To improve the justice system, Florida should legalize recreational marijuana. Here’s why.

The way Florida deals with small-scale marijuana possession is ineffective, destructive, racially biased, and out of touch with contemporary sentiment. It’s a good thing voters have a chance to fix all that in the Nov. 5 election. Legalization of recreational marijuana for adults can’t come soon enough. Our criminal justice system catches too many law-abiding people simply for possessing a substance that is in many ways less dangerous than alcohol. The pros of legalization outweigh the cons. Florida should join the other two dozen states that have made this important change.

Amendment 3 is on the ballot via a citizen initiative. If approved by 60% of voters, the amendment would allow people 21 and older to possess up to 3 ounces — or about 85 grams — of recreational marijuana. Currently, possession of 20 grams or less without a medical marijuana card is a first-degree misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in prison. Possession of more is a felony.

In 2016, Florida voters approved a medical marijuana system that helped bolster acceptance of the drug. In recent years, some jurisdictions have issued civil citations to people caught with small amounts of marijuana, rather than charging them with felonies. Both of those steps are positive, but they don’t go far enough. Florida prosecutors filed charges against about 16,000 people last year for small amounts of marijuana, a Times analysis found. That’s 16,000 too many.

States that legalize marijuana for adult use typically see huge drops in marijuana arrests. Colorado saw 13,225 marijuana arrests in 2012, the year the state voted to legalize it. By 2019, that number had dropped to 4,290, according to a report from the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice. Other states saw declines ranging from 50% to 70%.

Ricky Dixon, secretary of the Florida Department of Corrections, said none of the state’s 87,000 inmates are serving prison time solely for possession of 20 grams or less of marijuana. But people can end up in local jails and their lives can be changed in other unnecessary ways. A person convicted of marijuana possession can lose their job. A conviction can also make it harder to find housing. It can make a person ineligible for certain government grants and contracts, and it can make them vulnerable to further arrest and imprisonment for violating probation. Arrest also comes with legal fees and fines. The punishment doesn’t fit the crime, because possession of small amounts of marijuana shouldn’t be a crime.

More consequences

Arresting a law-abiding citizen for behavior that polls show most people shouldn’t consider a crime undermines trust in the justice system. To be effective, police and prosecutors must build trust. They need communities to support what they do. Every one of those minor marijuana arrests undermines that trust. Ultimately, all those arrests undermine the foundation. If police arrested thousands of Floridians for buying a bottle of wine or a few beers, how quickly would they distrust law enforcement? Minor marijuana arrests have the same damaging effect.

Likewise, racial profiling—real or perceived. For decades, police have arrested black and brown people for small amounts of marijuana at significantly higher rates than white people, despite research showing that different groups use marijuana at roughly the same rates. Such disparities raise all sorts of questions that undermine trust in the system, especially given that marijuana possession is not a violent crime. The insidious impact of these unnecessary arrests on the relationship between police and some communities should not be underestimated. Legalizing marijuana for adult use won’t solve all racial problems, but it would be a step in the right direction.

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Making so many low-level marijuana arrests also takes police away from preventing or solving higher-level crimes. Paperwork takes time, as does transporting people to jail or showing up in court to testify against a defendant. That time could be better spent on other crime-control measures.

Legalizing marijuana for adults is also safer in many ways. Buying marijuana from a street drug dealer involves much greater dangers than buying it from a regulated supplier. In a legal market, transactions take place in legitimate businesses, not on the streets or in secret meetings. Florida would be better off if American companies ran the marijuana industry, not criminal cartels. Companies use the law to resolve disputes. Cartels use violence. There is even evidence that legalizing recreational marijuana in so many states has hurt the profits of a Mexican marijuana cartel.

Instead, some of those profits go to state coffers. Colorado has collected nearly $2.8 billion in marijuana taxes and fees in the decade since legalization. Last year, Washington state collected nearly $469 million. The Florida Financial Impact Estimating Conference predicted that legalizing recreational marijuana would generate between $195 million and $432 million in annual sales taxes at the state and county level. That estimate doesn’t include the additional marijuana tax — known as an excise tax — that many states, such as Colorado and Washington, add to marijuana sales. With a similar excise tax, Florida’s estimated total would be much higher. Less money for criminal cartels. More for state programs — or to lower other taxes. It’s a win-win.

Risk mitigation

Of course, legalizing recreational marijuana raises legitimate concerns. Many states that have taken this step have seen an increase in marijuana use, although the trend lines were often upward before legalization. Some studies have found that adult marijuana use in states that NO legalized recreational marijuana has also increased. Studies also show that marijuana is viewed much more positively by many more people than it was 25 years ago. So is the rising use of marijuana a consequence of legalization or a cause of it? More research is needed.

States that have legalized recreational marijuana have generally seen an increase in marijuana-related hospitalizations, although the total number is relatively small — and the consequences are generally less serious — than for other drugs, including alcohol. Some states have seen an increase in marijuana-related traffic fatalities, but many studies indicate that testing positive for marijuana does not mean someone was intoxicated at the time of the crash. Some crash analyses also did not consider whether the increase in marijuana-related traffic fatalities was offset by a decline in alcohol- or other drug-related traffic fatalities.

The available data doesn’t support the oft-repeated claim that legalizing marijuana use by adults will lead to significantly more use by teens. The results of the studies are mixed, although the most widely cited ones found no significant increase — or decrease — in high school and middle school use after a state legalized it for adults. And the findings about whether legal marijuana is a gateway to harder drug use are unclear at best. The same goes for the arguments that legalizing marijuana leads to more violence or that marijuana users are significantly less productive than nonusers. When it comes to “marijuana madness,” the rates of psychosis diagnoses or antipsychotic prescriptions in states with medical or recreational marijuana aren’t all that different from states where marijuana remains illegal, some studies have found.

Passing Amendment 3 won’t unleash marijuana on the wild side, no matter how much opponents would have you believe. Florida can set rules and regulations on everything from who can sell legal marijuana to how much it’s taxed. Don’t want people smoking it in public? The Legislature can pass a law, just like it does for smoking cigarettes. Don’t want marijuana dispensaries near schools? Write it into the law. Want labels that detail what each marijuana blend contains? States have done that, too.

More than half the country’s population lives in states where recreational marijuana is legal. Those states have faced challenges, but they haven’t become modern-day Gomorrahs. Many officials in those states thought recreational marijuana would be a scourge, but they softened their stance as reality set in. Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, for example, campaigned against legalization in 2012, only to later admit he was wrong about some of his predictions, including increased teen use. Florida can learn from states that have already enacted laws, incorporating what worked best while avoiding the mistakes.

Florida could also use the extra tax money to boost drug treatment or campaigns to get people off drugs, programs that are often far more effective than criminalizing nonviolent drug use. Some jurisdictions have used the money to hire more police or build schools, which are more beneficial to society than clogging the court system with minor marijuana possession cases.

Florida has already legalized medical marijuana, so we won’t spend much time rehashing the health arguments. Marijuana is not a cure-all. Yes, it has some medical benefits, such as pain and anxiety relief. It also has some health consequences, especially for chronic users. Eating sugary cereal every day is unhealthy, but no one is getting arrested or imprisoned for possessing Froot Loops or Cap’n Crunch. That’s our main point. Too many Floridians end up on the wrong side of the law for engaging in relatively benign marijuana possession behavior. People should have the right to be left alone without good reason, and the reasons for criminalizing marijuana possession are not good enough. In fact, they fall far short of that standard. Fortunately, Floridians have a chance to fix that.

With respect to Amendment 3, the Tampa Bay Times Editorial Board recommends a vote of “yes.”