The US advances in the legalization of marijuana

The Basement store in Washington's Adams Morgan neighborhood, famous for its nightlife, presents itself as a candle boutique but actually sells marijuana. If a customer pays 130 dollars (119 euros) for a candle, he receives in this store located in a basement about 28 grams of marijuana as a “gift”.

The explanation for this strange agreement lies in the fact that the possession and consumption of cannabis has been legal in the US capital since 2014, although its sale is still illegal, so many drug stores run similar business models to this one.

Washington is just one example of how marijuana is increasingly accepted in American society and how the legalization of this soft drug is progressing.

Earlier this month, the U.S. House of Representatives passed - mostly with the Democratic votes of President Joe Biden - a new bill that plans to decriminalize marijuana at the federal level.

The leader of the Democratic majority in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, wants to enter a similar bill in the upper house soon. In a letter to his colleagues in February, he called for a reform of the “aging cannabis laws”.

It is not yet clear whether this new regulation could actually be approved by the Senate, given that the Democrats rely there on several votes from the Republicans. What will happen in that camera is unpredictable.

“Last year there was more progress in legalizing cannabis than ever before,” Democratic Congressman Earl Blumenauer recently said. In a survey by the Gallup Institute last November, more than two out of three Americans spoke in favor of legalization for the first time. In the mid-90s they were just one in four.

Meanwhile, 37 of the 50 states in the United States and the capital, Washington, approved marijuana use for medical reasons, and the corresponding certificates are usually easy to obtain.

In 18 of the states and in the capital, adults can also consume marijuana even without a medical justification. By way of comparison, less than four years ago this was allowed in only nine states and in Washington. In most places, buying is still easier than in the capital, where the customer must formally receive drugs in the form of a gift.

While marijuana is becoming easier to obtain in different states, the ban at the federal level has far-reaching consequences. The economy generated around cannabis, for example, is excluded from the banking system, while in stores such as “The Basement” you can only pay in cash.

This can have dangerous side effects. US media reported in 2020 a series of assaults on cannabis shops on the west coast of the United States, as criminals assumed that they would find large amounts of cash there.

On the other hand, the federal government is losing any amount of money it could charge from this rising sector of the economy in the form of taxes. According to research by the cannabis specialist website Leafly, the legal marijuana industry employs nearly 430,000 people, a third more than a year ago.

The draft approved by the House of Representatives also mentions the development of the sector. “Legal cannabis sales in 2020 were $20 billion and, according to forecasts, will reach $40.5 billion by 2025,” he said.

According to the bill, a sales tax of 5 percent would fund, among other things, programs to help people “most affected by the war on drugs” through vocational training, for example, literacy courses or even legal aid.

Under the law, federal courts would also have to erase criminal records for marijuana-related offenses.

Once again, the problem of racism in the United States shows that these penalties are very different depending on who they are attached to. “Marijuana use is roughly as high among blacks and whites, but blacks are arrested 3.73 times more for marijuana use,” says a 2020 report by the civil rights organization ACLU.

The report notes that between 2001 and 2010, more than 8 million arrests due to marijuana were recorded in the United States, that is, one every 37 seconds.

“Implementing marijuana laws costs us about $3.6 billion a year, but the war on marijuana did not reduce the use or availability of marijuana,” he adds.

dpa