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As of Thursday, marijuana for adult recreational use is legal in Michigan as the voter-approved ballot initiative went into effect.

What Michigan's vote on marijuana tells us

By Maria McFarland Sánchez-Moreno

Michigan joined nine other states and Washington, D.C., on Thursday in legalizing marijuana for adult recreational use. It's the first state outside of the West and Northeast to do so, and it reflects just how dramatically public opinion in America has shifted on marijuana. In just 10 years, legalization has gone from a fringe issue, attracting about 40 percent support, to a mainstream topic attracting vast bipartisan support.

The history of this shift is instructive. The conversation around marijuana started with compassion for seriously ill patients who benefited from the medical properties of marijuana. Activists started growing medical marijuana in the 1980s and '90s, in the context of the AIDS epidemic, to share it with patients who were wasting away and dying painful deaths.

When the George H.W. Bush administration shut down a program that had been allowing some access to cannabis in 1989, San Francisco activists pushed for a local ordinance to allow medical marijuana. That led to California's Prop 215, the Compassionate Use Act of 1996, which opened the door to other states legalizing marijuana for therapeutic purposes. Over time, stories about patients benefiting from cannabis humanized the issue and powerfully posed the question of why — of all substances — this one was prohibited.

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The publication of data showing severe racial disparities in marijuana enforcement, with black people being several times more likely to be arrested for marijuana use than white people, despite comparable rates of use, also made it increasingly difficult to defend prohibition.

Legalization has received a further boost simply from the fact that it is working. Opponents' worst fears have not materialized: Neither youth marijuana use nor the DUI rate has increased in states that legalized, according to our research. Instead, in states where data are available, arrests are dropping, states are enjoying cost savings while filling their coffers with marijuana revenue, and regulators are putting in place strict measures to protect health and safety in a legal marijuana market.

As the Michigan vote indicates, the question is no longer whether to legalize cannabis: It is how to do it in a manner that repairs the many harms from decades of prohibition.

Maria McFarland Sánchez-Moreno is the executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. You can follow her on Twitter: @MMcFarlandSM.

What our readers are saying

Cannabis prohibition is a ridiculous waste of police, court and tax-paid resources. Research data prove that cannabis is much safer than alcoholic beverages, which is completely legal. Based on that fact alone, cannabis should be completely legal.

Cannabis prohibition wrongfully persecutes and criminalizes cannabis consumers for selecting a recreational substance that is much safer than booze or cigarettes!

— Ben James Yokel

To me, pot serves no useful purpose. The only reason people smoke it is to alter their consciousness, and I don't see that as a good thing.

— Edgar Fuss

Regulate pot research, growing, sales and distribution. Tax the heck out of it, increase the penalties for illegal sales, abolish the penalties for possession of small amounts. Treat it like alcohol. I don't drink alcohol or smoke pot, but It's time to be realistic.

— Ken Michaels

It's ridiculous to ban marijuana and then legalize and condone a much more dangerous drug like alcohol. Either legalize both or ban both.

— John Russell

What others are saying

Amol Sinha, The (Bergen County, New Jersey) Record: "For legalization to advance justice, it must facilitate expungement of marijuana offenses, allow people with prior convictions to work in the industry, and create equity initiatives to ensure people of color, women and diverse communities have a meaningful stake in the new cannabis economy."

Justin McCarthy, Gallup: "Like support for gay marriage — and in prior years, interracial marriage — support for marijuana legalization has generally only expanded, even if slowly, over the course of multiple decades — raising the question of where the ceiling in support might be. As the percentage of Americans who favor legalizing pot has continued to grow, so has the number of states that have taken up legislation to allow residents to use the substance recreationally. "

Patrick Barone, Detroit Free Press: "Because marijuana has just become legal to use recreationally in Michigan, it will take some time for the intoxicated driving laws to catch up to this new reality. Thus, until this new law works its way through the legal system, which may take years, recreational users of marijuana should expect to possibly face zero-tolerance prosecution."

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