Colorado Supreme Court says companies can fire workers for using medical marijuana in their off-hours

Marijuana plants at RiverRock Organic Cannabis in Denver, Co. (Photo by Marc Piscotty For The Washington Post)
Colorado is a state where many residents legally use marijuana. It is also a state where companies can fire employees for using the drug, even if that occurred when the person wasn’t at work.
The Colorado Supreme Court ruled Monday that a business can fire an employee for using medical marijuana even if the employee is off-duty and abiding by state law, a decision that could have far-reaching ramifications in a state that has decriminalized most marijuana use.
The justices said that employees can still be fired because marijuana remains illegal in the eyes of the federal government, making this case a high-profile example of the sharp divide between state laws and the federal law. This chasm affects nearly two dozen states that allow legal medical marijuana, as well as a growing effort across the country to legalize recreational marijuana, following in the footsteps of Colorado and other states.
While the ruling does not specifically mention Colorado’s highly publicized and thriving recreational marijuana industry, focusing instead on medical marijuana, it could reverberate across a state that allows anyone 21 and older to legally buy and use marijuana.
In Colorado, about one in seven residents said they use marijuana, according to data released Monday by the state Department of Public Health and Environment. And about a third of the people who defined themselves as current marijuana users last year said they used it daily.
The opinion released Monday dealt with an employee who was fired because he used medical marijuana. Under Colorado state law, it is considered discriminatory “for an employer to terminate the employment of any employee due to that employee’s engaging in any lawful activity off the premises of the employer during nonworking hours.”
In the case, Coats v. Dish Network, Brandon Coats argued that the satellite provider violated this statute by firing him for using medical marijuana after work, because he was acting in accordance with Colorado law. Coats is a quadriplegic who has used a wheelchair since he was a teenager, according to court filings, and he obtained a medical marijuana license in 2009.
Brandon Coats, right. (Ed Andrieski/AP)
Coats worked for Dish until 2010, when he tested positive for tetrahydrocannabinol (or THC, the active mind-altering ingredient in marijuana) during a random drug test. He was fired for violating the company’s drug policy.
A trial court dismissed Coats’s claim that he had been wrongfully terminated, and an appeals court upheld that decision. The state’s Supreme Court, in an opinion delivered by Justice Allison H. Eid, agreed with the lower courts, determining that despite the state law, Coats’s marijuana use can’t be considered lawful because it violates federal law.
The Colorado statute does not define what is a “lawful” activity, Eid wrote, and while Coats argued that it should cover things legal under Colorado law, she said the justices disagreed.
“As a national employer, Dish remains committed to a drug-free workplace and compliance with federal law,” Dish Network said in a statement praising the decision.
Michael Evans, an attorney for Coats, called the decision was “devastating” and said the state’s legislature must act to keep people from needing medical marijuana from having to choose between using the drug and their work.
“Although I’m very disappointed today, I hope that my case has brought the issue of use of medical marijuana and employment to light,” Coats said in a statement released through Evans’s firm. “If we’re making marijuana legal for medical purposes we need to address issues that come along with it such as employment.”
Coats worked as a telephone customer service representative who only used marijuana after work hours and at home, Evans’s firm said.
Advocates of reforming drug policy said the case highlighted the problematic gray areas that exist between state and federal law.
“It’s now painfully clear that something akin to a medical marijuana bill of rights is needed for patients in Colorado,” Art Way, state director for the Drug Policy Alliance in Colorado, said in a statement e-mailed to The Post. “We need robust state protections for our patients and legal adult marijuana users, just as we have robust regulations for the marijuana industry.”
Recreational marijuana became legal in Colorado last year, after voters in 2012 approved a constitutional amendment making that state and Washington the first in the country to legalize retail sales of the drug for personal use.
Meanwhile, medical marijuana is allowed in nearly half the states in the country, with 23 states and Washington, D.C. allowing legal medical marijuana, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
In Colorado, medical marijuana has been allowed since 2001, when a constitutional amendment went into effect allowing “persons suffering from debilitating medical conditions” to possess and use marijuana.
That constitutional amendment does not require employers “to accommodate the medical use of marijuana in any work place.” However, it does not explicitly state what happens when medical marijuana is used by employees outside the workplace.
But the federal government still deems marijuana a Schedule I substance, considered by the Drug Enforcement Administration to be “the most dangerous drugs” they classify, along with heroin, LSD and peyote.
In 2009, David W. Ogden, a deputy attorney general, wrote in a memo that prosecuting people with serious illnesses who use medical marijuana “is unlikely to be an efficient use of limited federal resources.”
Rather, the memo said, the Justice Department would remain focused on entities that illegally sell marijuana instead of people who “are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws” governing medical marijuana.
This post has been updated. First published: 12:16 p.m.


Find information about the popularity of traditional painkillers, anti-anxiety medications and anti-nausea drugs in states that adopted medical marijuana laws.

Studies indicate that medical marijuana is effective in treating chronic pain; PTSD; anxiety; AIDS; and spasms. Overall, most of the same studies report that there has been a decrease in a variety of drugs, especially pain-killers, in states that have adopted medical marijuana laws. Among the older population, medical marijuana is reportedly improving their quality of life, making them less dependent widely prescribed opioid painkillers and other drugs. Documents mentioning Washington are relevant.

Find scholarly articles that support this question's claims.

As more states legalize marijuana, NFLPA to study potential as a pain-management tool

The increasing legalization of marijuana at the state level could spur change with the NFL’s drug policy. (Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press)
In the aftermath of a new set of states legalizing marijuana use in the national elections, the NFL Players Association said Wednesday it is actively studying the possibility of allowing players to use marijuana as a pain-management tool.
The union is forming an NFL players pain management committee that will study players’ use of marijuana as a pain-management mechanism, among other things, though the union has not yet determined if an adjustment to the sport’s ban on marijuana use is warranted.
“Marijuana is still governed by our collective bargaining agreement,” George Atallah, the NFLPA’s assistant executive director of external affairs, said in a phone interview Wednesday. “And while some states have moved in a more progressive direction, that fact still remains.
“We are actively looking at the issue of pain management of our players. And studying marijuana as a substance under that context is the direction we are focused on.”
A growing push from players within the sport, plus an ongoing national medical conversation over the benefits of marijuana and the dangers of opiate-based painkillers, have increased scrutiny on the league’s rules that ban the drug. This also comes as voters in California, Nevada and Massachusetts approved recreational marijuana use Tuesday, joining four other states and Washington, D.C., in enacting similar laws. Florida, Arkansas and North Dakota voters legalized medical marijuana use, bringing the total of states with such measures to more than two dozen.
But marijuana use remains prohibited under the drug policy collectively bargained between the NFL and the NFLPA, and both parties would need to agree to any changes to that policy. Players are tested for marijuana and can be fined or suspended without pay for positive or missed tests.
The union’s contemplation of approving marijuana as a pain-management mechanism for players had begun before Tuesday’s voting.
Some players, including former Jacksonville Jaguars and Baltimore Ravens offensive lineman Eugene Monroe, argue that marijuana is safer than the painkillers commonly used by players and its use should be permitted by the sport for pain-management purposes.
“To this point, I understand why no one but me as an active player has said anything about it,” Monroe said in an interview with the Post earlier this year prior to his retirement. “It’s a banned substance in our league. Speaking about it can honestly ruin someone’s career if the wrong team gets wind of it and has adverse opinions on it. But my health is more important than the opinion of someone who could be my employer now or my future employer. . . .
“There’s enough anecdotal evidence already to say, ‘Hey listen, we know it’s not toxic. We know it’s safer than what we’re already doing.’ ”
Monroe, who announced his retirement in July, was not available for further comment Wednesday, according to one of his representatives.
Some contend that the increasing number of states to legalize marijuana use should impact the NFL’s view.
“There is no health and safety reason for marijuana being on the banned list and now the legal rationale has crumbled,” a person on the players’ side of the sport said Wednesday, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic.
Some medical experts are also advocating for cannabis-based treatment over some current painkillers, noting the addiction and overdose potential of opioids. In 2014, 19,000 deaths were attributed to overdoses from prescription pain medication, according to the American Society of Addiction Medicine. Prescription painkillers have also been cited as a gateway to heroin use.
“In my mind, there’s no comparison if we just started from scratch in the year 2016 and looked newly at which class of drugs worked better to treat pain and side-effect profile up to and including death, in the case of opioids,” Daniel Clauw, a University of Michigan professor who has performed studies comparing opioids and cannabis, told the Post in June. “You put the two next to each other, and there really is no debate which is more effective to treat pain. You would go the cannabinoid route instead of the opiate route.”
Cannabidiol, or CBD, an anti-inflammatory extracted from cannabis, could potentially help players as a preventative measure against one of the most pressing issues facing the NFL: concussions.
Lester Grinspoon, a professor emeritus at Harvard and one of the first medical marijuana researchers, said in an interview with the Post earlier this year that “evidence shows CBD is neuroprotective. I would have each individual take a capsule an hour or two before they play or practice. It’s better than nothing.”
Grinspoon also noted there would be no guarantee such a measure would work.
Following Tuesday’s election results, the league has given no indication that, in its view, any change to the current drug policy is at hand.
“This isn’t just the NFL’s policy,” NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said in a written statement Wednesday to the Post. “This is a collectively bargained policy with the NFL Players Association.
“The program is administered by jointly appointed independent medical advisors to the league and the NFLPA who are constantly reviewing and relying on the most current research and scientific data. We continue to follow the advice of leading experts on treatment, pain management and other symptoms associated with concussions and other injuries. However, medical experts have not recommended making a change or revisiting our collectively-bargained policy and approach related to marijuana, and our position on its use remains consistent with federal law and workplace policies across the country. If these medical experts change their view, then this is an area that we would explore.”
The current collective bargaining agreement between the league and union runs through 2020. But the two sides review the sport’s drug policies annually and sometimes make adjustments. In September 2014, the league and union agreed to raise the threshold for what constitutes a positive test for marijuana from 15 nanograms per milliliter to 35 nanograms per milliliter. A nanogram is one-billionth of a gram.
Under the league’s current rules failed or missed tests typically result in a suspension of four games without pay for a fourth violation. The first violation results in the player being referred to a substance abuse program. The second violation results in a fine equivalent to two of the player’s game checks, and the third violation typically results in a four-game fine. A fifth violation is a 10-game suspension and a sixth violation is a one-year ban.
The league has come under fire recently for the length of suspensions given for marijuana use compared to other violations, such as the initial suspensions for domestic violence incidents assessed to then-New York Giants kicker Josh Brown (one game) earlier this season and then-Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice (two games) in 2014.
Rice’s suspension was subsequently increased in the wake of a public outcry, although the longer suspension later was overturned by an arbitrator. Brown has been put on the commissioner’s exempt list, a form of paid leave, as the league mulls a possible larger penalty. He was released by the Giants. Rice has remained unsigned since being released by the Ravens in 2014.
Despite the legalization of marijuana in some states, the federal prohibition on marijuana use remains in place. The Obama administration maintained a policy of noninterference with state marijuana laws. It is not clear what approach will be taken by the administration of President-elect Donald Trump.
Gabriel Feldman, the director of the sports law program at Tulane University, said the NFL and NFLPA face a practical and perhaps political decision about marijuana, but not one of compliance with shifting state laws.
“There are substances on the banned substances list that are not illegal,” Feldman said in a phone interview. “The league and the Players Association can make the determination under the CBA that substances that are legal can be on the banned substances list. . . . [Conversely the league] doesn’t have to test for it just because it’s illegal.
“The league is certainly not bound by the laws of individual states in terms of whether they test or don’t test. There are some who might say that alcohol should be a banned substance even though it’s legal. Ultimately it’s up to the league and the players to decide.”
The momentum of the marijuana-legalization movement potentially could influence the NFL’s thinking, Feldman said.
“It may,” Feldman said. “I would think that both the league and the players are continuing to study the issue and continuing to study whether it makes sense. Certainly as the laws change, that might inform their decision and we may see action. [But] the league also has a uniformity issue. Even if the federal prohibition is lifted and it’s legal in some states and illegal in other states, the NFL might have an interest in maintaining uniformity in its policy.”
Previous reporting by The Washington Post’s Adam Kilgore and Liz Clarke was used in this story.


