Matthew Cavedon
A couple of years ago, I published an academic paper predicting that the remaining laws criminalizing marijuana use were on the verge of falling. That’s proven wrong, and an editorial from yesterday’s New York Times sets out some of the reasons why. But where the Gray Lady thinks nanny-statism is the way forward, libertarians should focus on marijuana’s public harms rather than restricting personal choices.
While marijuana reform has notched some victories lately, including (at long last) moves toward moving the drug from Schedule I to Schedule III classification, other efforts have stalled. Several state referenda have rejected legalization, and some people have even proposed reviving abolished criminal laws.
Public opinion has shifted in response to realities that have followed in the wake of state legalization decisions. As I wrote, there was always a risk of reform advocates overselling their case, and the Times is right that legalization has been accompanied by increased marijuana use by Americans. The editorial wrongly seems to treat this as a problem in and of itself; Americans exercising their liberty is their own prerogative. Nevertheless, and even though access to marijuana as medicine has eased suffering for many people, the drug’s use—and especially its abuse—can cause physical and mental health problems.
Facing these, the Times takes a middle road—but ignores a better one. Some of the paper’s proposals are sensible. Certainly, it’s reasonable for the government to go after the grifters who claim their marijuana products will cure cancer and reverse the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. The Times also urges governments to raise taxes on marijuana. Libertarians aren’t fans of taxation in general, but for those of us who aren’t anarchists, government funding has to come from somewhere, and such taxes would at least be avoidable while targeting activities that cause public costs. (But for a libertarian argument against “sin taxes,” check this out.) Then there’s the Times’s emphasis on improving medical awareness so that users and doctors are accurately informed about the dangers of overindulging in marijuana. The more information, the merrier.
Beyond this, however, the Times proposes a new marijuana nanny state. It urges limits on the potency of marijuana and frets about the political influence of marijuana businesses. Limiting the products Americans can legally purchase is just going to incentivize the rise of black markets; Mexico recently banned the legal sale of vapes only to find drug cartels becoming the new monopoly providers. The Times worries about packaging and product names that “mimic snacks for children.” Adults can tell the difference between marijuana products and candy, and no twelve-year-old is going to stroll into a dispensary and plunk down lunch money in exchange for “Double Stuf Stoneo.”
The Times editorial board may not support criminalizing marijuana, but it doesn’t trust responsible adults to make their own choices any more than the government.
Surprisingly, the Times does not mention the downsides of marijuana legalization for the public—downsides that libertarians can agree merit government intervention, unlike the problems that may face informed adult users. Those problems are real. As with tobacco, secondhand marijuana smoke may pose health risks for non-smokers, but go to any city that has decriminalized marijuana and try to take a walk without wandering into someone else’s cannabis cloud.
Public intoxication from alcohol is restricted because it can be a nuisance that denies other people free and fair access to public spaces. But many jurisdictions become indifferent to public marijuana intoxication. Most dangerously, driving under the influence of marijuana is dangerous, yet the smell of lit joints pollutes interstates and intersections alike.
Those problems, while noticeably absent from the Times’s concerns, are ones libertarians should support uprooting. Libertarians support personal liberty, which means one person’s freedom to use marijuana should end where it infringes on another’s ability to avoid inhaling it, enjoy public spaces, and stay safe on the roads.
There are also clear political advantages for drug reformers in supporting sensible regulation. Earlier this decade, Oregon rolled out hard-drug decriminalization, with virtually no effective enforcement of limits on public drug use. The backlash to the resulting public filth and danger not only triggered a return to prohibition shortly afterward; it damaged the case for drug reform elsewhere in the country. By contrast, European jurisdictions have taken a different, “zero tolerance” approach to abuse when decriminalizing drug possession. Reason reports:
The authorities in Lisbon dismantled shanty towns, relocated their inhabitants, and broke up an open-air drug scene known as “the supermarket of drugs.” As Zurich decriminalized, authorities took a “zero tolerance” approach towards large public gatherings of drug users, which they described as “destructive to co-existence.”
These balanced approaches have proven to be both workable and livable.
The New York Times wants to restrict the products people can choose to use. The European examples offer a different model focused on publicly harmful behaviors. The editorial board’s nanny-state dreams infringe on personal liberty, and the best way to keep them from becoming reality is to curb the chaos that has sometimes followed marijuana-policy reform. Clean up public spaces, pull over buzzed drivers, verify purchasers’ ages—and legalize responsible adults’ freedom.