at worst.

Garrett Dash Nelson, Nashua