State votes on marijuana and psychedelics signal drug policy concerns
In three red states, voters opted not to legalize recreational marijuana.
In blue Massachusetts, residents rejected a plan making therapeutic use of psychedelics plants legal.
And in liberal California, voters embraced stiffer penalties for certain drug crimes.
The state ballot decisions Tuesday signal voter concerns that drug policies across the United States have drifted too far to the left, according to some policy experts and political analysts. Each ballot question featured nuances specific to their states.
But amid political rhetoric tying Democratic policies to supposed spikes in crime and rampant drug use in liberal communities, the votes came as part of a rightward shift by an electorate that returned Donald Trump to the White House in resounding fashion.
“Whether it is fair or not, places like San Francisco and Oregon have become poster children for failed drug policies,” said Keith Humphreys, a Stanford University professor of psychiatry and former White House drug policy adviser. “That’s made people nervous about liberalizing drug policies.”
Throughout the campaign, Trump and the GOP raised the specter of drugs as part of larger fears about public safety and illegal immigration. Trump advocated using the U.S. military to target Mexican cartels manufacturing the dangerous opioid fentanyl and called for the death penalty for dealers. He and allies also claimed marijuana is being laced with fentanyl even though little evidence exists that is happening.
Regina LaBelle, director of the Addiction and Public Policy Initiative at Georgetown University Law Center, said voters - particularly in California - were sending a message about social disruption that they perceive from public drug use.
In California, voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 36, undoing aspects of a decade-old initiative that reduced sentences for nonviolent crimes and was part of a wider progressive push for criminal justice reform. The vote came after lawmakers in Oregon rolled back a pioneering voter initiative that decriminalized possession of drugs but led to outrage because of perceptions of rampant public drug use.
The new California measure increases possible penalties for repeat drug offenders caught with substances such as fentanyl, heroin and methamphetamine.
“Voters wanted more law and order,” LaBelle said.
In Florida, opponents of recreational marijuana cited concerns about crime and addiction and - echoing decades of exaggerated war-on-drugs rhetoric - about weed potentially acting as a “gateway” to harder substances.
D.C. and 24 states, including Republican-led Missouri and Ohio, have legalized the use of recreational marijuana by adults.
Advocates from both parties had hoped to make Florida the largest red state to legalize marijuana, ending decades of prosecutions for minor pot possession. And the cannabis industry had eyed the state as potentially the largest marijuana market in the nation, worth billions of dollars in sales to Floridians, tourists and residents from neighboring Southern states where the drug is prohibited.
The cannabis company Trulieve, which operates more than 150 medical marijuana dispensaries in Florida, donated nearly $145 million to the campaign to legalize weed. But Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and allies hammered the measure as benefiting only a few companies. He warned that Florida could resemble California and Colorado, clouded in marijuana smoke and battling an illicit marijuana market that has “led to more dangerous drugs coming in” - echoing frequent GOP attack lines that turned liberal states into foils to be feared.
The stark imagery employed by opponents of recreational marijuana in conservative states is a far cry from how medical marijuana is portrayed, said Daniel J. Mallinson, an associate professor at Penn State Harrisburg’s School of Public Affairs who studies cannabis legalization efforts.
“It’s different than a glaucoma patient going and getting some marijuana that they consume at home,” Mallinson said. Marijuana opponents, he said, employ “that bigger narrative that ‘We don’t want to be like California.’”
Underscoring his thesis, Mallinson pointed to ruby-red Nebraska, where voters this week overwhelmingly approved the use of medical marijuana. (The results could be undone by a legal challenge.)
For cannabis activists, the defeat of recreational marijuana amendments did not prove a total surprise.
Similar ballot measures in deeply conservative North and South Dakota failed in years past. While more than half of Floridians supported Amendment 3, the state failed to clear the 60 percent threshold required by Florida law to enshrine an initiative in the state’s constitution. Trump, a Florida resident, endorsed the measure and a Biden administration push to loosen federal restrictions on marijuana.
Cannabis activists pointed out that Florida’s medical marijuana program failed its first go-around before voters approved it in 2016. The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws - widely known as NORML - said public support for legalizing marijuana has increased significantly during the past decade, with nearly 180 million Americans living in a place where marijuana is legally regulated.
“Every movement suffers temporary difficulties and disappointments. But our consistent upward trajectory is undeniable,” Paul Armentano, NORML’s deputy director, said in a statement.
But Kevin Sabet, president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, which opposes legalization, called the Tuesday votes “monumental for the antidrug movement.” He said the results underscore that voters are pushing back on rapid legalization of substances that opponents view as harmful for public health.
“This sends a message to both parties - this is not the winning issue you were sold,” Sabet said.
The vote on psychedelics in Massachusetts proved significant, Sabet said, because the state was home to psychedelics pioneer Timothy Leary.
Psychedelics have enjoyed a cultural renaissance - earning support from right-leaning tech figures, military veterans groups and some Republican lawmakers.
But concerns have mounted that states and cities are allowing psychedelics to proliferate before their benefits have been scientifically established. Separately, the Food and Drug Administration this year rejected an application to approve MDMA, a euphoria-inducing compound better known as ecstasy, for treating post-traumatic stress disorder.
The Massachusetts ballot question regarded legalizing psilocybin, a substance found in certain mushrooms, which is increasingly being studied for its potential to treat mental health conditions. The measure also would have legalized the use of mind-altering substances found in plants including ibogaine, which has been hailed for helping military veterans with traumatic brain injuries but also carries heart risks.
The law would have established therapeutic centers for administering the drugs, similar to programs created under measures passed in Colorado and Oregon. Mason Marks, a visiting law professor at Harvard University who studies psychedelics regulation, said a long and complicated ballot may have left voters confused and uncomfortable with how the program would be administered.
The measure also would have allowed people to grow the mushrooms and other plants and give them away, raising concerns about the proliferation of mind-bending drugs.
“In the view of the public, these are not casual drugs,” said Caroline Alcock Cunningham, campaign manager for the coalition that opposed the measure.
Tuesday’s votes will not mark the end of ballot measures addressing drug policies, said Beau Kilmer, co-director of the Rand Drug Policy Research Center.
But future measures may account for the growing belief that public health is taking a back seat to private companies seeking to sell drugs such as marijuana, Kilmer said. Initiatives might offer voters the establishment of state-run dispensaries or the legalization of only marijuana flower and products with lower levels of THC, not potent concentrates such as waxes, he said.
“You may see pushes for policy changes that aren’t as extreme,” Kilmer said.
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