After President Joe Biden began formal decriminalization of marijuana at the federal level, Texas Gov. Greg Abbot announced that won’t happen in this state, and he would fight any effort to do so. This clashes with public opinion polls that show Texans increasingly support legalization.
Many factors support legalization, and are convincing more and more states to do so.
The morality of marijuana prohibition, and much of the drug war in general, has always been questionable. The most glaring issue is the arbitrary nature of drug laws that have few restrictions on proven hazardous drugs such as alcohol and tobacco while listing marijuana and other more benign drugs among the most dangerous.
One of the problems is that we’re still learning about marijuana. For years Congress, and state legislatures including our own, also banned research into the medicinal value of marijuana, as if they feared the truth might contradict the claims upon which many lawmakers based their political careers.
Abbott’s stance means that while people detained on federal marijuana charges can be released under Biden’s pardon, those held under state charges can’t.
Expanding the pardon, which includes expungement of criminal records, obviously would benefit those convicted, and our communities. Thousands of nonviolent Texas offenders, including many in the Rio Grande Valley, could be released. This would ease jail overcrowding in places such as Hidalgo County, where the need to lease extra cells at the Willacy County Regional Detention Facility is contributing to a $19 million budget shortfall for this fiscal year.
Released from our jails and prisons, these nonviolent inmates could reenter our work force, filling critical job vacancies and supporting families that currently might be utilizing food stamps and other state and federal benefits because their provider currently is behind bars.
Moreover, while we’re no fan of unnecessary taxation, we note that Arizona, which normally challenges Texas for the claim to being the country’s most intolerant state, has collected around $300 million since voters legalized marijuana in 2020. In our state, such revenue could provide needed services, fund vital infrastructure projects or help offset the cost of incessant frivolous lawsuits against the federal government, depending on whom is elected Nov. 8. That’s in addition to the regular economic boost of a new, growing industry.
That boost includes new jobs to run the marijuana market and investment opportunities as research into the drug’s actions, possible benefits and uses expands.
Texas is becoming one of the last holdouts with cannabis prohibition. As of this summer, 37 — nearly three-fourths — of U.S. states permit medicinal use of marijuana, and 18 — more than one-third — allow recreational use. They see the growing practical reasons for easing restrictions and penalties for a substance that a majority of Texans now consider relatively harmless.
Abbott and other state officials have long touted our state as a friendly place to do business. Their increasingly puritanical, controlling stances, however, threaten to undermine that feature by making Texas a hostile place to live.
