Legalization advocates have long argued that marijuana represents a potentially effective treatment option for chronic pain and could serve as an alternative to opioid-based painkillers—and according to a new scientific meta-analysis, they may be onto something.
Despite a bill being tabled in U.S. Congress this week to support smaller cannabis companies during the pandemic, an independent Colorado retailer said they aren’t holding their breath for financial aid.
At the start of 2020, more than a dozen states seemed very likely to legalize marijuana for recreational or medical purposes by the end of the year. Now that a coronavirus pandemic has overwhelmed just about every aspect of American life, it seems only a handful of states will be able to enact marijuana reform.
At the start of 2020, cannabis legalization bills in a handful of northeast states had a relatively clear path to passage. That was before the coronavirus pandemic hit. The latest place where a cannabis bill is delayed? Connecticut.
In 2013, the American Civil Liberties Union released a groundbreaking report that examined millions of cannabis arrests across America between 2001 and 2010 and found significant racial disparities in how cannabis laws were enforced. Just one year before its release, Colorado and Washington made history when voters in both states on election night passed ballot measures to legalize cannabis use and sales for adults. Since then, nearly a dozen states have followed.
The coronavirus crisis could be igniting a revolution of sorts in the legal cannabis industry. Thirty-three states across the U.S. allow for some form of sale and consumption of marijuana. And of those, more than 20 states have designated the cannabis industry as essential during the coronavirus outbreak.
April 20, or 4/20, is a day when many people across the world celebrate marijuana culture by toking up, jamming out to tunes and filling up on munchies. But the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is using the unofficial cannabis holiday to draw attention to a serious issue: Despite the growing number of states that are enacting legalization laws, people of color are still much more likely to be arrested for marijuana than white people are—even though consumption rates are virtually identical across races.
There will be many policy lessons that emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic. One should be that we can achieve better health, safety, and economic outcomes if we replace cannabis prohibition with a thoughtfully regulated system of sales to adults and take other steps to reduce the number of low-risk offenders who become entrapped in our criminal justice system.