The medical marijuana industry is reportedly gearing up for another initiative to legalize recreational pot in Arizona.

This will rekindle familiar arguments. But there is one new issue that should take center stage in this debate: the regulation of the potency of recreational marijuana.

The observation is frequently made that today’s marijuana isn’t the marijuana familiar to aging boomers from their college days. It’s far more potent.

And there is growing medical evidence linking high-potency pot with a substantially higher risk of psychosis.

I have been reliably informed that the lower potency from the boomers’ college days was sufficient for a recreational buzz.

Recreational pot should be different

Causation between high-potency pot and psychosis has yet to be indisputably established. And there are those who dispute it.

But there is enough evidence of correlation that any scheme to legalize recreational marijuana should include the ability of an independent regulator to limit its potency.

This could establish a meaningful distinction between medical and recreational marijuana. Recreational marijuana would be low-potency. Medical marijuana could be higher potency, arguably of legitimate value for some purposes, such as pain relief.

One of the benefits of legalizing recreational marijuana is to dry up the black market and criminal control of means of production and distribution.

Limiting the potency of recreational weed arguably could reduce this benefit, leaving more room for a black market in higher potency recreational pot. But the ease of obtaining a medical marijuana card for those wanting a more potent product would mitigate this downside.

Regardless, if there is to be a legal market for recreational pot, an independent regulator should have the authority to weigh the medical evidence and determine if a limit on potency is an important consumer protection and public health component.

Industry initiative should regulate potency

Ideally, such a provision would be part of the legalization initiative the industry presents.

It wasn’t in 2016, the last time the industry tried to get recreational pot legalized in Arizona. The initiative narrowly failed.

That measure allowed regulation about the measurement and disclosure of marijuana potency. But it would not have permitted a regulator to limit potency.

And the regulator was far from independent. Marijuana regulation, medical and recreational, would have been taken from the independent Department of Health Services and vested in a board heavily influenced by industry insiders.

It was close to self-regulation.

If not, the Legislature should step in

If the initiative circulated by the industry does not include an independent regulator with the authority to set limits on the potency of recreational marijuana, the governor and Legislature should step in.

The Legislature is dominated by politicos who oppose legalizing recreational marijuana. And Gov. Doug Ducey was a leader in the effort to defeat the 2016 initiative. They probably want to go down fighting to the last vote to prevent it from happening.

If they wanted to do more than that, there are several options.

The most sensible would be to eliminate state criminal penalties for the possession and distribution of small quantities of marijuana. That would keep the criminal sanctions in place for dealers. But it would eliminate the most powerful argument in favor of legalization, the injustice of threatening people with jail for ingesting weed.

It also avoids the awkwardness of the state legalizing a product that is still illegal under federal law. Arizona just wouldn’t be in the business of using its resources to go after small users.

The second approach would be for the Legislature to enact a legalization scheme of its own. This would have the benefit of not locking the law into place, as would be the case for a voter-approved initiative.

A third approach would be to refer a competing measure to the ballot, so voters would at least have the option of approving an independent regulator with the authority to limit potency.

As the debate resumes, regulating the potency of recreational pot is too important to be overlooked.