Marijuana’s rising acceptance comes after many failures. Is it now legalization’s time?

In the San Francisco Bay Area, activists who've been rallying for marijuana reform for decades see a new wave of politics and public opinion that may change California's cannabis laws to come.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, activists who've been rallying for marijuana reform for decades see a new wave of politics and public opinion that may change California's cannabis laws to come. (Chris Hardy and Casey Capachi/The Washington Post)
SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. —
Across a vast outdoor plaza lined with hundreds of booths, this month’s Cannabis Cup gathering in Southern California has attracted more than 10,000 visitors at $40 a ticket. By midafternoon, some of them are sprawled on overstuffed couches that merchants have thoughtfully provided. Others move from booth to booth, sampling wares from businesses that have risen from the underground economy to create a burgeoning industry of hazy legality.
Vendors hawk brightly colored candies, chocolate bars, slickly designed jars of gourmet peanut butter — all infused with weed. Smokers sample e-cigarettes, vaporizers and the latest in bongs and glassware. Agricultural firms display industrial-sized machinery for harvesting plants, electronics firms offer a dazzling array of grow lights, and everywhere, growers lovingly explain the virtues of dozens of plant strains such as Gorilla Glue, Silver Haze and Crystal Coma.
All in a state where marijuana is not yet quite legal, and all without a single police officer to be seen.
America has been at the edge of marijuana legalization several times during the past half-century, but never as close to mass acceptance of the drug as the nation is today.
Since the 1960s, the United States has traveled on a herky-jerky trip from hippies and head shops to grass-roots backlash by suburban parents, from enthusiastic funding of the war on drugs to a gathering consensus that the war had little effect on marijuana use. Now, for the first time, marijuana legalization is winning majority support in public opinion polls and a drug used by about 6 percent of Americans — and one-third of the nation’s high school seniors — is starting to shake off its counterculture reputation. It is winning acceptance even from some police, prosecutors and politicians.
But is this time really different? Why is the current campaign for legalization resonating when previous ones did not? Today’s leap toward legality is entwined with the financial desperation of cash-strapped states, an Internet-driven revolution in how Americans learn about marijuana and its medicinal uses, and a rising libertarian sensibility in which many liberals and conservatives alike have grown skeptical of government’s role in telling citizens how to medicate themselves.
The skies looked bright for legalization at several other points in recent decades, and those efforts ultimately went nowhere, as campaigns by parents combined with sharp opposition by law enforcement and elected officials to keep marijuana on the list of substances that can land you in jail.
But in 20 states and the District, the booming medical marijuana industry (the drug first became legal to treat ailments in California in 1996) has raised expectations of full legalization. In 2012, legalized marijuana outpolled President Obama in Colorado; the votes for pot and Obama in Washington state were almost identical at 56 percent each.
Activists in at least six states and the District are working to put legalization initiatives on the ballot this year or in 2016, and legislatures in 13 states are considering bills to legalize a plant that in 80 years has traveled from widely used patent medicine to felony to misdemeanor and now to the cusp of acceptance as one more taxed and regulated mind-altering substance, akin to alcohol or tobacco.
Mike Aldrich, with the support of his wife, Michelle, has been pushing for the legalization of marijuana for over four decades. He now predicts that “marijuana’s going to be legal in the United States in 10 years. Of course, I first said that in 1967.” (Chris Hardy/for The Washington Post)
The seeds of change
Michael Aldrich remembers the day: Aug. 6, 1963.
He was a kid from South Dakota, a Princeton junior studying at Harvard for the summer, out on a date with a beautiful beatnik woman he’d met in a class on contemporary British poetry. She was dressed all in black. He was smitten. They’d spent the evening at Club 47, a legendary folkie spot, and now, as they walked through Harvard Yard, she turned to him and asked, “Ever try this?” She showed him a tiny, skinny joint.
They lit up right there in the Yard.
“We were in bed within the hour,” Aldrich recalls. “I was sold.” He began smoking pot every day, a practice that would continue for half a century.
In short order, Aldrich began his life’s work. His campaign for legalization seemed in its first years like a blend of academic exercise and cultural rebellion, but it contained the seeds of arguments that would gradually shift social attitudes toward the drug.
As a graduate student traveling abroad, Aldrich explored marijuana’s role in the mythology of India. As a doctoral student at the state university in Buffalo, in 1967, he founded the nation’s first campus group advocating for legalized pot, LEMAR, as in LEgalize MARijuana. They were 15 longhaired hippies who thought they could change the world.
Aldrich challenged the head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, Henry Giordano, to a debate. Giordano argued that marijuana was worse than heroin and that efforts to legalize the weed were “just another effort to break down our whole American system.” Aldrich answered with a history of pot’s use as a relaxant, sedative, painkiller and inspirational aid.
Aldrich organized the first national conference on legalization and met the poet Allen Ginsberg, who hired him as his personal assistant and launched a New York City chapter of LEMAR. In 1969, Aldrich moved to California to teach and joined other activists there to create Amorphia, which made and sold Acapulco Gold brand rolling papers and used the proceeds to fund a drive for “free, legal backyard marijuana.”
Marijuana by that time was a symbol of the anti-Vietnam War movement and the hippie counterculture; only 12 percent of Americans favored legalizing pot. Amorphia — a core group of 30 hippies, many of whom lived communally in a house north of San Francisco in Marin County — didn’t need to reach much beyond their peers to collect enough signatures to put a legalization initiative on the ballot in 1972. In the face of a wall of opposition from politicians, police and parents, the hippies had forced the issue.
California would vote on making pot legal.

