City councilors proposing an ordinance to limit cannabis licenses portray their objectives as protecting existing cannabis businesses — clearly a task for the marketplace, not government — and protecting “teenagers” from cannabis use. While underage cannabis use certainly isn’t harmless, minors face dramatically greater injury from alcohol and tobacco, substances with more than four times as many retailers locally than cannabis retailers.
Federally funded studies report that cannabis legalization does not promote underage use: see the research published by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (2021); the National Bureau of Economic Research (2021); the Journal of Adolescent Health (2020); Preventing Chronic Disease (2020), the Journal of the American Medical Association; Pediatrics (2019); and reports of the state Cannabis Control Commission, 2020 and 2019 (“The enactment of cannabis [reform: medical and adult-use] policies were not associated with greater odds of youth reporting Lifetime and Past 30-day cannabis use behaviors”).
If the proposed ordinance ignores the data on legalization’s benign impact on underage users, why does limiting cannabis licenses appear popular? Stigma is defined as “a mark of disgrace associated with a particular circumstance or person,” an apt description of some people’s reaction to the proliferation of local licenses. Stigma ignores the reality that limiting cannabis retailers, who have a perfect record in keeping minors off their premises, is counter-productive to “protecting kids.” Fewer licenses simply empowers the illegal market’s availability to underage users. Stigma also disregards the fact that the marketplace already is reducing retailers without municipal intervention. The City Council must look beyond stigma, and consider the actual data on legalization and underage use. The council can overcome the archaic stigmatization of cannabis, and protect our youth, by rejecting the proposed ordinance on Jan. 19. If you disapprove of cannabis, don’t patronize its retailers and let the market limit licenses.
Michael Cutler
Florence