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Now that the new medical marijuana regulations have gone into effect, many are looking ahead to possibly placing a proposal to legalize recreational use of the drug.
How different will the regulations be if that were to happen?
Michigan Tech’s Syd Johnson is an Associate Professor of Philosophy and Bioethics.
She says you can expect more of the same.
Johnson said, “When recreational marijuana is legalized, at least the example of other states has indicated that the state still has the ability to do the things that Michigan is currently doing with medical marijuana, which is to make businesses apply for licenses in order to sell this type of product. They’re also able to regulate the product, so the potency of the product, the standardization of percentages of content in those products, and also the types of products that might be produced.”
Though heavily regulated, states like Colorado that have legalized marijuana have seen numerous benefits.
Johnson said, “It’s added quite a lot of money to the state. It produced a lot of jobs. I think the number of jobs that Colorado has estimated has been produced there have been somewhere around 18,000. It’s added $2.5 billion to the state economy. That’s quite a lot of money and that’s basically attributed solely to the recreational use, not to medical use.”
Johnson says those states have also seen a reduction in opioid abuse.