A bridge over ideology
Back in Washington, from the perspective of the Nixon White House, marijuana was at the core of the nation’s deepening generational, social and political divide. Young people seemed out of control, detached from institutions and traditions, determined to smash the rules and go their own way.
One of Nixon’s youngest advisers, Gordon Brownell, was a native Washingtonian who came to the White House fresh out of college. He had founded Colgate University’s first conservative club, and in law school he had remained a loyal conservative but secretly smoked pot with a friend who later became a federal drug prosecutor.
By the time he returned to Washington, Brownell had put marijuana out of his mind. He was profoundly alienated by longhaired radicals. When they surrounded the White House to protest the war, he walked through the crowd to get to his car and saw that “I was on the other side of a cultural divide. I was not one of them.”
In 1969, when the daughter of TV host Art Linkletter killed herself and her father blamed the death on her use of LSD, Brownell wrote a memo urging that Nixon come out in favor of a national crusade against the “social evil” of drugs.
A year later, Brownell, then 26, left Washington to take a top post in California Gov. Ronald Reagan’s reelection campaign. Living in Los Angeles, Brownell dated a woman who reintroduced him to marijuana and also shared mescaline — a drug with effects similar to LSD. Thrilled by the psychedelic journey, he nonetheless felt like a criminal.
“Possession of marijuana was a felony in California,” he says. “I still supported Reagan, but I felt for the first time the tension with being a Republican as Nixon and Reagan waged war on drugs.”
After the campaign, Brownell moved to Mendocino, rented a cabin by the sea, let his hair grow, and spent nine months writing a novel about a conservative young woman whose life pivots when she discovers drugs. He met and hung out with hippies who smoked a lot of dope, and he never let on that he’d worked for Nixon and Reagan.
A few miles away, the hippies of Amorphia realized they had no clue how to run a statewide campaign. They needed professional help, a bridge to the 90-plus percent of Californians who were not pot-smoking radicals.
Brownell had taken a job in Washington to write for a conservative newsletter, but a newspaper story about the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), the marijuana legalization lobby, changed his direction. “Reform was stalled because it was associated with hippies, antiwar activists and radicals,” he says. “I could put a different face on marijuana.”
Gordon Brownell’s home office contains memorabilia of his days working for Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. He believed a libertarian appeal would persuade Californians to approve a 1972 ballot initiative legalizing marijuana. It won only 35 percent of the vote. (Chris Hardy/For the Washington Post)
Brownell moved back west to become political coordinator of the California Marijuana Initiative. Many of the hippies thought he had to be a narc. His friends from the Reagan campaign thought he’d gone mad. “A lot of doors just closed on me,” Brownell says.
The message he crafted for middle-class Californians was basic libertarianism: “I’d tell my Republican friends, ‘What you do in your own home is none of the government’s business, and that was central to Barry Goldwater’s message,’ ” Brownell recalls, sipping coffee from an Obama for President mug.
Nixon crushed George McGovern, 55 percent to 42 percent, in California that year. The marijuana initiative won 35 percent of the vote, well more than opponents had predicted, but the result was still a clear message that, as Brownell says, “it just wasn’t mainstream yet. We couldn’t counter that stereotype of who used marijuana.”
A push to decriminalize
In 1970, Nixon signed into law a measure that eliminated mandatory prison sentences for marijuana possession and required him to set up a commission looking into the dangers of marijuana.
Michael Aldrich and Allen Ginsberg cut their hair, shaved off their beards and donned neckties to testify before the commission. “ ‘Get straight and infiltrate’ was the idea,” said Aldrich’s wife, Michelle, who supported her husband’s ventures in pot politics by working as a stockbroker.
But the commission had little patience for those who portrayed marijuana as harmless or even a social good.
“It was an insane position then and now, given our understanding of smoking and health,” says Michael Sonnenreich, a former drug prosecutor who was staff director of the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse. “I’m a conservative guy, but it made no sense to overburden the police and the jails. The system was out of kilter. This never meant we were in favor of people smoking the crap.”
In 1972, too late to have an impact on the California initiative, the commission unanimously recommended that marijuana be decriminalized.
The administration was appalled. Nixon’s aides “believed that bad people smoked this,” Sonnenreich says. “The whole world was going upside down — the pill, assassinations, LSD, Vietnam. So certain people in the White House tried to convince me not to come out for decriminalizing.”
The report was one of three that year — the others were from Canada’s government and Consumers Union — to determine that marijuana was less harmful than other illegal drugs and to recommend decriminalization. In 11 state legislatures across the country between 1973 and 1979, penalties for possession were greatly reduced or eliminated.
Marijuana seemed to have made the jump from the counterculture into the mainstream. “I thought there was no turning back,” says NORML’s founder, Keith Stroup. In Washington, Stroup smoked pot with President Jimmy Carter’s son Chip while Secret Service agents stood outside the door.
Stroup drafted the statement the president sent Congress in 1977 arguing that “penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself.” Carter urged Congress to accept the commission’s findings and decriminalize marijuana.
“Use was extremely widespread and there were clearly very few medical consequences,” says Peter Bourne, who was Carter’s drug czar. But Bourne and Carter couldn’t move the needle on decriminalization. Forty-five million Americans had tried marijuana, but as California’s commission on pot concluded, “progress is rarely linear.” To many parents, pot was a sign that they were losing their children.
The coverage of marijuana in PSAs, politics and pop culture has evolved quite a bit since the 1960s. See how the messages about pot have changed as much as the faces delivering them, from Sonny Bono to Barack Obama. (Gillian Brockell contributed to this video) (Kate M. Tobey /The Washington Post)
Parents turn the tide
For Carla Lowe, it was the calls she got as PTA president of her children’s high school in Sacramento. The school’s neighbors saw students smoking, and it didn’t smell like tobacco.
For Sue Rusche, it was a group of parents in Georgia who gathered after several middle school children were discovered smoking pot at a party.
From the late 1970s into the ’80s, Lowe, Rusche and many other mothers created a parents’ movement that halted, then reversed, momentum toward decriminalization. Starting in suburbs where teenagers turned to pot and turned head shops into hangouts, the movement compelled state and federal lawmakers to slam the brakes on Carter’s push for decriminalization and then feed the Reagan administration’s appetite for tougher enforcement.
“My son was a super athlete,” Lowe says, “and then, all of a sudden, he’d seem silly and inattentive. I didn’t know that it was marijuana. Then I was called into school because they found what I heard as a ‘bomb’ in his locker.” At school, Lowe learned that what her son had in his locker was a bong made from a tennis-ball can.
She devoted the next three years of her life to ridding her city of paraphernalia — and the next 35 years to fighting liberalized drug laws. She got a bong of her own — and a buzzbee, a Frisbee rigged up with a pipe in the center — and brought it to PTA and church groups to let parents know that “your children are smoking pot and these are the toys and tools that are being marketed to them.”
The comedienne Carol Burnett called Lowe and offered to help. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) enlisted Lowe to join her campaign against paraphernalia. First lady Nancy Reagan joined the bandwagon with her ”Just Say No to Drugs” campaign. Attorney General Edwin Meese III saw a tough stand against marijuana as a way to push back against a counterculture that was undermining society.
The legalization movement entered an 18-year freeze.
“We were caught flatfooted,” Stroup says. “I thought nobody would take these moms seriously. Oh, was I wrong. There was a feeling that the country was getting out of control. I wasn’t sure we’d ever regain the momentum.”
The mothers didn’t do it alone. The rise of cocaine brought a constant supply of frightening stories that reinforced support for harsher enforcement: gun battles among powerful drug dealers, the rising power of cartels creating geopolitical strain between the United States and Latin American countries, the devastating impact of crack on cities, the overdose death of basketball star Len Bias, comedian Richard Pryor lighting himself on fire while he was using cocaine.
Lowe finally got her son to stop smoking pot when she “gave him three months to get cleaned out, or no college,” she says.
But she saw that stepped-up enforcement made little headway against marijuana’s popularity, and the parents’ movement could never raise significant funds.
“We basically died out in the early ’90s,” Rusche says. “We’ve never been able to find a single foundation willing to support this cause.”
By the mid-’90s, most parent groups had dissolved. Those that remained saw the tide turn against them once again. Rusche recalls Stroup telling her at a debate that although the reform movement appeared to be defeated, it would be back with a new strategy — positioning marijuana as medicine.
A shift in strategy
Gen. Barry McCaffrey never saw marijuana in high school or at West Point, from which he graduated in 1964. “Pre-pot,” he says. “My generation was a lot of alcohol abuse and everybody smoked cigarettes.” But when he got to Vietnam as an Army first lieutenant, McCaffrey saw pot having “a huge, pernicious effect on the armed forces” and beyond. “Bus drivers were stoned, students were stoned, reporters were stoned.”
By the time McCaffrey became the nation’s drug czar in 1996, he had launched a crusade against drug abuse. He saw pot as a crucial battleground because, he says, “marijuana’s a stalking horse for Darwinian, libertarian acceptance of drug use of all kinds.”
In those years, McCaffrey could depend on audience applause as he belittled those who would ease restrictions on marijuana.
“Woody Harrelson, the noted agronomist, is going to save America with a crop of marijuana,” the general would say of the film star and pot proponent. “But the American people, mothers and fathers, aren’t stupid enough to do that.” Whereupon audiences would cheer.
