Excerpt from the Washington Post
Has the U.S. reached the “tipping point” in marijuana legalization? That’s what one CNN commentator said happened last month when, on June 26, Oklahoma adopted medical marijuana through a ballot initiative — making it the 30th state to do so, as you can see in the figure below.
It’s true that a lot was unusual about the Oklahoma initiative. The state approved medical marijuana with roughly 57 percent of the vote — despite the fact that the ballot measure was held in a conservative state, during a primary — when only the most committed party members tend to vote — rather than during a general election, is more permissive than many comparable laws, and was opposed by statewide Republican leaders.
So was Oklahoma’s new law indeed a tipping point? Research on policy diffusion suggests that as neighboring states, provinces, or countries adopt a policy, the pressure for adoption increases among lagging jurisdictions. And in addition to the many states, the nation’s northern neighbor Canada legalized recreational use nationwide on June 19.
The answer may lie in the pathway ahead for further expansion of marijuana liberalization. Let’s examine how that might go.
States without a ballot initiative option might not decriminalize as easily
Notably, Oklahoma’s voters approved medical marijuana directly, rather than through the legislature. In our previous research, we found that five states legalizing medical marijuana via ballot initiatives between 1996 and 1999 helped legitimize the effort — and, beginning in 2000, a handful of legislatures followed suit.
Direct democracy is one important way that advocates successfully force the issue in some states — either through successful initiatives, as in Oklahoma, or through the threat of an initiative campaign, as in Ohio, where the legislature quickly passed a medical marijuana law to head off a 2016 initiative sponsored by Marijuana Policy Project.
As a result, as fewer and fewer of the remaining 20 states without any legal marijuana use have mechanisms for such direct referendums, it becomes less and less likely that those states will liberalize cannabis policy. In that sense, perhaps Oklahoma is not a tipping point.
The federal government’s position may shift as public opinion shifts
Somewhat like the rapid shift in public opinion toward same-sex marriage, opinions about marijuana have been changing rapidly. Overall support has swung from 25 percent in 1996 to 64 percent in 2018. Also, 2018 marked the first time that Gallup found a slim majority of Republicans (51 percent) supporting marijuana legalization. As a result, members of Congress have introduced several proposals to liberalize marijuana policy and passed a limit on the Department of Justice’s discretion in enforcing federal marijuana laws.
The limitation was prompted when, in January 2018, Attorney General Jeff Sessions instructed all U.S. attorneys to enforce the federal prohibition on marijuana possession and use. His memo may have backfired. As a result, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) introduced a bill — which President Trump has said he’s likely to support — that would give state marijuana laws priority over federal marijuana prohibitions. And since Warren and Gardner have titled the bill “Strengthening the Tenth Amendment Through Entrusting States” or the STATES Act, congressional Republicans may find that they can use states’ rights arguments to maintain their conservative credentials while supporting marijuana liberalization.
So far, medical and recreational marijuana have progressed through state popular initiatives and legislation. But Congress could sponsor incremental changes or even take marijuana off the schedule of nationally controlled substances — encouraging the lagging states to follow along.
