Recreational Pot Calling the Capital Smacked: Recreational Marijuana Law Reform in DC

Considering the themes in the literature from other jurisdictions in the USA of increased: crime, underaged drug use (UDU), traffic accidents (TA), marijuana related hospitalizations (MRH), and disadvantage in low income and minority communities, has medical marijuana and recreational marijuana laws in the District of Columbia (DC) created adverse social effects, thereby perpetuating the need to reform DC’s marijuana laws (MLs)?

This is a significant public health issue for many reasons. First, as it relates to crime, residents in any city need to feel safe, and DC being the capital of the USA makes public security of heighten importance. If MLs in DC are creating an atmosphere for the proliferation of crime, especially violent crime then research into the topic is warranted. Second, studies have shown that legalization and decriminalization, medicinally and/or recreationally, MLs increase social acceptability, access and use to marijuana in adolescents, and with increases UDU in the age group ≥12-20 results in lower scholastic achievement, thereby contributing to poverty.

Third, in virtually every state with MML, there have been increases in TA, however most studies lack direct causation linking the two, nonetheless most studies have recognized there is a clear association. MRH have increased in every jurisdiction that allows medical marijuana (MM), recreational marijuana (RM) or both. Although ML proponents note that states with MM and RM have seen decreases in opioid addiction, this has been offset by increases in alcohol related harm associated with MM and RM. Fourth, from the literature minority and low-income communities have a disproportionate amount of licensed and unlicensed MM and RM retailers within their communities, despite consuming marijuana at the same levels as non-Hispanic whites.

Do all these factors justify amendments to DC’s current marijuana policy, and what is the be4st course of amendment to pursue? My hypothesis is the current policy increases social distress and increase the burden on public health in DC. These laws need to be amended by mandating all recreational marijuana retailers to be licensed, taxed, have quality control mechanism for marijuana and marijuana products (edibles), and require stick ID checks during sales. This would decrease many of the social harms experienced on other cities based of off the literature.

This project is certainly doable, TA, UDU, crime and MRH are available in government databases, and synthesizing the data would not be difficult, furthermore Colorado had a similar recreational cannabis policy as DC, and they amended it after a year of implementation, to require licenses for recreational dealers.

Note: “Smacked” is a slang word from DC that means a person is under the influence of marijuana. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=smacked