But in San Francisco during the ’90s, the 30-year culture war over marijuana had gone silent, replaced by a new urgency. In the city’s devastated gay neighborhoods, AIDS powerfully shifted the debate.
Dennis Peron was about the least likely person to become the symbol of a drive to redefine marijuana as a symbol of compassion and care. Peron, an insistent, rough-edged guy from the Bronx, was a pot dealer who’d been arrested more than 20 times. He’d been selling ever since he came home from Vietnam with a pound of pot and a habit acquired while working 16-hour days in an Air Force morgue, bagging and shipping bodies of fallen comrades.
After Dennis Peron’s lover died, he resolved to find a way to supply marijuana to anyone suffering from AIDS. The Cannabis Buyers Club he launched in San Francisco was instrumental in winning legal status for medical use of the drug. (Chris Hardy/For The Washington Post)
Peron is gay, and his longtime lover, Jonathan West, had AIDS and was dying. Peron supplied West and other AIDS patients with marijuana to ease the side effects of their medications.
“It gave them the munchies so they’d eat something,” Peron says. “I could help these people, sell them marijuana and make a little money.”
He says he required customers to show physicians’ letters confirming their diagnoses; this, he hoped, might protect him from prosecution.
It didn’t. In 1990, San Francisco police raided Peron’s apartment, which for years had been a place where gay men could hang out and get high. They arrested him for selling marijuana. Later that year, two weeks after testifying on Peron’s behalf, West died. Peron then resolved to find a way to supply pot to anyone suffering from AIDS.
He launched the Cannabis Buyers Club in a prominent storefront and invited TV stations to interview his customers. He wanted to force lawmakers to confront marijuana use as medical care. He won enough attention and support that, in 1991, a nonbinding resolution he wrote asking the state to make marijuana legal for medical purposes won a citywide vote by a 79 to 21 percent margin.
City police left him alone after that, but once Peron’s club attracted more than 4,000 members and had 90 employees, state officials decided they could no longer ignore such a flagrant violation. They raided the club in 1996, arresting Peron once more. Again, he took his case to the people.
“I’d lost my lover, my friends were dead, I had nothing to lose,” Peron says. “I wasn’t the right symbol — a gay guy, busted for pot — but no one else wanted to do it. So we went statewide.”
The 1996 campaign for medical marijuana in California pushed aside groovy graphics and hippie rhetoric and repositioned weed as a tonic for cancer, glaucoma and AIDS patients. Grandmothers took to TV to explain how marijuana eased their pain, and Peron enlisted doctors in a campaign that asked: “If it’s helping people, how can we keep it illegal?”
Back in Washington, strategists at NORML were skeptical of using medical benefits to back-door marijuana into legal status.
Peron insists there was no subterfuge. “All use is medicinal,” he says. “All people, even those who say they’re using it recreationally, have clouds in their lives. Marijuana makes you see the silver lining in those clouds. That is a medical use.”
That argument was not going to win an election. With the campaign running behind, even true believers saw they needed a different way. Enter billionaires George Soros and Peter Lewis, who each pumped half a million dollars into the medical marijuana effort. Peron never spoke to his campaign’s benefactors. “Soros doesn’t understand marijuana’s true benefits,” Peron says. “He’s just against the war on drugs.”
The initiative won 56 percent of the vote, opening the door.
During the next decade, 20 states and the District followed the same path, but with extremely different results. In California, where medical marijuana permits are as easy to get as a bottle of scotch, more than half a million people have cards letting them shop in hundreds of dispensaries. In the District, where the law requires a 14-page application and recognizes only four diseases as warranting treatment with marijuana, just 120 people have been approved to purchase it since the first dispensary opened last July.
Peron, now 67, closed his cannabis club and says he stopped selling pot in 2001. “I was glad I didn’t have to sell pot anymore — too much stress,” he says. “I’d rather Walgreens did it.”
Accepting drug abuse?
Today, Boulder, Colo., is a city of 100,000 that has three Walgreens — none of which sell marijuana — and more than 100 medical marijuana dispensaries, even before licensing commences for shops that seek to sell weed for recreational use. Major national chain stores are not yet applying to sell pot, but at the Cannabis Cup convention and on hundreds of Web sites of marijuana-related businesses, the battle against liberalizing pot laws seems lost.
“The momentum to treat marijuana as a legal drug is irreversible,” says McCaffrey, the former drug czar. He no longer accepts invitations to appear on television to debate the issue because he says the networks “only wanted a rented idiot general who didn’t understand that marijuana was harmless and filling America’s jails. The opposition has gone silent. The politicians, police, judges know this is bad policy but they don’t make a peep. So we’re going to end up with impaired surgeons and air pilots. We’re just accepting another drug of abuse.”
After half a century of advocacy, Aldrich now predicts that “marijuana’s going to be legal in the United States in 10 years. Of course, I first said that in 1967.” He laughs. But this time, he says, it’s unstoppable: “It’s taken 40 years to reach a point where our national leaders have smoked. The last three presidents have admitted it.”
If legalization spreads beyond Colorado and Washington state, it likely will be because of a confluence of forces that have gathered steam during the past decade: Big money is backing the new, aboveground marijuana industry, the Internet has altered the kind of messages that Americans hear about pot, Americans have grown more libertarian in their perspective on personal freedoms, the most anti-marijuana generation has passed on, and people across the ideological spectrum have grown frustrated with the cost, both financial and social, of decades of arrests and imprisonments.
Legalization drives are underway mainly in states facing tough budget problems. Just as casino gambling spread first among states hungry for new tax revenues, so too are hard-up states now realizing, as Stroup says, that “big money can be made and suddenly the sin doesn’t matter that much.”
Buds of GT Dragon, a potent hybrid strain of cannabis, are displayed by a San Diego medical marijuana delivery service at the 2014 Cannabis Cup in California. (David Walter Banks/For The Washington Post)
Angelo Capozi’s company TwoSticky.com marketed marijuana-infused honey and peanut butter at the 2014 Cannabis Cup. (David Walter Banks/For The Washington Post)
The burgeoning marijuana industry has flourished on the Internet, where back channels filled with anecdotal accounts of marijuana’s medicinal benefits have fed consumer appetites for everything from seeds to growing equipment to edibles.
Angelo Capozi, 45, spent decades as a chef, even appearing on TV’s “Iron Chef America,” before starting TwoSticky.com, which makes marijuana-laced peanut butter and honey. He made the switch after experimenting with recipes on behalf of his father, a cancer patient looking for relief from pain.
Capozi believes the doorway to legal status opened as his parents’ peers began to die.
“Once that generation’s out of here, it’s going to really open up,” he says. “Within a few years, I expect to be able to put my product on a supermarket shelf with a bar code.”
The passing of the baby boomers’ parents has created the first cross-generational consensus in favor of liberalized laws, says Stroup, now 70. “We knew we were going to win demographically, eventually,” he says. “I just wasn’t sure I’d see it in my lifetime.”
The generational shift change has greatly diminished the organized opposition. Few parent groups remain active; Rusche’s National Families in Action still exists, but its founder now supports decriminalization. Rusche, 75, still believes marijuana is harmful, but she has concluded that the parents’ movement erred in failing to present alcohol and tobacco as the same sort of gateway drugs as marijuana.
“There are a whole lot of arrests that shouldn’t be happening,” Rusche says. “We don’t want to see laws unfairly applied with people of color overwhelmingly being the ones arrested.”
Her longtime ally is startled to hear of Rusche’s altered stance.
“I’m just stunned,” Carla Lowe says. “Decriminalization is just a step to legalization. What we’re seeing today is a grab for taxes and a power play by a fast-growing industry.”
Even with a diminished opposition, the path to legalization faces considerable obstacles, especially from parents who don’t want their teens to be too easily tempted by the drug, city residents who envision street corners teeming with kids getting high, and sheriffs and police chiefs who say marijuana arrests remain a powerful tool against drug abuse and other crimes.
Diane Goldstein, a retired police lieutenant in Redondo Beach, Calif., went from busting drug users to working for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a nonprofit group critical of “the failures of our existing drug policies.” Some ex-colleagues tell her she’s dishonoring officers who died enforcing drug laws, but Goldstein, a Republican and a grandmother, says her audiences at Rotary clubs and Republican women’s groups increasingly support taxing and regulating marijuana.
“We’re never going to be drug-free,” says Goldstein, who says she hasn’t used pot since high school. “But we can make it less available to kids by making it legal and restricting access. And we can stop marginalizing people because they’ve been arrested for pot and can’t get student loans or jobs.”
From left, Makoto Anderson, Anthony Ramirez and Jeremiah Harvey help Cannabis Cup attendees take sample “dabs” of concentrated marijuana. A metal tool with a small amount, or “dab,” of resin is touched to a heated titanium nail fitted inside a glass pipe, and the resulting vapor is inhaled. (David Walter Banks/For The Washington Post)
As the rhetorical battle continues and politicians remain cautious about speaking out on marijuana, the facts on the ground are changing fast. The Cannabis Cup, an open-air marketplace the size of two football fields in the San Bernardino Valley, featured open consumption of pot-infused sodas, candies and cookies and displays of whole marijuana plants — staged with virtually no controversy.
“Generations coming up now don’t see what the big deal is,” says Brian Wansolich, 39, wearing a white coat emblazoned with the logo of his online cannabis ratings service, Leafly. “My parents still have moral problems with it, but now they see we can tax this and get states out of trouble. It’s the American way.”


