This Week's Election Results Are a Discouraging Sign for Drug Policy Reformers
Despite a few bright spots, the disappointing returns suggest that the road to pharmacological freedom will be rockier than activists hoped.
The last time voters sent Donald Trump to the White House, I barely noticed on Election Night because I was so pleasantly surprised by the electoral success of marijuana reform. In 2016, voters in California, Maine, Massachusetts, and Nevada approved recreational legalization, while voters in Arkansas, Florida, Montana and North Dakota approved or expanded medical use. Two years later, Michigan joined the first list, while Missouri, Oklahoma, and Utah joined the second.
In 2020, recreational initiatives won in Arizona, Montana, and New Jersey; Mississippi voters approved marijuana as a medicine; South Dakota voters approved both steps simultaneously; Washington, D.C., voters told police to leave psychedelic users alone; and Oregon voters passed two groundbreaking drug policy measures—one authorizing state-licensed "psilocybin service centers," the other decriminalizing low-level possession of all drugs. The 2022 midterms delivered another important victory: Colorado voters approved a measure that decriminalized five naturally occurring psychedelics.
This year's results look quite different. Legalization of recreational marijuana lost in Florida, North Dakota, and South Dakota, where a legal challenge had nixed the 2020 initiative. Nebraska voters overwhelmingly approved medical marijuana, but a pending legal challenge may prevent implementation of that policy. A Massachusetts psychedelic initiative similar to Colorado's went down by a double-digit margin. And California voters overwhelmingly approved an initiative, Proposition 36, that restores felony penalties for some drug possession offenses, reinforcing the message that Oregon legislators sent when they overturned decriminalization earlier this year.
These disappointing developments suggest that the collapse of pot prohibition is slowing, that the road to broader pharmacological freedom will be bumpier than reformers hoped, and that the punitive mentality of the war on drugs still appeals to many Americans, even in blue states. But there are a few brights spots.
Medical use of marijuana was so controversial when California became the first state to allow it in 1996 that a Democratic administration threatened to punish doctors for recommending cannabis to their patients. Today medical marijuana is widely accepted even in deep red states.
While Florida's legalization initiative fell short of the 60 percent threshold required for a constitutional amendment, it was nevertheless favored by 56 percent of voters, including the Republican who won the presidential election. In fact, the marijuana initiative proved just as popular in Florida as Trump did, which is striking given the state's increasingly red political demographics. The appeal of legalization in Florida is consistent with national polling data indicating that Republicans, despite the backlash epitomized by Gov. Ron DeSantis' olfactory opposition to allowing recreational marijuana, are turning against pot prohibition.
According to Gallup, 70 percent of Americans—including 87 percent of Democrats, 70 percent of independents, and 55 percent of Republicans—think marijuana should be legal. Medical use is legal in 38 states (not including Nebraska), 24 of which, accounting for most of the U.S. population, also allow recreational use. For the first time ever, both major-party presidential candidates this year were supporters of state or federal legalization.
Reformers inclined toward optimism can also cite the election results in Dallas, where I live. Two-thirds of Dallas voters approved an initiative that instructs local police to refrain from arresting people for marijuana possession misdemeanors, which include simple possession of less than four ounces, unless the offenses are discovered while investigating a violent felony or during a "high priority" drug felony investigation. Except in those circumstances, the initiative also says, "Dallas police shall not consider the odor of marijuana or hemp to constitute probable cause for any search or seizure."
Dallas voters are much more likely to be Democrats than Texas voters generally. But the position that cannabis consumers should not be treated as criminals has strong bipartisan appeal, even though politicians and voters seem to be having second thoughts about eliminating or reducing penalties for users of other drugs. Both Trump and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R–Ohio), have repeatedly said that people should not be arrested for using marijuana.
The Massachusetts results nevertheless suggest that Democrats as well as Republicans have reservations about eliminating criminal penalties for psychedelic users. Colorado's 2022 psychedelic initiative won by more than seven points, which was impressive given that registered Democrats have just a small edge over registered Republicans in that state. But in Massachusetts, where Democrats outnumber Republicans by 3 to 1, a similar initiative lost by 14 points this week.
The Massachusetts initiative, like Colorado's, would have allowed adults 21 or older to produce and possess limited amounts of psilocybin, psilocyn (another psychoactive component of "magic mushrooms"), dimethyltryptamine (DMT, the active ingredient in ayahuasca), ibogaine (a psychedelic derived from the root bark of the iboga tree), and mescaline (the active ingredient in peyote). The initiative also would have let people assist other adults in those activities and transfer personal-use amounts to them "without remuneration." Also like Colorado's initiative, the Massachusetts measure would have authorized state-licensed businesses where adults could use the covered psychedelics under the supervision of trained "facilitators."
The measure's backers "now acknowledge that the initiative's dual objectives may have added confusion among voters," Benzinga reports. It says a campaign spokesman "noted that the initiative's home cultivation provisions may have dissuaded some voters." Yet Colorado's initiative included the same basic elements. Perhaps voters in that Western state, regardless of party, are more inclined to favor individual freedom over technocratic regulation.
Like the campaigns in Colorado and Oregon, the Massachusetts campaign, which was spearheaded by a group called Massachusetts for Mental Health Options (MMHO), emphasized the psychotherapeutic potential of psychedelics. "We look forward to working with legislators in the new session to continue advocating for access, for hope, and for healing," the MMHO spokesman told Benzinga. "We will keep fighting to find new pathways for all those who struggle with their mental health."
Just as the medical use of marijuana opened the door to broader legalization, that strategy could undermine the premises of the war on drugs and pave the way to wider cognitive liberty. But there is a rhetorical tension between the argument that supervised "treatment" should be available to people who "struggle with their mental health" and the argument that adults should be free to consume psychedelics independently, for whatever reasons seem sufficient to them. In retrospect, it makes sense that voters in Massachusetts, a state that does not even allow adults to use flavored tobacco or nicotine products, would rebel at the latter proposition.
