The Eldorado of marijuana in recent years was… Oklahoma! In 2018, voters in this ultra-conservative rural state voted to legalize medical cannabis. But, unlike other places, the local authorities have not put in place a strict regulatory framework. For lack of having established specific health criteria, more than 400,000 people now hold a card which allows them to buy them, that is to say nearly 1 inhabitant in 10, the highest rate in the United States. The price of the license to produce and sell was set at $2,500, a pittance compared to the $100,000 required in Arkansas. And the number of licenses has not been limited. As a result, there are currently in Oklahoma more than 7,000 producers and some 3,000 “cannabis factories”.
Worse, as the control authority granted the licenses in a very lax way, “it rolled out the red carpet to all the criminal organizations of the planet, attracted by the abundance of cheap land in Oklahoma”, laments Lawrence Pasternack , a pro-legalization activist who has written extensively on the subject. Since then, police have carried out dozens of raids on illegal farms, including one last November following the murder of four Chinese workers. This laissez-faire caused “a total fiasco that we could have avoided”, believes Lawrence Pasternack. Result ? Fed up with the anarchic development of the industry, voters have just overwhelmingly rejected the legalization of cannabis for recreational use.
Oklahoma would have been the 22nd state to allow it. Medical marijuana is legal in 39 states, with more expected to follow. Millions of Americans consume it today, and sales reached $33 billion in 2022, according to estimates by MJBizDaily, a specialized media. At the federal level, however, cannabis remains classified as an illegal substance in the same way as heroin, which explains the patchwork of rules according to the States… and a chaotic legalization.
Cannabis laws vary from state to state.
© / Legends Cartography
The example of California
The telling example is California. After medical marijuana in 1996, this state authorized that for recreational use twenty years later. Today, it is consumed in record quantities, to the delight of the authorities who collect 1 billion dollars annually in tax revenue. But two-thirds of sales take place on the black market. The reason ? A poorly structured regulatory framework.
The state and municipalities have imposed too many taxes, thus raising the price of legal cannabis compared to that sold on the street. Producers therefore sell part of their harvest on the black market to avoid being taxed. At the same time, the authorities are ill-equipped to combat the clandestine operations that proliferate in the wild corners of this enormous state. As for municipalities, many have banned the opening of cannabisseries, thus limiting outlets. The governor of California announced reforms to reduce taxes and fight the black market. “We are in a period of transition. Legalization is recent, and it is a major change in society. Things will improve as we go,” said Robert Solomon, professor of law at the University of California at Irvine.
Until recently, nothing seemed able to slow down the legalization movement in the United States, popular in public opinion. But recently, besides Oklahoma, voters in Arkansas, South Dakota and North Dakota rejected a measure to allow cannabis for recreational use. “The tide is turning,” tweeted Luke Niforatos, vice-president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, which denounces its dangers to the health of young people and the growing influence of large commercial interests, including the tobacco giants. The group campaigns, among other things, to limit the THC content, which makes cannabis much stronger than in the 1990s, and to impose rules, as for cigarette producers. In the meantime, the industry hopes the Biden administration will remove marijuana from the federal list of dangerous drugs.