Hey New York, Wanna Know A Secret?

Though cannabis legalization has been a positive development overall, in many places, the black market still exists to one degree or another, albeit much less so than when cannabis was illegal.  Nowhere else is this more true than in New York, whose uniquely arcane, difficult, and disastrously sluggish rollout of cannabis licenses statewide has led to a massive proliferation of unlicensed weed shops, especially in NYC where such shops outnumber licensed ones by a whopping 250 to one.  So how does one solve such a bedeviling problem?

Enter Rear Admiral Luther E. Gregory.  In the 1930s, Prohibition was repealed, and Washington State along with other states were now faced with the task of shutting down the well-established bootleggers and speakeasies that persisted even after Repeal.   Admiral Gregory was asked to head the state's Liquor Control Board, and given carte blanche to come up with a solution, one which worked surprisingly well in fact:

1. End Prohibition, first of all.
2. Give amnesty and issue licenses to anyone willing to play by the state's rules, whether former bootleggers or otherwise.
3. Set the alcohol taxes as low as possible at first, the lowest in the country in fact.
4. Punish sellers who don't play by the rules, with an iron fist--i.e. blacklisting scofflaws from ever selling liquor in the state again.
5. After holding down alcohol taxes for three years, abruptly raise taxes to the point where they're now the highest in the nation.

Problem solved.  The legal market proved to be competitive with what was left of the black market, and drinkers overwhelmingly preferred the former over the latter, driving the latter out of business.  And the black market never came back even after raising taxes dramatically.  Looking back, it should have been so obvious indeed.

Substitute "cannabis" for "alcohol", and there is literally no reason whatsoever why this strategy would not work in this day and age.  And instead of holding down taxes for three years, merely one or two years should be sufficient to get the same results, even if the hike is automatically scheduled.  Doing so would minimize the greatest risk of the strategy, namely, that the fledgling legal cannabis industry would then become so powerful that they would resist and successfully quash any attempt to raise taxes in the future.  They would not become that powerful in just a year or two, and probably not for several years, but the black market could be easily quashed in that timeframe all the same.  But most importantly, cut the ridiculous red tape and, and make cannabis licenses easier and cheaper to get, particularly for the current gray market shops.

Now over to you, New York.  Remember, the cart does NOT go before the horse.

Latest Twin Study Pours Cold Water Over Cannabis Prohibitionists

A new study looked at pairs of twins where one twin lived in a recreational cannabis legalization state and the other lived in a state where it remained illegal and found the following:

• Somewhat greater self-reported levels of cannabis use among those living in legalization states, but they were no more likely to experience negative consequences as a result of their cannabis use.
• Both groups consumed alcohol at similar rates, but those living in legalization states reported fewer negative consequences from their alcohol use.
• No significant difference in tobacco or other controlled substance use between the two groups.

This dovetails nicely with a previous study that finds that alcohol use disorders are also less likely in co-twins who live in legalization states as well (and also no increase in psychosis either).

No increase in adverse consequences of cannabis use (check), decrease in adverse consequences of alcohol use (check), and no increase in tobacco or other drug use (check).  And no increase in psychosis either.  Both the gateway theory and Reefer Madness have thus been thoroughly debunked, at least insofar as they relate to legalization.  Ditto for any alleged associations with (non-victimless) crime as well, especially violence.  Such robust research findings slaughter so many of the sacred cows of the prohibitionists, that it's time to have a barbecue.

Zero Evidence For Zero Tolerance Pe Se Laws

At least for cannabis, that is.  Yet another study found a stunning lack of correlation between the detection of either THC or its metabolites in blood, breath, or oral fluid (saliva) and psychomotor performance, both on a driving simulator as well as on a standard field sobriety test (SFST).  While this does not mean that cannabis cannot cause impairment (it can) or that driving while high is a good idea (it's not), it does mean that the truth about cannabis and driving is far more nuanced than the prohibitionists and MADD-type zealots like to claim, and that any strict per se thresholds (let alone zero tolerance) for THC for DUI cannabis are not supported by the science.

