As a med­ley of bor­der vio­lence, reces­sion­ary pres­sure, inter­na­tion­al crit­i­cism and pop­u­lar accep­tance steadi­ly under­mines America’s decades-long effort to elim­i­nate drugs and drug use, the U.S. move­ment to legal­ize mar­i­jua­na is gain­ing unprece­dent­ed momentum.

Once derided and dismissed by lawmakers, law enforcers and the law-abiding alike, marijuana reform is sweeping the nation

Once derid­ed and dis­missed by law­mak­ers, law enforcers and the law-abid­ing alike, mar­i­jua­na reform is sweep­ing the nation, although the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment appears com­mit­ted – at least for the time being – to large­ly main­tain­ing the sta­tus quo.

A week after Attor­ney Gen­er­al Eric Hold­er announced in March that raids on state law-abid­ing med­ical mar­i­jua­na dis­pen­saries would end, the Drug Enforce­ment Agency effec­tive­ly shut down a San Fran­cis­co dis­pen­sary, claim­ing it vio­lat­ed both state and fed­er­al laws.

But to para­phrase Vic­tor Hugo, not even the strongest gov­ern­ment in the world can stop an idea whose time has appar­ent­ly come.

Indeed, sup­port for legal­iza­tion is at an all-time high, and con­tin­ues to grow. In 1969, just 12 per­cent of Amer­i­cans favored legal­iz­ing mar­i­jua­na, the Holy Grail of cannabis advo­cates; this num­ber had tripled by 2005, accord­ing to a Gallup poll. Bare­ly three years lat­er, anoth­er poll showed 44 per­cent of Amer­i­cans sup­port legalization.

“If we con­tin­ue on this curve – and there is no rea­son to think we won’t – we’ll hit 58 or 60 per­cent by 2020,” says Allen St. Pierre, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Nation­al Orga­ni­za­tion for the Reform of Mar­i­jua­na Laws (NORML). ​“We’re see­ing also that the gov­ern­ment is final­ly play­ing catch up with the people.”

In Feb­ru­ary, a Cal­i­for­nia state law­mak­er intro­duced a bill to legal­ize and tax pot, and mar­i­jua­na reform bills are being debat­ed in at least 37 oth­er states. (Last Novem­ber, Mass­a­chu­setts became the thir­teenth state to decrim­i­nal­ize adult pos­ses­sion, while Michi­gan became the thir­teenth state to legal­ize mar­i­jua­na for med­ical use.) All told, more than one-third of Amer­i­cans now live in a state or city that has legal­ized med­ical mar­i­jua­na or decrim­i­nal­ized its recre­ation­al use.

“It’s the busiest peri­od for mar­i­jua­na law reform ever,” says St. Pierre. ​“Legal­iza­tion is def­i­nite­ly on the polit­i­cal horizon.”

Grow­ing calls for reform

Argu­ments for end­ing the war on weed – that mar­i­jua­na is safer than alco­hol and that its pro­hi­bi­tion leads to vio­lence, exor­bi­tant enforce­ment costs, bil­lions in lost tax rev­enue and infringe­ments on civ­il lib­er­ties – haven’t changed much since the 1970s.

But the argu­ments have tak­en on unusu­al grav­i­ty over the last year, as drug-fueled vio­lence along the Mex­i­can side of bor­der has excit­ed fears that the car­nage and may­hem will spill over into Amer­i­can cities. Tes­ti­fy­ing before a House pan­el in March, a top Home­land Secu­ri­ty offi­cial warned (PDF link) that the car­tels now rep­re­sent America’s largest orga­nized-crime threat, hav­ing infil­trat­ed at least 230 Amer­i­can cities. Already, police in Tuc­son and Phoenix have report­ed a surge in drug-relat­ed kid­nap­pings and murders.

Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Clin­ton recent­ly acknowl­edged that America’s ​“insa­tiable” appetite for drugs has helped fuel the car­tel-relat­ed vio­lence. In fact, the Mex­i­can car­tels reap as much as 62 per­cent of their prof­its – and derive much of their pow­er – from Amer­i­can mar­i­jua­na sales, which total $9 bil­lion annu­al­ly, accord­ing to the Office of Nation­al Drug Con­trol Policy.

But Mex­i­can weed rep­re­sents only a sliv­er of America’s annu­al cannabis con­sump­tion. Each year, Amer­i­cans spend a whop­ping $39 bil­lion on domes­ti­cal­ly grown mar­i­jua­na, and anoth­er $7 – 10 bil­lion on weed smug­gled in from Cana­da. In short, untaxed and unreg­u­lat­ed mar­i­jua­na is America’s – if not the continent’s – largest cash crop, more valu­able than corn and wheat com­bined, accord­ing to Drug​Science​.org.

The grow­ing sense that America’s mar­i­jua­na pol­i­cy is more harm­ful than the plant itself is lead­ing some cash-strapped states to rethink the effi­ca­cy of lock­ing up non-vio­lent offend­ers and con­sid­er tax­ing med­ical mar­i­jua­na, despite the fed­er­al pro­hi­bi­tion on doing so. Sev­er­al Cal­i­for­nia cities are already tax­ing med­ical mar­i­jua­na sales. Oregon’s leg­is­la­ture is debat­ing whether to reg­u­late and tax it as well. (Last year a bill that would have allowed Ore­gon liquor stores to sell mar­i­jua­na failed.)

And in the first such step by a state gov­ern­ment, New Mexico’s Depart­ment of Pub­lic Health is now over­see­ing the cul­ti­va­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of med­ical mar­i­jua­na, brush­ing aside legal con­cerns that state employ­ees could face fed­er­al drug con­spir­a­cy charges.