Why Elizabeth Warren thinks legalizing marijuana could help end America’s opioid addiction crisis

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) addresses the 10th annual Make Progress National Summit last July in Washington. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Sen. Elizabeth Warren wants the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to explore the use of medical marijuana as an alternative to the powerful opioid painkillers that kill thousands of people each year.
In a letter to CDC chief Tom Friedan, the Massachusetts Democrat also asks the agency to look into “the impact of the legalization of medical and recreational marijuana on opioid overdose deaths.”
From a public health standpoint, Warren is right. There is a lot of potential here. Here’s a rundown of what the research has shown so far:
Marijuana is effective at treating pain
A big meta-analysis of 79 studies in the Journal of the American Medical Association found solid evidence that marijuana is effective at treating chronic pain. The researchers noted “30% or greater improvement in pain with cannabinoid compared with placebo.”
Marijuana is safe when used to treat pain
A Canadian study published last year in the journal Pain found no evidence of serious side effects among medical marijuana users after a year of treatment. Users did report some incidence of “non-serious” side effects, such as coughing and dizziness, however.
Medical marijuana users are less likely to drink or take other painkillers
Research published last year in the journal Drug and Alcohol Review found that 80 percent of medical marijuana users reported substituting pot for painkillers, and 52 percent said they drank less when taking medical marijuana.
“The high rate of substitution for prescribed substances, particularly among patients with pain-related conditions, suggests that further research into cannabis/cannabinoids as a potentially safer substitute for or adjunct to opiates is justified,” the researchers concluded.
States with medical marijuana laws have fewer painkiller overdose deaths
In 2014, a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine found that states with medical marijuana laws saw a 24.8 percent reduction in opioid overdose deaths, compared with states without such laws. That worked out to about 1,700 fewer deaths in 2010 alone.
Medical marijuana availability decreases the rate of opioid dependency and death
An NBER working paper published last year found that the presence of marijuana dispensaries was associated with a 15 percent to 35 percent decrease in substance abuse admissions and a similar drop in opiate overdose deaths.
“Our findings suggest that providing broader access to medical marijuana may have the potential benefit of reducing abuse of highly addictive painkillers,” the researchers concluded.
One important thing to note: All of the studies above were published in the past 18 months or so. This is a fairly new angle of inquiry, and the results suggest it is a highly promising one.
The CDC could play a leading role in fostering more of this type of research in the future, and the need for it is critical: Nearly 20,000 people died from prescription opiate overdoses in 2014, according to the CDC.
More from Wonkblog:
This Super Bowl ad proved just how much America loves its opioid painkillers
Why hardly anyone dies from a drug overdose in Portugal
The dramatic shift in heroin use in the past 50 years: Whiter, more suburban


The Health 202: Half of Americans think Obamacare marketplaces are crumbling

THE PROGNOSIS
Half of Americans think the Obamacare marketplaces are falling apart. But they’re not — even though Republicans have pulled out some legs from under them.
Fifty-three percent of people believe the individual marketplaces — where those without workplace coverage can get subsidized health-care plans — are “collapsing,” according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll released this morning. And while 64 percent of Republicans believe this narrative, nearly half of all Democrats buy into it, too.
Such public sentiment is perhaps not surprising, given the marketplaces’ turbulent year under the GOP’s congressional and executive branch rule. Democrats are responsible for the structure of the marketplaces — and new health benefit mandates that pushed premiums higher. But Republicans have not solved the existing problems and perhaps even made them worse.
Recall late last month, when it became clear lawmakers weren’t going to fund extra payments to help insurers lower premiums in the omnibus spending bill — or perhaps ever. Before that, President Trump took steps to exempt more plans from Affordable Care Act requirements by expanding short-term and association health plans, which could lower premiums for healthy folks but make them more expensive for the sick.
Congressional Republicans did try and dramatically fail to replace the much-maligned ACA with a system offering cheaper health insurance. And they’ve been bragging since December about how they repealed its penalty for lacking coverage, which could further inflate premiums if enough healthy people drop coverage as a result.
Add all these actions together and it certainly means the marketplaces aren’t headed for the kind of dramatic revitalization they needed, where the 10 million people covered under them suddenly find a wide selection of affordable plans instead of double-digit rate hikes and insurer exits.
Over the next few months, insurers will be filing their 2019 rates with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Stakeholders are closely watching the trajectory for premiums and level of competition in the marketplaces. There remains the possibility that some counties may lack insurers, a problem the administration narrowly circumvented last year.
But Republicans’ actions, while perhaps maladroit, aren’t exactly a death knell to the marketplaces, either.
“I do think [enrollment] is headed down rather than up if there’s not a solution. But it won’t happen overnight,” Joel Ario, who headed up the marketplaces during the Obama administration, told me.
Ario said the repeal of the law’s individual mandate will negatively affect the marketplaces because it could cause younger, healthier people to drop out of them, pushing up premiums for everyone left. But the Kaiser poll offers evidence that at least among current enrollees, most intend to continue their coverage even without a requirement by the federal government to do so.
Nine in 10 respondents to the Kaiser survey said they will continue buying their own insurance even when the penalty for being uninsured is no longer in effect. Respondents indicated they’re more driven to buy coverage to avoid hefty medical bills and for peace of mind, rather than simply because it’s required by the government.
Seventy-five percent said a major reason for being covered was to “protect against high medical bills in the case of severe illness or accident” and 66 percent cited “peace of mind” as another major reason. Just 34 percent said the mandate was a major reason they’d decided to buy a plan.
And there’s evidence that marketplace insurers are beginning to regain profitability, if you look at how much insurers pay out in benefits versus how much they collect in premiums.
As time ticks down to the next enrollment period, which will again run from Nov. 1 to Dec. 15, the question is whether increased stabilization among insurers is enough to counter the negative effects of repealing the individual mandate. When all is said and done, the two effects might end up roughly canceling each other out.
“The carriers have now gotten their rates to a point where their balance sheets are pretty good,” Ario told me. “What would have been fairly stable rates will be up some, but not hugely.”
AHH: Here's how Iowa is trying to create cheaper health plans: by contending that not all health plans are health insurance.
The law says such plans “sponsored by a nonprofit agricultural organization . . . shall be deemed not to be insurance.” That means they will be allowed to avoid both federal and state insurance regulations, sparking debate over whether the strategy is a creative path to offer some residents an alternative to spiking prices in the state’s ACA marketplace — or a path to substandard coverage that will divide the healthy from the sick.
Iowa's Farm Bureau plan is the state’s second attempt to bypass parts of the ACA.
OOF: Persistent water and sewage leaks in and around the operating rooms of Washington’s largest hospital are at the center of a lawsuit seeking millions in damages for the infection-related death of a patient early last year,
During a tour last summer they described a “black, grainy, foul smelling substance” on the floor between two operating rooms.
OUCH: Questions are swirling about how seriously the gay hookup app Grindr takes its users' privacy. BuzzFeed News reports the app, which has more than 3.6 million users, has been providing information about its users’ HIV status to two other companies.
“Grindr was founded in 2009 and has been increasingly branding itself as the go-to app for healthy hookups and gay cultural content,” Azeen writes. ”In December, the company launched an online magazine dedicated to cultural issues in the queer community. The app offers free ads for HIV-testing sites, and last week, it debuted an optional feature that would remind users to get tested for HIV every three to six months.”
The Norwegian nonprofit SINTEF first identified the issue.
....But the new analysis, confirmed by cybersecurity experts...calls into question how seriously the company takes its users’ privacy.”
—The Drug Enforcement Administration has arrested 28 pharmacists and drug prescribers and revoked the license of 147 people who handle controlled substances as part of a nationwide crackdown on opioid use and distribution, our colleague Lenny Bernstein reports.
“Over the last 45 days, the DEA has surged resources and personnel to prevent the diversion of opioids, arresting dozens of people and taking away drug dispensing authority from nearly 150 medical professionals,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said yesterday in a news release about the efforts.
The enforcement surge followed a review of 80 million drug transactions that revealed dispensers who sold disproportionately large amounts of drugs -- particularly opioid painkillers -- and sparked 188 investigations.
—Making medical and recreational marijuana available may be one way to help fight the opioid epidemic. Two new studies published yesterday found availability of marijuana is linked with lower rates of opioid prescription rates,
“The studies are the latest in a long line of research showing that marijuana availability is associated with reductions in opiate use and misuse,”
"There is widespread agreement among doctors and public-health experts that marijuana is effective at treating chronic pain,"
“Marijuana is one of the potential alternative drugs that can provide relief from pain at a relatively lower risk of addiction and virtually no risk of overdose,” Wen and Hockenberry wrote. “These findings suggest that medical and adult-use marijuana laws have the potential to reduce opioid prescribing for Medicaid enrollees, a segment of population with disproportionately high risk for chronic pain, opioid use disorder, and opioid overdose.”
—The confusion continues over whether former Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin resigned or was fired. But our colleague Aaron Blake points out that if Shulkin decided to step down from his role, as the White House says, they should be able to prove it by producing a resignation letter.
Why does it matter?
— Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar is making sure he has good eyes and ears at the agency's major operating divisions.
According to an email Redfield sent to agency staff yesterday afternoon, McGowan “worked in the Immediate Office of the Secretary and across HHS operating divisions to coordinate with external groups, and this included working closely with the secretary’s public affairs team to amplify messages about HHS priorities.” The email said McGowan worked directly on “many of the department’s priority issues, including the opioid epidemic, drug pricing and health reform.”
McGowan joined HHS a year ago. Before that, he had worked for then-Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) for nearly six years, including as deputy chief of staff.
McGowan was also political director for Karen Handel’s unsuccessful run for the Republican nomination for governor of Georgia in 2010, according to his LinkedIn page. Handel defeated Democrat Jon Ossoff in a special congressional election last year to fill the seat vacated by Price in Georgia’s 6th congressional district.
—The federal government is lagging behind the private sector when it comes to addressing sexual harassment concerns among its employees,
Veterans Affairs, along with the Navy, Homeland Security and Agriculture, has among the highest rates of harassment, according to the Merit Systems Protection Board.
—A few more good reads from the Post and beyond:
Today
Coming Up
Rep. Elizabeth Esty (D-Conn.) said she won’t seek reelection after she took months to remove a top aide accused of threatening to kill a colleague:
Here’s what you need to know about Bill Cosby’s retrial:
Watch the president and first lady kick off the annual Easter Egg Roll:


