The themes I have discovered in the literature thus far are the affects medical marijuana laws (MMLs) and recreational marijuana laws (RMLs) have had on society as a whole.  Society includes consumers, public health systems, law enforcement, young adults and teenagers, minority communities, cultivators and distributors.  In the USA, in the past most states MMLs were passed prior to RMLs, however down the line more recent states to end prohibition on marijuana concurrently passed MMLs and RMLs.  Some states passed MMLs and RMLs by referendum, whereas other states passed laws by way of the legislation proposed through delegates in state legislatures, and the way the laws came on the books has affected the efficiency and enforcement of the laws.

Most of the literature conflicts as to whether MMLs and RMLs have increased the use of marijuana amongst adolescents and increased marijuana related hospitalizations, however all agree that these laws have increased marijuana’s social acceptance and destigmatization towards the once illicit drug. Also, marijuana dispensaries, like liquor stores, are disproportionately located in high crime, low income minority neighborhoods; however increased marijuana related crime has surged in adjacent neighborhoods, and not in neighborhoods where the dispensaries have their situses.

For MMLs most states have mandatory registries for medical marijuana (MM) patients, and the dispensary have rigorous regulatory regimes for dispensaries and growers to ensure quality control. For RMLs, have far less quality control  measures in places, however they have strict licensing mechanisms for cultivation and sale, thereby making it a product dominated by wealthy stakeholders. The District of Columbia (DC) is still the outlier, whereby RMLs ban the sale, but not the possession or cultivation small amounts of marijuana.  DC’s RMLs have created a legalized black market offering no quality control, thereby reducing the city’s taxable income for the product, and offering a Wild West cash-and-carry marketplace for growers (which could increase robberies), transferors and transferees, and placing the onus on transferors to self-audit to ensure (1) proper ID checks, (2) product quality, (3) legal quantities, (4) and additive free marijuana.

Nonuniformity in Recreational and Medical Marijuana Laws Across the USA, and DC is the Weed Wild West / Greg Dennis / Research Design for Public and Global Health (2020-2021)[FLEX] by blogadmin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0