OPINION:
On the ropes and with no message about rising crime or the struggling economy to appeal to voters, President Joe Biden has gone to pot. Literally. The president’s election-eve marijuana decriminalization order has him yet again putting politics over people’s lives and health.
In a shameless attempt to buy the votes of young people and lower-income minority communities, Mr. Biden is waving his pen around again to dig himself out of the political cellar.
The American Left, and some on the Right, along with the Big Tobacco companies already responsible for millions of deaths from their products, have spent heavily to convince communities of color that THC legalization is social justice and the people jailed for breaking the law are victims.
Even more bizarrely, they’ve claimed for years that more marijuana amounts to actual empowerment.
The reality has proved otherwise. Black and minority entrepreneurs have seen little financial benefit from legalization, having been muscled out by Big Tobacco companies run by wealthy Whites. Legalization is not generating the tax revenue that is making it into underserved communities. Arrests in many places aren’t down, and the black market is thriving.
Today in Denver, there are more pot shops than Starbucks and McDonald’s combined, and the vast majority of them are in minority neighborhoods.
Federal decriminalization was the only move left Mr. Biden could quickly make to convince voters they should stick with a Democratic Party that is presiding over the new urban and cultural decay.
Again playing the race card, he sounds like he’s righting a systemic wrong. In actuality, of the nearly 160,000 federal prisoners in 2021, only between 6,000 and 7,000 are in prison for simple marijuana offenses. Most of those are for higher-quantity possession as well as other crimes.
The real consequence isn’t freeing those disproportionately prosecuted. It will create more momentum toward full legalization and more government dependency. That inertia, even when legalization is absent, encourages the increased use of THC products, developed through billions in investment from Big Tobacco and major alcohol companies.
This appalling tactic from the White House goes beyond mere political manipulation when you consider the consequences of expanded THC use.
Places where marijuana is legal are having significant difficulty hiring workers that can pass drug tests in construction, transportation, health care and other industries, forcing employers to seek help out of state. To compensate, Democratic states are making it illegal to discriminate in employment over marijuana use, despite the dangers.
Mr. Biden questioned the wisdom of promoting and legalizing marijuana for decades. Increased possession translates to increased usage. His latest pivot to the Left now puts the imprimatur of the president for the first time on the contention that possession and use of marijuana are benign.
Over 20,000 peer-reviewed research articles link marijuana use to severe mental health outcomes, including depression, psychosis, and deficits in cognitive development. Use of marijuana among high school students has more than tripled since 2017. The psychological impact of long-term THC use is becoming increasingly clear.
The dirty little secret the industry and the Left won’t tell Americans is that the potency of marijuana has increased dramatically. Potency more than doubled between 2008 and 2017.
THC products engineered from concentrates of the drug went from an average of 6.7% to more than 55% over a 10-year period. That industrialization leads to more negative health impacts and addiction. Even one of President Barack Obama’s top drug policy advisers, Kevin Sabet, has been saying for years that today’s pot isn’t “Woodstock weed.”
U.S. surgeons general appointed by both Republican and Democratic presidents have repeatedly argued against legalization because they know it’s not a harmless drug.
Democrats have helped sink millions of Americans into what psychologists call coronaphobia (irrational fear of COVID-19). Now they’re cheerleaders for policies that minimize the danger of THC. Cannabis use disorder among 12- to-17-year-olds is up 25% in states that have legalized it.
The majority of localities in so-called legalized states have opted out of sales because they’re smart enough to know more drug use in their communities isn’t a good thing.
Mr. Biden’s latest voter enticement makes for a great sound bite for the social justice warrior crowd, but it does little to deal with America’s growing drug problem, punctuated by a fentanyl crisis coming across the border that the administration loves to ignore.
Mr. Biden’s appeal for votes will only encourage more drug use, not less. What the president says matters, and more drug use is not what America needs.
• Tom Basile is the host of “America Right Now” on Newsmax TV, an author and a former Bush administration official.
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