Common critiques of marijuana legalization follow a few simple lines of logic. One is that allowing adults 21 and over to possess marijuana without a doctor\u2019s recommendation isn\u2019t legalization at all \u2014 at least not\u00a0really<\/i>.<\/p>\n
If cannabis were\u00a0truly<\/i>\u00a0legal in places like Canada, Colorado, Washington, California, and the other states where adults enjoy the legal right to purchase marijuana in a state-licensed retail storefront, this argument goes, there would be no limits on how much cannabis an adult could purchase, possess, or cultivate.\u00a0There would be no taxes or regulations<\/a>. There would just be us and the weed.<\/p>\n This is as much a critique of capitalism or government in general as it is cannabis policy \u2014 and probably belongs in the same conversations as overthrowing the government or replacing the market economy (that is: they are massive undertakings that may be beyond the ken of drug-policy reform). At the same time, few would argue that most states\u2019\u00a0medical<\/a>\u00a0or recreational legalization measures are anywhere close to perfect; they are probably better seen as \u201cgood starts,\u201d which is not to say they do not have value.<\/p>\n But so far, only one state is edging close to achieving the libertarian\u2019s nirvana described above \u2014 and it\u2019s\u00a0North Dakota,<\/a>\u00a0which has since 2016 been the unexpected and welcome surprise of the marijuana-reform movement. North Dakota voters\u00a0legalized medical marijuana on Election Night 2016 by a wide margin<\/a>, at the same time as fellow Trump-supporting red states Arkansas and Florida<\/p>\n And if voters in that state approve Measure 3 on Election Day next month, conservative North Dakota could have some of the most liberal marijuana laws in the country. In stark contrast to more progressive states where marijuana \u201clegalization\u201d stops at 1 or 2 ounces, adults would be\u00a0able to possess marijuana with no possession limits.<\/a><\/p>\n If passed \u2014 and according to current polling from NORML, one of the ballot measure\u2019s few sponsors, it has a good chance of passing \u2014 Measure 3 would also expunge past convictions for marijuana crimes. Compare that to the process in other blue states like California and Washington, where marijuana \u201coffenders\u201d have had to hire lawyers to file petitions to get their records cleared. And not every state that\u2019s legalized marijuana has gone this far. Massachusetts hasn\u2019t (and neither have dispensaries opened up for business, nearly two years after the state legalized marijuana).<\/p>\n Why is cannabis such an easy sell in such a conservative area? While it\u2019s been true for a while that legalization is a bipartisan issue, Great Plains states like North Dakota also tend to skew towards a small-government libertarianism that tracks nicely with drug policy reform.<\/p>\n This is not to say that the state is perfect, or will implement legalization perfectly if it passes \u2014 or that it will pass at all. Patients in Arkansas and North Dakota are still waiting for medical-marijuana dispensaries to open, and patients in Florida have seen fit to file several lawsuits against the state to overturn what they perceive (probably correctly) as overly restrictive laws designed to limit cannabis access as much as possible while still allowing it in some form.<\/p>\n As North Dakota state Rep. Rick Becker\u00a0told reporters,<\/a>\u00a0it\u2019s possible that the Legislature could intervene following Measure 3\u2019s passage and change it.<\/p>\n Either way, the mere fact that red-state voters had no issue with allowing adults to possess in theory entire truckloads worth of cannabis is significant \u2014 and maybe the clearest sign yet that any lingering prohibition-era qualms over cannabis per se are finally dissipating.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/b>, do you think there should be no limits on how much cannabis a person can purchase, possess and cultivate?<\/p>\n The post Why the Best Marijuana Legalization Law Yet is in North Dakota<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Common critiques of marijuana legalization follow a few simple lines of logic. One is that allowing adults 21 and over to possess marijuana without a doctor\u2019s recommendation isn\u2019t legalization at all \u2014 at least not\u00a0really. If cannabis were\u00a0truly\u00a0legal in places like Canada, Colorado, Washington, California, and the other states whereContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,5432,6263,53,415,139,146,596],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30139"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30139"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30140,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30139\/revisions\/30140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nRead More: Why the Best Marijuana Legalization Law Yet is in North Dakota<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"