The stark difference in how doctors and the government view marijuana

(Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
Nathaniel P. Morris is a resident physician at Stanford Hospital specializing in mental health. He recently penned a strongly worded op-ed for ScientificAmerican.com on the differences between how some in the medical community view marijuana and how the federal government regulates it.
"The federal government's scheduling of marijuana bears little relationship to actual patient care," he wrote in the essay published last week. "The notion that marijuana is more dangerous or prone to abuse than alcohol (not scheduled), cocaine (Schedule II), methamphetamine (Schedule II), or prescription opioids (Schedules II, III, and IV) doesn't reflect what we see in clinical medicine."
Here's Morris' money quote:
For most health care providers, marijuana is an afterthought.
We don't see cannabis overdoses. We don't order scans for cannabis-related brain abscesses. We don't treat cannabis-induced heart attacks. In medicine, marijuana use is often seen on par with tobacco or caffeine consumption — something we counsel patients about stopping or limiting, but nothing urgent to treat or immediately life-threatening.
He contrasts that with the terrible effects of alcohol he sees in the emergency room every day, like car crash victims and drunk patients choking on their own vomit. Morris points out that excessive drinking causes 88,000 deaths per year, according to the CDC.
The medical and research communities have known for some time that marijuana is one of the more benign substances you can put in your body relative to other illicit drugs. A recent longitudinal study found that chronic, long-term marijuana use is about as bad for your physical health as not flossing. Compared to alcohol, it's virtually impossible to overdose on marijuana alone. On a per-user basis, marijuana sends fewer people to the emergency room than alcohol or other drugs.
The scientific consensus was best captured in a 2010 study in the Lancet, which polled several dozen researchers working in addiction and drug policy. The researchers rated commonly used recreational drugs according to the harm they pose to individuals who use them, as well as the harm they pose to society as a whole. Here's what their results looked like:

The experts rated marijuana as less harmful to both users and to society than either tobacco or alcohol, or indeed than many other recreational drugs, such as heroin, cocaine or methamphetamine. Alcohol was, by far, the most socially harmful drug the committee rated, as well as one of the most harmful drugs to individual users.
Research like this is one reason surveys have shown a substantial majority of doctors support the use of medical marijuana. And although big medical groups, such as the American Medical Association, haven't shifted gears on marijuana, other groups, such as the California Medical Association, are now openly calling for marijuana legalization.

This year has also seen the formation of the nation's first doctor's group devoted to legalizing marijuana, Doctors for Cannabis Regulation. The group views marijuana legalization primarily as a public health issue.
None of this is to say, of course, that marijuana is completely "safe" or "harm-free." As with any drug, using too much weed can lead to dependency on it. And as with any other drug, marijuana can have particularly harmful effects on young, developing minds.
But the federal approach to marijuana has stood at odds with the science on the drug for decades. As far back as the 1970s, an expert report commissioned by Richard Nixon recommended that the federal government decriminalize marijuana use, given the drug's mild effects.
Nixon, of course, ignored the report's findings. In the years since, there have been hundreds of thousands of arrests for marijuana possession each year, people have lost their homes and their property over suspicion of marijuana use, and decades of racially biased policing tactics have decimated many minority communities.
Voters in California, Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada just approved recreational marijuana use. Here's what they can learn from Washington, Colorado and Oregon, states where marijuana use has already been legalized.


Study: Legalizing medical marijuana has not increased teen pot use

October, 2010 photo of marijuana plant under grow lights at a warehouse in Denver. (AP Photo/Ed Andrieski) Among the concerns of those who oppose legalization of marijuana for medical purposes was that one way or the other, the pot would find its way to young people and encourage more drug use. But the first comprehensive study of teen drug use in the states where marijuana is available for medical uses shows that it just hasn’t happened. The study, published in the latest issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health, is sure to figure into the ongoing debate over the legalization of marijuana for recreational purposes. The authors, led by Esther K. Choo, of Brown University’s Alpert Medical School, wrote: Our study suggests that — at least thus far — the legalization of marijuana for medical purposes has not increased adolescent marijuana use, a finding supported by a growing body of literature. Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia The researchers looked at reported marijuana use by teens in states where medical marijuana is now legal, both before and after the laws were passed. and compared those numbers with nearby states where pot remains illegal for all purposes, controlling for demographic factors such as gender, age and race that might affect the outcome. The study used data gathered through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s anonymous Youth Risk Behavioral Surveillance System survey, which is administered every other year by local and state schools to kids in ninth through twelfth grade. Although pot use remains common among teens, with one-third saying they’d tried pot before and a fifth reporting use in the past month, the results of the study show medical marijuana laws didn’t increase pot use by teens in any state. The authors don’t advocate anything as a result of study and advocates of legalization hoping to pass it around state legislatures may want to think twice before doing so. The authors note that: “Marijuana has a demonstrated impact on the still-developing adolescent brain” and that “in early adolescence, marijuana may have permanent detrimental effects on cognition. Marijuana has also been linked to schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders among adolescents. Longitudinal cohort studies of adolescents using marijuana found associations between use and later respiratory problems, general malaise, and neurocognitive problems, as well as social problems including lower academic achievement and functioning.”

October, 2010 photo of marijuana plant under grow lights at a warehouse in Denver. (AP Photo/Ed Andrieski) Among the concerns of those who oppose legalization of marijuana for medical purposes was that one way or the other, the pot would find its way to young people and encourage more drug use. But the first comprehensive study of teen drug use in the states where marijuana is available for medical uses shows that it just hasn’t happened. The authors, led by Esther K. Choo, of Brown University’s Alpert Medical School, wrote: Our study suggests that — at least thus far — the legalization of marijuana for medical purposes has not increased adolescent marijuana use, a finding supported by a growing body of literature. Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia The researchers looked at reported marijuana use by teens in states where medical marijuana is now legal, both before and after the laws were passed. and compared those numbers with nearby states where pot remains illegal for all purposes, controlling for demographic factors such as gender, age and race that might affect the outcome. The study used data gathered through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s anonymous Youth Risk Behavioral Surveillance System survey, which is administered every other year by local and state schools to kids in ninth through twelfth grade. Although pot use remains common among teens, with one-third saying they’d tried pot before and a fifth reporting use in the past month, the results of the study show medical marijuana laws didn’t increase pot use by teens in any state. The authors don’t advocate anything as a result of study and advocates of legalization hoping to pass it around state legislatures may want to think twice before doing so. The authors note that: “Marijuana has a demonstrated impact on the still-developing adolescent brain” and that “in early adolescence, marijuana may have permanent detrimental effects on cognition. Marijuana has also been linked to schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders among adolescents. Longitudinal cohort studies of adolescents using marijuana found associations between use and later respiratory problems, general malaise, and neurocognitive problems, as well as social problems including lower academic achievement and functioning.”


