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To promote ‘social justice,’ don’t subsidize marijuana dealers. Protect the poor from street predators.
There aren’t many issues that unite us politically these days, but marijuana legalization seems to be one of them. In recent years, the number of Americans who smoke weed frequently has surpassed those who consume alcohol as often, according to research published in the journal Addiction in 2024.
“A good 40% of current cannabis users are using it daily or near daily, a pattern that is more associated with tobacco use than typical alcohol use,” said Carnegie Mellon University’s Jonathan Caulkins, the study’s author. Even people who don’t indulge have concluded that the criminal-justice system comes down too hard on people who do.
During President Trump’s first term he signed the First Step Act, a bipartisan law that reduced mandatory-minimum sentences for convicted drug offenders. Last week the administration reclassified state-licensed medical marijuana as a less-dangerous drug under federal law—removing it from a category that includes LSD and heroin and placing it in one shared by anabolic steroids and Tylenol with codeine.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the Wall Street Journal (paywall)
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Jason L. Riley is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, and a Fox News commentator. Follow him on Twitter here.