Nov 14, 2020 3 min read

Let’s be clear that smoking marijuana on a recreational basis is perhaps not the best lifestyle choice.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, heavy users can develop problems with memory and attention, and marijuana can also lead to an increased risk for bronchitis, among other health problems. But alcohol, particularly if used in excess, can also pose obvious health risks. It’s estimated that close to 100,000 Americans die annually as a result of alcohol abuse. Cigarettes kill almost 500,000 Americans every year, which works out to roughly 1,300 deaths per day. Yet cigarettes are legal, regulated and taxed.

And if the results of last week’s election are any guide, Americans increasingly agree that marijuana should also be legal, regulated and taxed.

While the election was a mixed decision for the two major parties, legal pot was a bipartisan smash. New Jersey voters, as widely anticipated, gave their blessing to making marijuana legal for recreational use by adults by a 2-to-1 margin, as did deep-red Montana and South Dakota. Arizona, now purple, also approved a marijuana legalization measure. At the same time they approved marijuana for recreational use, South Dakota voters also smiled on making marijuana available for medical use, and Mississippi did likewise.

Also, voters in Washington, D.C., approved a measure to decriminalize psilocybin, a compound used in psychedelic mushrooms, and in Oregon, all drugs will be decriminalized, with taxes from marijuana being put toward treatment for addicts.

What a long, strange trip America has traveled from the 1960s and 1970s, when pot was a totem of the counterculture and possession of a couple of marijuana cigarettes could land you in jail.

Some of this is the result of generations with more relaxed attitudes about recreational drug use reaching adulthood. The libertarian ethos that has also seen more Americans adopt a live-and-let-live posture when it comes to things like homosexuality and same-sex marriage could also be at play. The 1980s “war” on drugs is widely deemed to have been a failure, with large numbers of Americans sent to prison for relatively small drug offenses, with lasting damage inflicted on predominantly poor and Black communities along the way. The ongoing opioid epidemic, the toll of which has been particularly painful in this region, has also opened eyes to the reality that drug abuse is more an issue of public health than criminality.

Here in Pennsylvania, Gov. Tom Wolf and Lt. Gov. John Fetterman have been advocates for recreational-use marijuana, with the crux of their argument being that it would help fill coronavirus-depleted state coffers. Of course, the Keystone State can sometimes lag behind the rest of the country when it comes to cutting-edge policy initiatives, but it’s probably just a matter of time before Pennsylvania adults can light up with impunity.

There aren’t many things that spark bipartisan agreement nowadays, but marijuana seems to be one of them. John Boehner, the former speaker of the U.S. House and a Republican, now leads the National Cannabis Roundtable, and observed that “when cannabis is on the ballot, it wins.”