It may be days before we know who won yesterday's presidential election, but by the end of the evening, it was clear that drug warriors had suffered a resounding loss. Across the country, in red and blue states, on both coasts and in between, in the Midwest and the Deep South, voters passed ballot initiatives that not only continued to reverse marijuana prohibition but also broke new ground in making drug laws less punitive and more tolerant, reported Reason.
New Jersey's approval of
marijuana legalization was expected. Preelection
surveys consistently put public support above 60 percent, although the
actual margin
of victory was a few points bigger than the polls suggested.
Arizona, where voters rejected legalization
in 2016, was iffier. Public support averaged 56 percent in five
polls conducted from mid-May to mid-October, and voters have been
known to have second thoughts about legalization as Election Day approaches. In
the end, legalization won by
nearly 20 points. Survey averages likewise underestimated public support
in Montana,
where voters approved legalization
by a 13-point margin, and Mississippi,
where voters favored a
relatively liberal medical marijuana initiative by a margin of nearly 3 to 1.
And who would have predicted that South Dakotans,
who are overwhelmingly Republican
and conservative, would make their state the first jurisdiction in the
country to simultaneously
legalize medical and recreational marijuana? Not me.
Voters favored the
former measure by more than 2 to 1, while the latter won by seven points.
"These results once again illustrate that
support for legalization extends across geographic and demographic
lines," says Eric
Altieri, director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana
Laws. "The success of these initiatives proves definitively that marijuana
legalization is not exclusively a 'blue' state issue, but an issue that is
supported by a majority of all Americans—regardless of party politics."
The South Dakota results were not the only first
yesterday. By a margin of
more than 3 to 1, voters in Washington, D.C., approved quasi-decriminalization
of "entheogenic plants and fungi." That initiative,
which says suppressing the use of such substances should be "among the
lowest law enforcement priorities for the District of Columbia," goes
further than similar measures enacted recently in Denver, Ann
Arbor, Oakland,
and Santa
Cruz, since it applies to noncommercial production and distribution as well
as possession and covers ibogaine, dimethyltryptamine, and mescaline in
addition to psilocybin and psilocin (although it does not include a prohibition
on the use of public funds to pursue such cases).
Oregon, meanwhile, became the first jurisdiction in
the United States to legalize
psilocybin and the first to decriminalize
possession of all drugs. The first
initiative, which won by
a margin of more than 11 points, allows adults 21 or older, regardless of
whether they have a medical or psychiatric diagnosis, to consume psilocybin at
state-licensed centers. The second
measure, which was supported by
nearly three-fifths of voters, makes low-level, noncommercial possession of
controlled substances, which was previously a misdemeanor punishable by up to a
year in jail, a citable offense punishable by a $100 fine.
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