Ky and I were discussing drug legalisation the other day, and it was quite an interesting conversation.
Colorado has fully legalised marijuana, and I think decriminalised psilocybin, better known as magic mushrooms. This means that where we live, you can go to your nearest dispensary (which there are PLENTY of), pick up a joint, and blaze it on the sidewalk next to a police officer without a care in the world.
As someone who is not a marijuana user, but pro-legalisation, it has been interesting to see how this approach has panned out. Frankly, there isn’t much to write about. Occasionally I smell it, and I am sure some people use it while driving (very bad behaviour) but overall, it doesn’t feel like a net negative to my day to day life.
The most interesting part of our conversation hinged on the trade off between depth and breadth. When marijuana became legal, the depth of how bad things could get was greatly nullified. Buying a pharmaceutical grade product with your credit card in a licensed establishment is far better than cash deals in dark alleys with shady individuals. Your friendly neighberhood “budtender” isn’t going to try and push some meth or coke on you either. But that depth is countered by breadth; on the margin, there is going to be some people who wouldn’t have imbided in marijuana while illegal, but now that they can pick some up round the corner, they do. As with many things, the range of outcomes related to that decision is broad, and undeniably some are quite bad.
There is another, similar story going on right now with online sports betting and prediction markets in the US. 20 years ago, unless you were in Vegas, the average 20 something Denverite who wanted to put a bet on the upcoming game had two options: a gentleman’s bet with their friend, or get into some illegal gambling ring with some truly unsavoury characters. Today, it’s a 5 minute task downloading an app.
The depth has been massively lifted. For those who were always going to gamble, being able to do it via DraftKings or Bet365 is far better than getting in deep with Big Tony’s poker game. However, there are MILLIONS of (mostly young, male) Americans who are now regularly betting on games, who would never have been involved in illegal gaming in the past. The breadth is staggering.
It’s a trade off for policy-makers, governments, and frankly individuals, at all levels. As with many things, there are no solutions, only tradeoffs.