Before she became
vice president of the United States, Kamala Harris (the senator) was one of the
main voices calling for the nationwide legalization of marijuana, under the
pretext of “social justice”.
اضافة اعلان
In several interviews
in 2019, she pushed for the idea of new federal laws
and policies to rectify racial disparities in the US criminal justice system, in a country suffering from steep and
systematic racism against African Americans in particular.
In her pro-cannabis
campaign, Harris and other lawmakers in the progressive camp, substantiated their
legalization argument with a 2013 study by the American Civil Liberties Union
(ACLU) that noted that African Americans were nearly four times more likely
than White Americans to be arrested on charges of marijuana possession in 2010.
Those are very
specific American problems in a country built on the backs of slaves. Slaves who
toiled in plantations belonging to white settlers, and whose descendants went
through the grueling humiliation of dehumanization and segregation, up until
the civil rights movement helped lift some of those injustices.
Although many
Jordanians have great compassion for the cause of the African American
community in light of police brutality and other forms of systematic oppression,
the fact remains those are not Jordanian problems, nor are they Jordanian narratives
that are part of our history or our local context.
Yet, the policy lines
of the current US Administration have somehow reached us, as if we have the
same racial injustice issues or the same social structures, which we certainly
do not. I am referring to the recent controversial amendments to the
Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Law of 2021, which now
includes the much-debated measure of not charging first-time offenders with
criminal intent.
Those recent changes are completely aligned
with the broad policy lines of the US Democratic Party and the current administration,
in relation to legalizing marijuana
at the federal level (a step yet to be taken). In fact,
the new Jordanian law is even more lax than the marijuana law in Washington, DC,
where first-time offenders caught with less than one third of a kilogram of
cannabis, can face up to $1,000 in fines and 6 months in prison.
For background, the recreational
use of cannabis is currently legalized in 18 out of 50 states, while 35 states
have implemented medical marijuana programs for patients. The remaining states adhere
to the federal law, under which marijuana is classified as a Schedule 1 drug,
meaning it has a "high potential for abuse"
and "no currently accepted medical use."
This is the federal law that has been in
the crosshairs of then-senator Kamala Harris.
I personally think that looking at
marijuana from a narrow social justice lens is somewhat short-sighted and
lacking a multi-disciplinary broad view. American lawmakers need to factor in
so many other angles to prevent normalizing marijuana use in ways that are hard
to reverse, in order to protect society from forming a dependency on a harmful
substance that affects mental health.
What Harris hasn’t
accounted for in her campaign is the multi-billion-dollar cannabis industry that
has already taken shape, almost overnight, to market everything from marijuana-laced
chewing gum to CBD drinks and massage oils.
This not only
commercializes cannabis beyond the “social justice” argument, but also makes marijuana
an over-the-counter drug that is easily accessible by tweens and teens in states
were cannabis has been
legalized.
Legalizing cannabis on
the federal level all across America, would mean making marijuana products
readily available for consumption by children and minors, because anyone can grab
a packet of CBD chewing gum and give it to a child. There are no laws designed
to prevent this from happening.
There are actually no
laws at the present time to regulate the booming medical and recreational
cannabis market, in the commercial sense. No bills tabled in the legislature to
say where cannabis can be sold, or what food and drink products can have
cannabis in them. At the moment, the marijuana industry has free rein to shape
its own rules and to impose what it comes up with on Americans, with little
scrutiny and oversight.
This is why I believe
that when Harris pushed for her “social justice” agenda, she totally failed to
see the commercial side of the issue, or the new social and mental health problems
that were starting to take shape.
Interestingly enough,
just a day ago, Bloomberg reported on a newly released study that said nearly
half of America’s college-age students used marijuana last year. To be more
specific, “44 percent of college students reported using marijuana in 2020, an
increase from 38 percent in 2015.”
I wonder how many more
months, or years would we have to wait to read a headline that says, “half the
number of school students have started using cannabis products,” just because
they have easy access to it in the form of canned drinks and gummy bears!
This failure to see
the full picture is not new to the US Congress. It took almost 20 years for US
lawmakers to realize Big Tech companies, like Facebook and Google, were
destroying democracy and society with their tech surveillance practices and
privacy-violating terms of service. US lawmakers started introducing privacy
and antitrust bills right after the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018, but
before that no one cared to regulate tech companies.
Only yesterday did
President Biden tweet about taxing the wealthy, including tech companies who
have benefited from tax exemptions for two decades, thanks to the relentless
efforts of their lobbyists who managed to keep tax laws at bay.
The cannabis industry
has lobbyists, too. With this in mind, it is not too far-fetched to imagine a
scenario where US lawmakers would take 10-15 years before “seeing” the real
problems of marijuana legalization. Maybe then, they would start putting in
place robust safeguards to protect American kids (and therefore our kids) from
the over commercialization of cannabis, and the over normalization of a
substance that turns people into slackers, and pollutes their worlds with all
types of moral and mental health problems.
On July 26, and
contrary to every lobbying effort to make marijuana seem harmless and tame, CNN
ran a story titled, “Schizophrenia Linked to Marijuana Use Disorder is on the
Rise, Study Finds.” The network said according to a new study from Denmark, the
percentage of schizophrenia cases stemming from the problematic use of
marijuana has increased over the past 25 years, rising from two percent in 1995 and 8 percent since 2010.
Those risks are not
even mentioned in the ongoing drive by US lawmakers campaigning for the
legalization of marijuana. The risks to children and teenagers are not even
discussed in a public platform in America, because everyone’s sole focus is on “social
justice,” the hottest topic of the hour!
Seeing how flawed the US
approach is to cannabis legalization, why should Jordan, or any country for
that matter, follow in the footsteps of such a poorly though-out policy?
American and Jordanian children and teenagers deserve better! Our societies
deserve better! We owe it to ourselves to take a step back and reexamine marijuana
legalization in a way that allows us to measure every possible repercussion and
every possible scenario, before it is too late!
Read more Opinion and Analysis
.jpg)
.jpg)
