Cannabis legalization will be a key item on candidate's agenda
Many readers have probably partaken in cannabis at some point in their lives.
This might not be the case within all circles, but its use is very common. I know several people, including enterprising business owners and veterans, who use it as a means to treat chronic health conditions. Acknowledging that cannabis can cause long-term impairments in persons under the age of 25, for the vast majority of people, cannabis is safe, non-addiction-forming, and even beneficial.
Among justifications for its criminalization is that cannabis serves as a “gateway” drug. This hypothesis hasn’t been conclusively proven and can be partly explained in other ways. There is nothing intrinsic to cannabis which predisposes a person to use harder drugs, except for that, in jurisdictions like Indiana, the same elements that meet the demand for cannabis, can be those which dispense other, more problematic substances such as heroin, meth, and cocaine. This represents one of the unintended consequences of criminalization.
Another unintended consequence: Did you know that between Woodstock and the present day, concentration of the psychoactive component of marijuana, THC, has increased from 1-3% to 18-23%? This increases the probability of rare complications including “Cannabis Induced Psychosis,” and I would argue is a result of the U.S.'s largely black-and-white treatment of cannabis hitherto.
The general air among the established political class is that there is no industry in passing marijuana legislation on the state level until the federal government reclassifies the drug. For the uninitiated, this should be interpreted to mean “just as soon as hell freezes over.” This represents a tacit admission that cannabis should “probably” be legal, and thus that the people in power are just fine with Hoosiers being thrown in jail for violating an unjust law, not to mention a grievous misrepresentation of how our federalist system of government actually works.
I’m not going to perjure myself and act like voting for me will guarantee cannabis legalization in the next year, but if elected, this will be one of the key items on my agenda, and I will engage with Republicans and Democrats to work toward a solution that brings us into the 21st century and in better competition with our various neighboring states, all of whom didn't wait for the federal government to tell them when to rectify their own laws.
