Youth use of pot and cannabis-abuse treatment admissions have not increased in Washington since marijuana was legalized, according to a new analysis by the state Legislature’s think tank. Under Initiative 502, the state’s legal-pot law, the Washington State Institute for Public Policy (WSIPP) is required to conduct periodic cost-benefit analyses of legalization on issues ranging from drugged-driving to prenatal use of marijuana. One of those reports was due after three years of legal sales. But the report was limited in scope to just a few impacts — including the degree of youth use and adult use, treatment admissions and criminal convictions.

Let’s give out heroin, for free, to anyone who wants it. This is not a provocation meant to make you gasp or to elicit angry clicks—rather, it’s a proven strategy for reducing the harm of opioids that’s already in use in several countries across the globe. We face two drug-related crises in the United States. The first we can all agree on: Drugs are killing people at unprecedented rates. Over 90,000 people die each year from overdoses in the US, an amount that has quintupled since 1999. The second crisis is disputed, but no less deadly: Our drug policy leaves people to fend for themselves, while we waste time and resources.

Canada was once the centre of a gold rush, but now a "green rush" for cannabis is setting stock markets alight. As the world's most progressive country on cannabis legislation, Canada has become the centre of a weed investment boom that has caught the eye of entrepreneurs across the globe. Canadian cannabis companies have the lowest cost of capital in the world, because they have a monopoly on the billions chasing the industry. Legalising cannabis has helped Canada gain "first mover" status in the burgeoning industry and now some are asking whether London should follow suit and steal a lead over European rivals such as Amsterdam, Luxembourg, Lisbon and Berlin.

As 2019 slouched toward its end, many predictions of what might happen with cannabis in 2020 had been tinged with optimism. Chronic Town was no different: in this space last week I sounded a hopeful note that, if pot isn't legalized at the federal level this year, at least the Senate might finally pass the SAFE Banking Act, shielding financial institutions from liability for serving the cannabis industry with a basic business function available to every other form of legal commerce. But hopes were dashed this past week. The law, especially federal law, is still the legal industry's biggest impediment by far. Cannabis won't become a fully legitimate, thriving industry until Congress unshackles it.

Skeptics of the movement to defund or abolish police departments often invoke the threat of a 911 call in the middle of the night that goes unanswered. But a lot of 911 calls could be answered by someone who’s not an officer in a uniform with a gun: Medical concerns about unhoused people, reports about individuals in the throes of a mental health crisis, and complaints about minor nuisances like loud music dominate the 911 wires. Nationwide, an estimated 80% of 911 calls are made for nonviolent, non-property offenses, says Frankie Wunschel, a research associate at the Vera Institute. The New York Times found that the share of time officers spend handling violent crime in New Orleans, Sacramento and Montgomery County, Maryland, this year was only 4%.

Since 2012, 11 states have legalized marijuana use for adults — which voters nationwide are considering on their ballots this year. Researchers are just beginning to understand the effects of those laws. Colorado and Washington were the first states to legalize the drug, and California, the most populous state in the nation, followed them. Among the most pointed concerns with legalization are whether it has caused more young people to use the drug and whether more people are dying in auto crashes caused by impaired drivers. Data show little change in either area. Surveys of young people in Colorado, for example, show a slight decline in the percentage of middle and high school students using the drug. In Washington, the rates have remained the same.

Marijuana possession led to nearly 6 percent of all arrests in the United States in 2017, FBI data shows, underscoring the level of policing dedicated to containing behavior that’s legal in 10 states and the nation’s capital. But the figure obscures the considerable variations in enforcement practices at the state and local levels. In many areas of the country in 2016, more than 20 percent of all arrests stemmed from pot possession, according to newly released county-level arrest figures from the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data. The figure exceeds 40 percent in a handful of counties, topping out at nearly 55 percent in one Georgia county.

Joe Biden has selected Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) as his vice presidential running mate. She has evolved significantly on marijuana policy over her career. Though she coauthored an official voter guide argument opposing a California cannabis legalization measure as a prosecutor in 2010, she went on to sponsor legislation to federally deschedule marijuana in 2019. Harris is the chief Senate sponsor of the Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act—a comprehensive piece of legalization legislation that includes various social equity and restorative justice provisions. Advocates will be watching to see if she continues to advocate for the reform move as she’s on-boarded to the Biden campaign. (See also: 67% of Americans are ready to end federal cannabis prohibition)

Local governments in New York State are debating whether or not to ban recreational cannabis sales. They can either “opt in” or “opt out,” but they have to choose. Fast approaching is a December 31 deadline set by the state—if municipalities don’t take action before then, sales will automatically be legal in their city limits. New York State legalized adult-use cannabis in April 2021. Under the law, municipal governments must choose whether or not to allow recreational cannabis sales, including through dispensaries and on-site consumption lounges. If they take no action by the end of the year, such sales will become legal by default. If a city bans cannabis sales, it can reverse course and opt in at a later date. But once it allows cannabis sales, it cannot ban them again.

With states legalizing marijuana by popular vote, some politicians, including Boston mayor Marty Walsh and New Jersey governor Chris Christie, are still calling marijuana a gateway drug. Most of the research linking marijuana to harder drug use comes from the correlation between the two. However, as any junior scientist can tell you, correlation does not mean causation. On the periphery of the marijuana-as-gateway-drug debates are studies showing marijuana as beneficial for the treatment of opiate addicts. These have been largely ignored.

A perfect storm of conditions over the last decade led to the current fentanyl epidemic in the US. It began with rising social deprivation and excessive opioid prescribing by doctors, leading to mounting addiction. Then came a crackdown on over-prescribing and a surge in demand for street heroin, which at the time happened to be poor quality and in short supply. In order to meet demand, heroin suppliers were boosted with the addition of fentanyl imported from China. Apart from its better management of prescription drugs, perhaps Europe's unsuspecting saviour from fentanyl is its historical nemesis, Afghanistan. Unlike in the US, regional heroin distributors in Europe have had a stable supply of high purity, low-cost heroin for nine years running.

As New York prepares to legalize adult-use cannabis, whether the illicit market will thrive or die seems like an important question. The best place to look to see how legalization affected the illicit market is the Emerald Triangle in Northern California, which is the epicenter of cannabis cultivation in America. When California legalized adult-use one of the main questions was around whether all the illegal production would go above board with recreational use. The answer was no. “I’m speculating, but the same dynamic could happen in New York,” Erick Eschker, an economics professor at Humboldt State University, says.

Residents in nine of the 11 states that have legalized the adult use of cannabis have no regrets about ending prohibition. In fact, according to a new survey, large majorities now deem the move a whopping success. YouGov, an international research data and analytics group based in London, surveyed more than 32,000 Americans in legal states. Participants were asked if they considered recreational marijuana legislation to be more of a success or failure. The survey was conducted April 17-20, 2020. In Colorado and Washington, the first states to legalize (in 2012), voters responded with two thumbs up.

Legalizing marijuana is associated with a decline in youth cannabis consumption, according to a new study in a journal published by the American Medical Association. The research, which analyzed federal data on marijuana use trends among 1.4 million high school students from 1993 to 2017, showed that self-reported past-month youth cannabis use declined by an average of eight percent in states that legalized recreational marijuana. There was also a nine percent drop in reports of using marijuana 10 or more times over the past 30 days in those states, the study found. However, there was no statistically significant change in consumption rates in states that legalized medical cannabis alone. (See also: US teens may be finding it harder to buy cannabis after legalisation)