The reason for this lack of correlation is due to the complex pharmacokinetics of cannabis, and how trace amounts of fat-soluble THC itself and especially its metabolites can linger in the body and be detected LONG after any impairment is gone.  And there is no hard and fast blood THC level threshold that can clearly (by itself) separate the actually impaired from the non-impaired, only very roughly determining how recent the last use was.  Thus unlike how it is for alcohol, chemical testing alone cannot accurately predict actual impairment for cannabis. 

That is all true whether a threshold is zero tolerance (LOD or LOQ) OR supposedly "science-based", even if the latter is slightly less ridiculous than the former.

(Even worse still are the places where driving with non-psychoactive metabolites is treated the same as THC well.  Pennsylvania, I'm looking at YOU!)

And there is still no evidence that states with strict per se laws have seen any sort of lifesaving benefits at all compared to the many states without them.

Thus, while per se laws (of any sort) make sense for alcohol, and possibly some other drugs, they make absolutely zero sense for cannabis whatsoever.  Either have an actual impairment standard alone, like many states currently do, or have that in addition to a prima facie threshold for THC (say, 5 ng/ml in blood) like Colorado currently has.  In fact, the aforementioned study found that a 2 ng/ml THC level in oral fluid did help further distinguish impairment among those who failed an SFST.  But cut out this ridiculous per se nonsense, that accomplishes literally nothing more that catching innocent sober drivers in the same dragnet along with the actually impaired.

By the way, there is actually a smartphone app called DRUID (Driving Under The Influence Of Drugs) that CAN accurately tell whether some is too messed up to drive, whether by cannabis or otherwise.  All without any sort of chemical testing whatsoever. 

It's what the late Peter McWilliams would have most likely wanted.  So what are we waiting for?

The Stupid Literally Burns Like Cigarettes

In Australia, there is quite a furor right now among the chattering classes in regards to a sharp increase in teen tobacco smoking from 2018 to 2023 after over two straight decades of decline.  And one of the things people are blaming is.....wait for it....vaping.  Because reasons.  Or something.  But there is one very glaring problem with this theory.  In Australia, vape products are technically legal, but ONLY if they do NOT contain any nicotine at all, thus kind of defeating the purpose.  That's right, nicotine vape products have never been approved for legal sales in Australia (and probably never will be any time soon), meaning anyone who wants to use them must either smuggle them in from abroad or buy them on the black market.  And interestingly enough, vaping itself also appears to be on the rise as well down under.  Thus, it truly takes a special kind of stupid to not only perversely create a situation where vaping and smoking both increase at the same time, but to then blame the increase in smoking on vaping.

Even more notable is the fact that in Australia, cigarettes have some of the highest taxes (and thus prices) in the world, plus so many other world-leading "best practices" tobacco control polices as well.  This additionally shows that while vice taxes and some other policies may work well to a point, all of these policies inherently have their limits in practice. 

Our working theory:  it is actually the banning of nicotine vaping, combined with the harmful effects of one of the strictest lockdown and Zero Covid regimes in the world, that ultimately snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in the long fight against tobacco smoking, particularly for youth.  And we must stress that while nicotine in any form is far from benign and definitely NOT for kids, banning or unduly restricting vaping (which is still significantly safer than the known deadly habit of smoking that it often displaces) is therefore a net public health loser of a policy.  And a policy like Australia's that perversely increases "dual use" of both is even that much worse still.

One could even argue that their truly massive cigarette black market created by their insanely high taxes, especially combined with their vaping black market from their nicotine ban, actually increased underage (under 18) use of both products since black market sellers typically don't ask buyers for ID.

Note also how the increase did not begin until 2020 (implicating the lockdowns as a contributing cause), and occurred for 14-17 year olds but interestingly NOT 18-24 year olds (putting the lie to the idea that their age limit of 18, as opposed to 21, was in any way related).  Also note that in England, where the age limit is still 18 and vaping is literally promoted by public health authorities, teen smoking continued its long decline through at least 2021.  New Zealand, where the age limit was still 18 (until very, very recently), smoking rates among 15-24 year olds nosedived as soon as nicotine vaping was officially legalized in 2020, despite an even stricter lockdown there.  Thus it seems to be the combination of 1) black markets, 2) vaping bans, and 3) lockdowns that is the cause of the jump in teen smoking in Australia.

But good luck trying to convince the nanny-state zealots to use even a little bit of common sense!

QED