“Recreational cannabis will be legalized in 2023”, It’s not simply because the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) is enjoying the “trifecta” — control of the governor’s office and both houses of the Legislature — for the first time in ten years that the Minnesota state Capitol feels different lately. Additionally, there is a strong smell of cannabis coming from the direction of state Representative Jessica Hanson.
Hanson, a second-term politician whose first political experience was working as the executive director of a pro-legalization group, co-sponsored adult-use legalization legislation that was reintroduced last week. The state Senate, which now has a DFL majority, is anticipated to react to the bill more kindly this year after it passed the state House last year. The first acknowledged cannabis user to be elected to a legislative office in Minnesota, Hanson said, “We elected folks at a grassroots level to the Legislature in our state that care about this subject.”
In 2023, the nation will likely witness the optimistic outlook and renewed momentum for legalization in Minnesota, where the Democratic governor has pledged to sign a legalization measure into law.
According to experts and interested parties, there are at least four states with a good probability of legalizing marijuana for adult use this year: Minnesota, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania. Only cannabis will be on the ballot for Oklahoma voters to decide whether or not to legalize it in a special election on March 7.
Cannabis is reportedly on the ballot by itself, without any candidates or other voter initiatives, for the first time ever in the history of the United States.
A well-funded and well-organized campaign to qualify legalization for the November ballot in that state is already underway, and unless the Ohio General Assembly gets over its recent reluctance and passes a voter-initiated measure by May 3, it will be operational. Even Recreational cannabis legalized that possible disagreement is hopeful for Hanson, despite the fact that there are still many details to be worked out in state legislatures, such as those involving local governance, social equality, and other matters. She said, “We’re fighting at the Capitol over how to legalize, not about whether or not to legalize.”
Advocates in other places claim that the time is right to set the stage for more ambitious victories, and some are planning more improbable campaigns in the Carolinas, Indiana, and New Hampshire. The state’s action this year comes after proponents of legalization had mixed results in the November 2022 midterm elections, with two wins and three losses.
More potential
State legislators in Pennsylvania are resuming a serious campaign to legalize adult-use recreational cannabis legalized, joining Minnesota in doing so. This time, the political environment is more favourable, which is encouraging for legalization.
Although the chances are a little longer in Pennsylvania because Republicans and Democrats presently share control of the legislature, there is still strong bipartisan support for legalization, as well as the governor’s endorsement. Republican state senators from Pennsylvania attempted but failed to persuade former U.S. senator Pat Toomey to back the SAFE Banking Act in Congress.
They will be urged once more to support state senators Dan Laughlin, a Republican, and Sharif Street, a Democrat, who introduced a legalization legislation in October 2021 that has so far stalled in Harrisburg.
Looking to the future
While voter initiatives have been the primary method of legalization in the majority of the 29 states that have done so, this approach has both political and practical drawbacks. Observers Recreational cannabis legalized claim that if state legislatures take steps in lieu of turning the issue over to voters, Congress will be under more pressure to act on marijuana policy reform.
However, the legislative is the only recourse in a large number of jurisdictions where adult-use sales are still illegal. The majority of those states have either completely eliminated or severely restricted the influence of voter initiatives.
Additionally, according to Jonathan Caulkins, a professor of drug policy at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University, “voter initiatives typically result in terrible laws, particularly in intricate fields like cannabis legalization.” He noted that these laws frequently are cumbersome and challenging to change. They might also face legal difficulties. After a lawsuit supported by Republican Governor Kristi Noem, the state Supreme Court of South Dakota struck down a 2020 measure that allowed adult use in the state.
In Mississippi, a voter-approved MMJ law was successfully overturned by a judicial challenge, but that controversy prompted lawmakers to pass a new bill allowing patients to consume cannabis. While MMJ legalization initiatives are being prepared in North Carolina and South Carolina, longer-shot laws to legalize recreational cannabis have been submitted in Indiana and New Hampshire.
In those states, lobbyists are “hyper focused” on persuading Republicans that legalization is a bipartisan issue that voters support rather than a partisan issue that gives Democrats the upper hand. One such lobbyist is Jeremiah Mosteller, senior policy analyst at Americans for Prosperity, a libertarian think tank with offices in Virginia and funded by billionaire Charles Koch.
The message is not that “we are pro-cannabis, but we are anti-prohibition,” he said, adding that “we are connecting them to veterans and to medical patients who have genuinely seen the benefits.”
