Should Michigan make it legal to smoke, sniff or eat marijuana just for the sheer fun of getting high?
You’ll be asked that – not in those words –if you vote in November. We wouldn’t be the first or the second state to do so, either – nine others already have, ranging from deep red Alaska to deepest blue Massachusetts and Vermont.
Most polls show a solid, but not overwhelming majority of Michigan residents are in favor of legalizing pot for fun.
But should they?
Randy Richardville, a Monroe Republican and former state senate majority leader, is spokesman for Healthy and Productive Michigan, the main coalition opposing it.
“I’m more of a libertarian than some other Republicans,” he told me. “I don’t care if adults want to smoke marijuana in their homes. We have more things to worry about.”
But he’s against legalizing it – or at least this proposal – because he thinks it will make it easier for small children to get it. “We’ll have second- graders bringing marijuana-laced gummy bears to school,” he told me when I interviewed him.
He worries that the parents will be smoking and getting high around their children, perhaps making them high and affecting their young brains. Though the ballot proposal makes it illegal for anyone under 21 to use pot, Richardville still fears legalizing it will make it easier for kids to get it.
Plus, he fears it will create another group of impaired drivers on our roads — something I’ve worried about too, if only for reasons of self-preservation.
Supporters of legalizing marijuana think that’s nonsense. They’ve organized under the sensible-sounding name “The Coalition to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol.”
Josh Hovey, the spokesman for that campaign, noted that the ballot proposal has many safeguards and serves merely to regulate and tax something already in widespread use.
Indications are that the ballot proposal will likely pass; most polls show “Yes” leading “No” by double digits. Perhaps tellingly, those supporting legalization have out raised those opposing it by a margin of about six to one.
So, how ought possibly confused citizens to vote on legalizing marijuana on Nov. 6? This is my column, not a news story, so I will admit my prejudices:
I don’t smoke marijuana, and don’t intend to start, even if the voters were to legalize it and pay me to use it.
I tried marijuana a couple times in the 1970s, and did not like it. Somebody gave me half a marijuana brownie last year and it made me sick. I do not like being high or losing control, and if I need relaxing, nothing beats a good class of Pinot Noir.
I share Randy Richardville’s worry about drivers, and think he is probably right about kids. I am not worried about lurid visions of grade schoolers with drugged-up gummy bears.
But I do think this probably would make it easier for teenagers to get their hands on grass – not that they currently have much of a hard time doing that.
However, there are a number of reasons legalizing marijuana makes sense. Ten years ago, when Michigan voters legalized it for medical uses, the ballot proposal failed to specify an adequate quality control, supply and distribution system, and administrative chaos resulted.
There were also no real standards set or enforced for who qualified to use it, and it became quite clear that a lot of the medical marijuana being consumed wasn’t really for medical reasons, don’t you know. This initiative would establish such standards, and also enforce quality control for the weed itself.
Too often now, those using marijuana have no idea where it comes from, how potent it is … or if it has been mixed with stuff or recently sprayed by the highway department.
This bill would also slap a 10 percent excise tax on pot, which economists say may mean a $150 million annual windfall for the state. The proposal specifies, by the way, that 35 percent of that goes to schools; 35 percent roads.
The rest would go to local government. By the way, any political entity – city, county, or township – could totally ban pot sales in their jurisdiction, if they so choose.
Frankly, I am somewhat queasy about partly funding education, the roads, and any function of government with pot sale money. For one thing, the law may say education and the roads are entitled to their cut of this money.
But that doesn’t mean the legislature won’t reduce the amount education gets by the amount marijuana sales bring it. Our wonderful lawmakers have pulled this before.
Plus, I think it is just plain unhealthy to have state government even partly dependent on a cut of drug money.
However, the drugs are being consumed, and money spent, and it you can argue that this is happening and going to continue happening anyway – so why shouldn’t the state enforce some standards and get some badly needed revenue?
Hmm,
***
Here’s a single issue worth deciding an election: Two things first came into the world in Michigan in the fall of 1953. One was Bill Schuette, now the GOP candidate for governor. The other was Enbridge Energy’s Line 5, twin pipelines on the bottom of the straits of Mackinac, which every day can carry more than 22 million gallons of oil, propane and natural gas.
Should they rupture, both Lakes Huron and Michigan would, almost certainly, be damaged beyond repair. These pipes were built, by the way, to last 50 years. They reached that milestone back in 2003. Can we say… metal fatigue?
By the way, some of the protective coating on the pipes has worn away (Enbridge at first tried to deny this) and they were slightly damaged by an anchor striking them on April Fools’ Day this year, which seems appropriate.
For years, I assumed the pipeline carried Canadian oil that was essential for American consumers. But I got a rude awakening when I discovered that most of what it carries is just Canadian fuel bound for another part of Canada.
True, the Upper Peninsula does get some of its propane via Line 5, but Mike Shriberg of the National Wildlife Foundation told me this could easily be supplied by railroad or truck, for no more than an added nickel a gallon, maybe less.
That beats risking destroying two of the Great Lakes. Gretchen Whitmer says if she is elected governor, she will take immediate steps to shut Line 5 down.
Bill Schuette won’t. Instead, he talks about maybe encasing it in a concrete tunnel. Liz Kirkwood, an accomplished attorney who is executive director of the environmental group FLOW in Traverse City thinks that makes no sense. “What if it breaks inside the tunnel?” she asked.
The tunnel, she added, would take billions and years to build. Besides, this is Enbridge. Remember what happened when another Enbridge pipe broke near the Kalamazoo River?
When the alarms went off one day in July 2010, workers thought it was only clogged, and tried to force more oil through it, making things much worse.
The cleanup still isn’t complete, and cost more than a billion dollars. Good folks to trust to manage a catastrophe.
Whitmer would end this environmental disaster waiting to happen. Schuette would not. You get to vote for governor.
Any questions?
