Yes on Issue 2, legalizing recreational marijuana: endorsement editorial – Medical Marijuana Program Connection

There’s no question that State Issue 2, which seeks to legalize the adult use, purchase and growing of recreational marijuana in Ohio, has fed anxiety among many about its potential impacts on the workforce, driving safety and people’s health. Will the wide, legal availability of weed and of THC- and CBD-laced edibles push more young people to take harder drugs and imperil children who get their hands unwittingly on THC gummies?

Will police face quandaries when they stop motorists for suspected impaired driving, given that THC, the psychoactive component of marijuana, may be detected in the hair for months and in urine for days, well after its presumed psychoactive effects have waned? Will employers have to adjust drug-testing protocols and be more alert to possible tokers on the job?

These are all good questions that, parenthetically, underscore the need for the federal government to end marijuana criminalization so large health and policy studies can proceed. But they also rightly concern many in Ohio, including on our editorial board. As just one example, in other states that have legalized recreational marijuana, more kids have wound up in the emergency room after ingesting THC gummies.

But that’s also the point.

This is not terra incognita. Twenty-three other states, plus Washington, D.C., and Guam, have already legalized recreational marijuana without material overall impacts on their businesses and justice systems.

One possible reason: Legalization brings weed use…