5 Reasons Why South Carolina Should Legalize Marijuana
According to the ACLU chapter in South Carolina, since 2015, there have been more arrests for marijuana possession than all violent crime arrests in Charleston, SC. Like South Carolina, more and more states are considering the possibilities and benefits of reforming their marijuana laws. According to a recent Gallup poll, 64% of Americans support legalizing marijuana for nonmedical use. Now is the time to rethink the role South Carolina could play in the legal marijuana market.
As a native South Carolinian and a person working in drug policy, it is clear that our state has nothing to lose and everything to gain from legalizing marijuana. Here are my top 5 reasons for why South Carolina should legalize marijuana:
1. Arresting people for marijuana-related conduct is a waste of taxpayer dollars and police resources. In South Carolina, police arrested almost 20,000 people for a marijuana-related offense each year. Given the costs of arrests and courts, South Carolina is wasting millions of dollars locking people up. At the same time, the state is foregoing the opportunity to collect the marijuana tax revenues enjoyed by legal marijuana states. This money should instead be invested in our communities, particularly those most harmed by marijuana criminalization.
2. White and black people use marijuana at similar rates, yet black people are arrested much more often. In South Carolina, black people are three times more likely than white South Carolinians to be arrested for using marijuana. Marijuana prohibition is rooted in racism so it comes as no surprise that in South Carolina, a state with one of the highest concentrations of black people, has a problem with racist marijuana arrests. With a marijuana arrest comes a host of collateral consequences, such as losing your job, your housing, money for education, etc. As a result, our state is not only wasting taxpayer dollars, it is ruining thousands of lives. Once South Carolina legalizes marijuana and establishes a regulatory market, we can begin repairing the harms of marijuana criminalization.
3. Legal marijuana would be good for the economy in South Carolina. While our state largely depends on revenue from tourism and manufacturing, South Carolina is still one of the poorest states in the Union. The land and climate of South Carolina is prime for growing marijuana. We have warm weather 10 months out of the year, meaning we could grow marijuana efficiently. The state government could use the money from the marijuana industry to improve South Carolina schools, social services, and infrastructure.
4. Legalizing marijuana would help folks with a variety of medical needs such as epilepsy, PTSD, glaucoma, AIDS, cancer, and other debilitating medical conditions. Thousands of people in South Carolina depend on prescription medicines for their health needs, yet our Senator Lindsey Graham stands against universal healthcare and champions his Graham-Cassidy proposal that would strip essential health care assistance. South Carolina Republicans like, Senator Graham, are putting our health care in a tenuous position. Now more than ever, the people of South Carolina need to take it upon themselves to push for marijuana legalization. Legal access to marijuana can help lessen health disparities by providing relief to ill patients. For example, in South Carolina black people are twice as likely to have diabetes as white people and 1.5 times more likely to die from diabetes than a white person. Marijuana helps lessen the symptoms of diabetes along with a vast array of other health ailments. With our state representatives trying to screw up health care, the least we could do is advocate for legal access to marijuana.
5. Prohibition endangers people’s lives. People have always used psychoactive substances. Over four decades of the war on drugs has proven that criminalizing drugs does not make people less likely to use them. Instead, people in states with legal marijuana tend to have lower overdose deaths. Through strict regulation there would be safer places to for consumers to purchase marijuana, consumers would know exactly what they were getting, and youth would be denied access. Under prohibition, marijuana not tested or labeled, and no one is checking IDs to make sure consumers are 21 years of age and older.
Let’s demand marijuana legalization in South Carolina.
originally posted on medium.com on Sept. 25th, 2020.