Marijuana wins big on election night

Marijuana wins big on election night

an incoming administration more skeptical of drug reform could easily reverse that approach. “The prospect of Rudy Giuliani or Chris Christie as attorney general does not bode well,” the Drug Policy Alliance's Nadelmann said in an interview. “There are various ways in which a hostile White House could trip things up.” Nadelmann pointed to the success of marijuana measures in the midst of an evident Republican wave as a sign that support for legalization now cuts deeply across party lines. And citing Trump's often contradictory statements on marijuana and drug use in the past, Nadelmann added that “Donald Trump personally could probably go any which way on this.” With today's votes, legal marijuana is also making significant inroads in the Northeast. “Marijuana legalization has arrived on the East Coast,” said Tom Angell of the marijuana reform group Marijuana Majority in an email. “What Colorado and other states have already done is generating revenue, creating jobs and reducing crime, so it’s not surprising that voters in more places are eager to end prohibition.” Opponents of legalization said they were disappointed by the outcomes. “We were outspent greatly in both California and Massachusetts, so this loss is disappointing, but not wholly unexpected,” said Kevin Sabet of the anti-legalization group Smart Approaches to Marijuana in a statement. “Despite having gained considerable ground in the last few weeks, the out-of-state interests determined to make money off of legalization put in too much money to overcome.” “This is a major tipping point,” said Tom Angell of Florida's vote. “With Florida's decision, a majority of states in the U.S. now have laws allowing patients to find relief with medical marijuana, and these protections and programs are no longer concentrated in certain regions of the country like the West and Northeast.” The victory in North Dakota is something of a surprise as no polling was done on the measure. “Better late than never,” said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the drug reform group Drug Policy Alliance, in a statement. “Most states outside the South already have legal medical marijuana, but the overwhelming victory today in Florida is likely to accelerate the momentum for reform throughout the region.” More from Wonkblog: One striking chart shows why pharma companies are fighting legal marijuana Legal marijuana is finally doing what the drug war couldn't One-fifth of this occupation has a serious drinking problem Donald Trump, 70, will be the 45th

The 2016 election has proved to be the biggest victory for marijuana reform since 2012, with voters in California, Massachusetts, Nevada and Maine approving recreational marijuana initiatives.
Voters in California, Massachusetts and Nevada approved recreational marijuana initiatives Tuesday night, and several other states passed medical marijuana provisions, in what is turning out to be the biggest electoral victory for marijuana reform since 2012, when Colorado and Washington first approved the drug's recreational use.
In addition to the states above, local outlets in Maine are declaring victory for that state's legalization measure, but with 91 percent of precincts reporting just a few thousand votes separate the "Yes" and "No" columns.
A similar legalization measure in Arizona did not gain sufficient support to pass, with 52 percent of voters rejecting it.
On the medical side, voters in Florida, North Dakota and Arkansas have approved medical marijuana initiatives. Voters in in Montana also rolled back restrictions on an existing medical pot law.
Reformers were jubilant. “This represents a monumental victory for the marijuana reform movement,” said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, in a statement. “With California’s leadership now, the end of marijuana prohibition nationally, and even internationally, is fast approaching.”
Voters in California, Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada just approved recreational marijuana use. Here's what they can learn from Washington, Colorado and Oregon, states where marijuana use has already been legalized.
California has long been seen as a bellwether by both supporters and opponents of marijuana reform. The state is home to about 12 percent of the U.S. population. Given the size of the state's economy and the economic impact of the marijuana industry there, California's adoption of legal marijuana could prompt federal authorities to rethink their decades-long prohibition on the use of marijuana.
In a recent interview with Bill Maher, President Obama said that passage of the legalization measures on Tuesday could make the current federal approach to the drug “untenable.”
Still, the likelihood of a Trump White House leaves a lot of uncertainty about the fate of marijuana measures in the next four years. Under Obama, federal authorities largely took a hands-off approach to state-level legalization efforts. But an incoming administration more skeptical of drug reform could easily reverse that approach.
“The prospect of Rudy Giuliani or Chris Christie as attorney general does not bode well,” the Drug Policy Alliance's Nadelmann said in an interview. “There are various ways in which a hostile White House could trip things up.”
Nadelmann pointed to the success of marijuana measures in the midst of an evident Republican wave as a sign that support for legalization now cuts deeply across party lines. And citing Trump's often contradictory statements on marijuana and drug use in the past, Nadelmann added that “Donald Trump personally could probably go any which way on this.”
With today's votes, legal marijuana is also making significant inroads in the Northeast. “Marijuana legalization has arrived on the East Coast,” said Tom Angell of the marijuana reform group Marijuana Majority in an email. “What Colorado and other states have already done is generating revenue, creating jobs and reducing crime, so it’s not surprising that voters in more places are eager to end prohibition.”
Opponents of legalization said they were disappointed by the outcomes. “We were outspent greatly in both California and Massachusetts, so this loss is disappointing, but not wholly unexpected,” said Kevin Sabet of the anti-legalization group Smart Approaches to Marijuana in a statement. “Despite having gained considerable ground in the last few weeks, the out-of-state interests determined to make money off of legalization put in too much money to overcome.”
Votes on medical marijuana in Florida and North Dakota were decisive. Florida's Amendment 2 passed with 71 percent support, according to the Associated Press. In North Dakota, the AP reports that 64 percent of voters approving of the medical marijuana measure.
Two years ago, a medical marijuana measure in Florida earned 58 percent of the vote, just shy of the 60 percent threshold needed for passage. Then, as now, opposition to the measure was fueled by multimillion-dollar donations from Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas casino magnate and GOP donor. In 2014 Adelson spent $5.5 million to defeat the measure. This year he's spent $1.5 million in Florida, and several million more to defeat recreational marijuana measures in other states.
“This is a major tipping point,” said Tom Angell of Florida's vote. “With Florida's decision, a majority of states in the U.S. now have laws allowing patients to find relief with medical marijuana, and these protections and programs are no longer concentrated in certain regions of the country like the West and Northeast.”
The victory in North Dakota is something of a surprise as no polling was done on the measure.
The Florida amendment has the potential to be one of the more permissive medical marijuana regimes in the nation. In addition to diseases like HIV, cancer and PTSD, the measure also allows doctors to recommend medical pot for “other debilitating medical conditions of the same kind or class as or comparable to those enumerated, and for which a physician believes that the medical use of marijuana would likely outweigh the potential health risks for a patient.” While the 2014 measure allowed doctors to prescribe marijuana for any illness they believed it would be useful for, the new measure requires they show the illness is severe — though the wording gives physicians considerable leeway in determining which conditions would meet those criteria.
The medical pot measure in North Dakota allows doctors to recommend the drug for a number of severe medical conditions.
With the passage of Amendment 2, Florida will become the first Southern state to enact a robust medical marijuana regime. Medical marijuana is already legal in 25 other states and the District.
“Better late than never,” said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the drug reform group Drug Policy Alliance, in a statement. “Most states outside the South already have legal medical marijuana, but the overwhelming victory today in Florida is likely to accelerate the momentum for reform throughout the region.”
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Medical marijuana will be on Florida ballot

