Sleepless in Midland

Under the radar -- Medical marijuana bill signed by Texas governor

Yep. Texas governor signs bill expanding access to medical marijuana.

Who can get it? See this description from a couple of months ago: Bill to expand medical marijuana in Texas heads to governor's desk:

It would allow specialty doctors to prescribe medical marijuana for ailments including multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, ALS, terminal cancer, autism and spasticity. ...

The law does not allow medical marijuana to be smoked. But it can be consumed or used in the form of edibles, inhalers, oils, topical treatments or gel caps.

There will be a 0.5% cap on the amount of THC in those products. But isn't getting high a big part of the medicinal benefit?

In any event, the bill has been signed into law. Governor Abbott didn't boast about this one like he's done with some of the other bills he signed, and it slid in under the radar.

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11:41 AM 6/16/2019

Early predictions about marijuana use and impaired driving turned out to be true

In July of 2014 Angela Hawken appeared on C-SPAN, and I wrote about it on these pages. See Angela Hawken on C-Span re marijuana legalization.

She talked about the results of her research, and one noteworthy observation was of the complicated relationship between alcohol and marijuana. She said driving while stoned on marijuana is probably not as bad as driving drunk. However, driving after using alcohol and marijuana is worse than driving under the influence of either one alone.

Two and a half years later we see some real world results of the state experiments with marijuana legalization. See States that enact medical marijuana laws see dips in fatal car crashes. Excerpt.

When examining 19 states that had medical marijuana laws on the books by 2014, researchers found that their average rate of traffic deaths fell 11 percent after the laws were enacted. The happy side-effect wasn’t uniform, however; only seven states saw significant reductions, while two states saw increases. Nevertheless, the authors of the new report in the American Journal of Public Health argue that the data bucks the common criticism that more pot access should increase car crashes and injuries.

Drops in traffic deaths may, in part, be explained by people swapping alcohol for pot, leading to reduced drunk driving, the study’s authors speculated. To back that up, the authors note that the lives spared tended to belong to younger people, particularly 25- to 44-year-olds—an age group frequently involved in alcohol-related traffic deaths.

More research is needed. But this study seems to support Ms. Hawken's predictions.

In any event, this is a big win for the federalist theory of allowing states to make their own laws so that those that work can be copied by the other states.

Price of marijuana goes down after legalization -- is anyone surprised?

"Unexpectedly," is the word popularized on blogs to categorize an item that surprises no one but the msm. Perhaps it applies here.

The article is in the WaPo titled So, something interesting happens to weed after it’s legal.

I hate to give away the ending, but the "interesting" thing is that the price goes down. But to be fair, the author makes it sound as though he is not the one who is surprised, leading one to believe it was the headline writer with the mouth agape and wide open eyes.

Excerpt:

After a transitory rise in the first few months, which Davenport attributes to supply shortages as the system came on line, both retail prices and wholesale prices have plummeted. Davenport said that prices “are now steadily falling at about 2 percent per month. If that trend holds, prices may fall 25 percent each year going forward.”

Extrapolations like that are seldom precise prediction tools, but the point remains: Remove prohibition and the price goes down.

Oops -- marijuana legalization led to more homelessness

Yesterday we talked about Angela Hawken's C-Span interview about legalization of marijuana. In the interview she was fairly even handed about the issue, although she is in favor of legalization. And as a social scientist she's highly curious about what will happen in Colorado and Washington now that marijuana is legal. Aren't we all? We're fortunate to live in a country with 50 social laboratories.

Anyway, for all the positive that can be said about it, here's a downside to being one of the first states to do it. The homeless population has increased in some Colorado cities.

The theory is that legal marijuana has drawn some new people, particularly younger people, into the state. Maybe they're looking for jobs in the industry. My guess is that they're the 7% of regular marijuana users who are clinically dependent, meaning they're unproductive, can't get things done, and can't quit. They were motivated enough to go where they could smoke legally, but that was it.  They don't have the resources to get a place to call home.

Perhaps that's the downside of being one of the first states to do it. When other states legalize marijuana one might expect a reduced rate of migration and the resulting homelessness.

Obama buzzed on marijuana

What a difference a decade makes. I was just thinking about this the other day. When George W. Bush was running for president way back in the beginning of the century, the msm were all over the possibility that GWB had partaken of some illegal substance -- marijuana, cocaine or some such.

Al Franken even tried to trick him into admitting it by asking if it was true that he was once a coke dealer. Franken expected him to say "no," at which point he would follow up with, "If you'll answer that one, why won't you tell us whether you actually used drugs?" GWB was a step ahead of him and declined to answer the first one.

So now we learn that Obama was a stoner. Click A User's Guide To Smoking Pot With Barack Obama for details plus a guide to his smoking crew's vernacular. Cheech and Chong would beam with pride.

Actually, it wasn't really the decade that made a difference, it was the political party. There are two standards, you know. As Jim Treacher observed:

It’s just funny that the same people who are scrambling to defend him were, shall we say, somewhat less accepting of Bush’s youthful indiscretions.

Yo 'bama, don't bogart that joint my friend.

Take marijuana out of the cartels' cash flow

An opinion piece in the yesterday's WSJ by Mary Anastasia O'Grady reported some insightful remarks from former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso. Link:  A Path to Victory in the Drug War behind the pay wall. Since Cordoso been out of office he has become a proponent of marijuana decriminalization, and he had some sound reasons.

Simply put, the war on marijuana has failed. The efforts to eradicate marijuana have been unsuccessful, the cartels are getting stronger, and democracy in some South American countries is being threatened.

The main argument against marijuana legalization is that marijuana leads to harder drugs.  He blows a big hole in that contention. If marijuana does in fact lead a user to experimentation and eventual addiction to hard drugs, it is because that is the business plan of the illegal drug sellers. Users have to make contact with an illegal seller in order to acquire marijuana. But the big profit margin is in the hard drug line. So the seller tries to get the buyer to upgrade his/her purchase. And when you think about it, why not give hard drugs to the buyer free with the marijuana purchase?

The solution to that particular problem is to take the marijuana business away from the cartels. If the buyer doesn't have any contact with the cartels then it is harder for the cartels to place that temptation in front of the typical marijuana user. And the cartels have less money to fight a war and corrupt government officials.

Makes sense. Some residents in the state of California tried to get a proposition passed that would legalize marijuana, but it failed for various reasons. That would have been a great experiment for the other 49 states to watch. But maybe such an experiment will take place in one of the South American countries. And there will be a lot to learn from it.