Although mar­i­jua­na reform has gained lit­tle trac­tion in Con­gress, last year Reps. Bar­ney Frank (D‑MA) and Ron Paul (R‑TX) cospon­sored a bill to pro­tect med­ical mar­i­jua­na patients and decrim­i­nal­ize pos­ses­sion of small amounts of mar­i­jua­na. ​“It’s no longer just pot­heads who want this,” says Bill Piper, direc­tor of nation­al affairs for the Drug Pol­i­cy Alliance. ​“We’re at the tip­ping point, in that we’re see­ing the most sus­tained dis­cus­sion ever by media and policymakers.”

Although Pres­i­dent Oba­ma jok­ing­ly brushed aside eco­nom­ic argu­ments for end­ing mar­i­jua­na pro­hi­bi­tion dur­ing his March 26th online town-hall dis­cus­sion, a mount­ing body of research under­scores their validity.

In 2005, Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty econ­o­mist Jef­frey Miron pub­lished a report show­ing that legal­iza­tion would save $7.7 bil­lion each year on enforce­ment, while gen­er­at­ing as much as $6.2 bil­lion in tax­es. In response, more than 500 lead­ing econ­o­mists wrote an open let­ter to fed­er­al and state offi­cials sup­port­ing a régime of legal­iza­tion and taxation.

With increas­ing fre­quen­cy, main­stream media out­lets are also advo­cat­ing major changes to U.S. drug laws. In March, the Econ­o­mist​’s edi­to­r­i­al board called for the legal­iza­tion of drugs, and CNN, Time mag­a­zine and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions have pub­lished op-eds sup­port­ing an end to mar­i­jua­na pro­hi­bi­tion or call­ing for an ​“hon­est” dis­cus­sion about legal­iz­ing drugs. Also ear­li­er this year, the Latin Amer­i­can Com­mis­sion on Drugs and Democ­ra­cy, which includes three for­mer heads of state, issued a report con­demn­ing drug pro­hi­bi­tion and call­ing for cannabis’ legalization.

“[Cannabis] con­sump­tion has an adverse impact on the user’s health, includ­ing men­tal health,” the 17 com­mis­sion mem­bers wrote. ​“But the avail­able empir­i­cal evi­dence shows that the harm caused by this drug is sim­i­lar to the harm caused by alco­hol or tobacco.”

Giv­en Pres­i­dent Obama’s pen­chant for prag­ma­tism, Piper chalks up Obama’s dis­mis­sive response regard­ing legal­iza­tion as a first-term answer to a sec­ond-term ques­tion. ​“There is debate as to whether he was even jok­ing,” Piper says, ​“because in many ways he’s sig­naled that this admin­is­tra­tion will take a dif­fer­ent approach to drug policy.”

The ​ ‘ van­guard’ of legalization?

Amer­i­can atti­tudes toward cannabis have soft­ened con­sid­er­ably over the last decade, yet they remain large­ly ambiva­lent about reform. ​“Most peo­ple agree the laws are too harsh, but many of these don’t want to see it legal­ized, either,” says Mason Tvert, who in 2005 co-found­ed SAFER Col­orado, which pro­motes mar­i­jua­na as a safer alter­na­tive to alcohol.

Eco­nom­ic argu­ments like those sup­port­ed by Miron’s Har­vard study, says Tvert, are inef­fec­tive because the same could be said of hard drugs like cocaine and hero­in. Legal­iza­tion, he says, will hap­pen only when peo­ple real­ize that mar­i­jua­na is safer than alcohol.

“The prob­lem is that peo­ple still have a per­cep­tion of harm that’s been built up over many years,” he says. ​“If mar­i­jua­na were legal­ized tomor­row, in 10 years these per­cep­tions would be very, very different.”

Tvert agrees that per­cep­tions about mar­i­jua­na are rapid­ly evolv­ing for the bet­ter. Ear­li­er this year, when a pic­ture sur­faced show­ing Olympic gold-medal­ist Michael Phelps smok­ing from a bong, many expect­ed the 23-year-old to lose many of his endorse­ments. But only Kellogg’s dropped him. Even more sur­pris­ing, the move seemed to hurt Kellogg’s more than Phelps, as sur­veys showed the move injured its brand reputation.

For those seek­ing high­er office, past pot use is no longer the polit­i­cal death knell it once was. When asked if he ever smoked pot in 1992, Bill Clin­ton claimed he didn’t inhale, and in 2005, tapes sur­faced of George W. Bush acknowl­edg­ing past mar­i­jua­na use after years spent dodg­ing the ques­tion. Remark­ably, vot­ers seemed large­ly uncon­cerned by Barack Obama’s can­did admis­sion that he once used both mar­i­jua­na and cocaine. ​“This is a huge turn­ing point in peo­ple admit­ting to past use and not suf­fer­ing any con­se­quences,” says Piper.

With pub­lic accep­tance grow­ing and states increas­ing­ly at odds with fed­er­al mar­i­jua­na laws, how much longer can Wash­ing­ton remain imper­vi­ous to calls for reform? NORML’s St. Pierre, who says there are major chinks in the armor of blan­ket pro­hi­bi­tion, believes fed­er­al reforms are imminent.

“At some point, we’ll have run the gaunt­let of states that have passed reform bills by pop­u­lar vote,” he says. ​“It’s get­ting hard­er for peo­ple to say we’re going to hell-in-a-bas­ket when the state next door has had these laws for years with­out prob­lems. This gen­er­a­tion is on the van­guard of legalization.”