Joints for Florida? Voters will get to make that decision this November (Credit: Brennan Linsley/Associated Press.)
The Florida Supreme Court has narrowly approved language for a proposed constitutional amendment that would legalize marijuana for medical use, guaranteeing the measure a spot on the state’s November ballot.
Advocates have already collected well over the 683,000 signatures necessary to qualify the measure for the fall ballot. County officials have already validated a sufficient number of signatures. The court challenge was all that stood in their way.
In an 84-page opinion, the court ruled by a 4-3 margin that the proposal’s ballot summary was sufficiently clear. Republicans, led by Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (R), had challenged the language as misleading.
Justices debated whether the language made clear that medical marijuana could only be used to treat “debilitating” diseases, like cancer, AIDS and Parkinson’s. The three justices who dissented said the ballot summary was “seriously deceptive” and would do voters “a severe disservice.”
“Today’s ruling leaves the issue of medical marijuana in the hands of Florida’s voters. I encourage every Floridian to read the full amendment in order to understand the impact it could have on Floridians,” Bondi said in a statement after the court’s ruling.
The proposed amendment will share the ballot with a heated race between Gov. Rick Scott (R) and his predecessor, former Gov. Charlie Crist, who last won office as a Republican but is now a Democrat.
Crist, once dubbed “Chain Gang Charlie” for his tough-on-crime stands, says he supports legalizing marijuana for medical uses; Scott opposes the bill. Crist is heavily favored over former state Sen. Nan Rich in the Democratic primary.
Some Republicans worry the proposed amendment will drive turnout among younger voters, who disproportionately vote Democratic. Several Republicans recently voiced fears that the amendment was little more than a Trojan horse for the Crist campaign.
Opposition to the medical marijuana push is likely to come from Save Our Society from Drugs, a group run in part by Betty Sembler. Sembler’s husband, Mel, is a former ambassador and major Republican donor. The group’s executive director told the Tampa Tribune that the loopholes in the proposed amendment would create “de-facto marijuana legalization.”
In an interview earlier this month, Ben Pollara, who is running the pro-amendment campaign, said his group would aim to raise and spend at least $10 million.
If the amendment passes, Florida would join 18 other states and the District of Columbia in allowing medical patients to use marijuana. Two states, Washington and Colorado, allow legal purchases for non-medical use.
A Quinnipiac University poll conducted in November showed a huge majority of Florida voters, 82 percent, backed allowing adults to use marijuana for medical purposes if their doctor prescribes the drug. Just 16 percent of voters said they opposed marijuana for medical use.
The same poll showed a slim plurality — 48 percent — supported allowing adults to possess small amounts of marijuana for personal use. Forty-six percent said they opposed recreational marijuana use.


An unprecedented number of states will vote on marijuana this fall

(Rachel Orr/Washington Post illustration; iStock)
This is a pivotal year for American drug policy. More states than ever will consider easing restrictions on marijuana use this November: Voters in five states will decide whether to fully legalize recreational use, while voters in four more will weigh in on whether to allow medical marijuana.
The outcome of these initiatives could set the tone for the national marijuana legalization discussion going forward. Big state victories for the pro-marijuana contingent -- recreational weed in California, medical marijuana in Florida -- could widen the gap between state and federal marijuana policies, ratcheting up pressure on Congress and the next presidential administration to provide a fix.
On the other hand, a string of defeats would signal public unease about condoning the use of an intoxicating substance that isn't tobacco or alcohol. Defeats would suggest that opponents' longstanding criticisms of the legal marijuana industry are making inroads among voters.
As campaigning shifts into high gear in the fall, here's a rundown of where marijuana will be on the ballot in November -- and how those contests are shaping up.
California -- Recreational marijuana
A "yes" on weed in the world's sixth-largest economy would loom large in the marijuana debate, making marijuana legal along the entire West Coast.
California is home to nearly 40 million people and an existing $2.7 billion market in medical marijuana. Legalization of recreational marijuana could cause that industry to swell to $6 billion or more by 2020, according to ArcView Research, a marijuana industry research firm. That kind of money is already drawing the interest of businesses and investors, who could leverage their newfound legal lobbying clout to pressure Congress and other states to relax restrictions on marijuana sales and use.
Voters in California, Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada just approved recreational marijuana use. Here's what they can learn from Washington, Colorado and Oregon, states where marijuana use has already been legalized.
Polls have shown the legalization measure drawing the support of 60 percent -- or more -- of voters, making it perhaps the marijuana initiative most likely to pass this fall. Legalization has been endorsed by some high-profile state and national politicians, as well as the California Democratic Party, the ACLU and NAACP of California, and the California Medical Association. It's opposed by a number of law enforcement groups and some politicians, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).
Supporters of the legalization measure also hold a huge fundraising advantage over opponents. According to Ballotpedia, supporters had roughly $11.5 million in cash on hand as of Aug. 16, compared to opponents' $186,000.
Nevada -- Recreational marijuana
While home to only 2.8 million people, legal weed in Nevada could have outsize national impact due to Las Vegas's draw as a tourism destination -- 40 million visitors per year.
Still, there's a lot less money in play in Nevada than there is in California -- supporters of legalization have a little more than $1 million in cash on hand, while opponents have zero, according to the latest campaign finance disclosures.
That dynamic could change heading into the fall. Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson has long opposed marijuana liberalization, and almost single-handedly bankrolled the campaign opposing Florida's medical marijuana initiative in 2014.
A late infusion of Adelson cash in Nevada could tip the scale of public support for the legalization measure there. A July poll found that 50 percent of Nevada voters supported the measure, while 41 percent opposed it.
Arizona -- Recreational marijuana
Arizona is the third act of the marijuana legalization trilogy playing out in the West this November. It's also the state giving marijuana proponents their toughest fight -- a July poll found that only 39 percent of likely voters support the measure, while 53 percent oppose.
The measure is not fundamentally different from other legalization bills on November ballots. But Arizona has different demographics than its neighbors to the north and west. The state has voted Republican in every presidential election since 1996, and Republicans are less likely to support marijuana legalization than other Americans.
Massachusetts -- Recreational marijuana
Massachusetts, on the other hand, is one of the deepest blue states in the nation, but voters there don't seem to be warming up to the legalization measure on their ballot this fall. Just 41 percent said they'd vote for it in July, down from the mid-to-high-50s a few months earlier.
Some elected officials have been campaigning fiercely against the state's marijuana measure, including Governor Charlie Baker. In March, he joined the state attorney general and Boston's mayor to pen an op-ed in the Boston Globe that was highly critical of legalization efforts. Soon after it published, a state Senate committee released a report detailing how lawmakers could blunt the measure's impact should it pass , such as requiring child-resistant packaging on marijuana products and putting strict limits on advertising.
Maine -- Recreational marijuana
Marijuana appears to be on stronger footing in nearby Maine. Polls conducted there earlier this year suggest the state's legalization measure currently enjoys upwards of 50 percent support.
That initiative was nearly derailed when Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap invalidated tens of thousands of petition signatures necessary to put the measure on the ballot. But a judge reversed Dunlap's decision on an appeal from the pro-legalization campaign, clearing the measure's way forward.
Maine has traditionally been at the forefront of marijuana change. The state was one of the first to decriminalize the use of small amounts of marijuana in the 1970s, and it was quick to follow California's lead in legalizing medical marijuana in 1999. In 2013, residents of Portland, the state's largest city, voted to legalize the possession of marijuana.
Florida -- Medical marijuana
On the medical marijuana side of the ledger, Florida is the biggest fight. Supporters and opponents have poured close to $10 million into the contest there. It would make Florida the first state in the South with a robust medical marijuana law.
Florida voters narrowly rejected a constitutional amendment for a California-style medical marijuana market in 2014. While 58 percent of voters approved it, the measure failed to meet the 60-percent threshold necessary for a constitutional change.
This year's measure is similar to the failed 2014 initiative, but supporters hope that a more Democratic-leaning electorate in a presidential election year will tip the scales in their favor.
Florida's bill has garnered a number of high-profile endorsements from state and national political leaders, as well as groups like the NAACP, ACLU and some labor organizations. Most recent polls show support surpassing the 60 percent threshold needed for passage.
But the 2014 amendment also had blockbuster polling numbers in the summer leading up to the election, only to collapse going into the fall. This could have been due to a late infusion of Adelson cash for the anti-marijuana campaign and a growing unease among voters with the specifics of the marijuana law.
Arkansas -- Medical marijuana
Arkansas is also making a play to be the first southern state allowing medical marijuana. The effort recently received a boost when the state Democratic party put a call for medical marijuana into their party platform.
Voters there narrowly rejected medical marijuana  in 2012, but a June survey put support at 58 percent among likely voters.
That support may be stymied by the fact that there are going to be two competing medical pot measures on Arkansas' ballot: One of those is a simple state statute, while the other is a constitutional amendment.
The measures are similar, and voters are free to vote for both. If both pass with a simple majority vote, the measure with the most support will be enacted. But there's also a danger of "splitting the ticket," and diluting medical marijuana support between two measures.
North Dakota -- Medical marijuana
In something of a surprise move, a medical marijuana measure recently qualified for the ballot in North Dakota. How this one will play out is anyone's guess. It appears the last polling on medical pot in the state was done in 2014, when 47 percent of voters approved of medical pot and 41 percent opposed it.
North Dakota's always been a bit of an odd man out when it comes to medical marijuana. Its neighbor to the west, Montana, approved medical pot by ballot in 2004. Its neighbor to the east, Minnesota, approved it via legislature in 2014.
But North Dakota is a notoriously conservative state. Authorities there have already been warning about the alleged cost to implement the measure. But backers dispute the official cost estimates.
Montana -- Medical marijuana
Wait, doesn't Montana already have medical marijuana? Well, yes and no. Voters approved medical pot in 2004, but since then, state lawmakers have been working to undermine that measure. In 2011, they passed legislation that, among other things, prevented medical dispensaries from charging for their services beyond the cost of recouping a licensing fee. In the year following the law, the number of medical marijuana providers plummeted by 90 percent.
For that reason, medical marijuana supporters have put a measure on the ballot that would roll back most of those restrictions and breathe some life back into Montana's medical marijuana regime.
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