The Legalization Myth

_{Filed Under: Prohibition’s Long Goodbye}

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Eighty-seven percent. That is how many Americans support marijuana legalization in some form. This is not wishful thinking or stoner optimism. It is hard data from a Pew Research Center survey released in July 2025. Over half the country wants cannabis to be fully legal for both medical and recreational use. Another third are cool with it medically. Only 12 percent of the country wants to keep it illegal. Twelve percent. That is a fringe. That is not public policy material. That is a minority of moral puritans still clinging to Nixon-era fever dreams and reefer madness propaganda.

So why the hell are we still arresting people?

Not metaphorically. Literally. In 2023, police arrested over 217,000 people for marijuana. In 2022, it was closer to 227,000. And the vast majority of those arrests, about 84 percent, were for simple possession. Not trafficking, not distribution, not anything resembling a public safety threat. Just people with weed in their pocket or in their car, or in their bedroom drawer. Nothing violent, nothing predatory. Just weed.

In the last decade, more than four million Americans have been arrested for cannabis. That is a weed bust every two minutes. Every two minutes, someone is getting thrown into a patrol car, fingerprinted, humiliated, and handed a criminal record for something that over three quarters of the country now believes should be legal. You want to know what hypocrisy looks like? It looks like that.

And it gets worse. Because these arrests do not fall equally. They never have. Black Americans are nearly four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana than white Americans, even though both groups use cannabis at nearly identical rates. That is not conjecture. That is the official analysis from the ACLU, NORML, and every honest cop who still bothers looking at the data. In some states, the racial disparity is even worse. In Wisconsin, Black people have been arrested for marijuana possession at over six times the rate of white people. In Montana, it is more than five. These are not isolated spikes. These are systemic.

“Black Americans are 3.64 times more likely than white Americans to be arrested for marijuana possession, despite similar usage rates.”
— ACLU, A Tale of Two Countries (via Business Insider)

And before anyone argues that legalization solves all this, go look at Colorado. It was one of the first states to legalize recreational cannabis. Arrests dropped by 68 percent statewide. Sounds like progress, right? Until you read the fine print. Black Coloradans are still more than twice as likely as whites to be arrested for cannabis offenses. Not for possession anymore, but for all the leftover criminal scraps. Public use. Unlicensed sales. Probation violations. The laws changed. The policing didn’t.

What legalization actually did was reduce the total number of arrests. It did not dismantle the system that makes enforcement discriminatory by design. And in prohibition states, especially across the South and Midwest, the numbers have not dropped at all. Texas, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, the Carolinas, and Indiana. These are still full-blown marijuana war zones. A cop in Tennessee can still ruin your life for a single joint. In some countries, they will.

Meanwhile, the government is busy gaslighting us. While they parade around cannabis reform bills and throw buzzwords like “equity” and “decriminalization” into press releases, the cops are still out there making weed busts. The courts are still clogging up dockets with petty possession charges. The feds are still classifying cannabis as a Schedule I drug, right alongside heroin and fentanyl. And states are still banning legal dispensaries at the local level, making legalization meaningless for millions.

“Will the agency continue to cling to its long-held ‘flat Earth’ position? Or will it finally take steps to move marijuana policy into the 21st century?“
— Paul Armentano, Deputy Director, NORML

This is what the 87 percent lie really is. It is the illusion that public support equals progress. It does not. Not in this country. Not when law enforcement unions still bankroll prohibition politics. Not when federal law refuses to budge. Not when local sheriffs use drug busts as cash grabs. Not when politicians smile for weed photo ops while quietly voting to maintain the status quo.

It is not a war on drugs anymore. It is a war on the poor. On the young. On the Black and Brown. On anyone without a lawyer or a trust fund, or a parent in politics. The same people who built this country’s cannabis culture are the ones still getting arrested for participating in it. The same kids who get priced out of a dispensary turn around and get handcuffed for buying weed from the guy down the street.

And here is the punchline. Almost 80 percent of Americans now live in a county with at least one dispensary. There are nearly 15,000 legal pot shops in the United States. But in dozens of states, it is still a criminal act to grow, possess, or share even small amounts of marijuana. So what we have is not legalization. It is selective amnesty. It is corporate cannabis for the well-behaved and criminal records for everyone else.

You want to fix this? Deschedule cannabis. Expunge records. Get cops out of weed enforcement entirely. And stop pretending that state-by-state reform is working. It’s not. Not when people are still getting arrested. Not when racial disparities are getting worse. Not when legalization means one thing in Los Angeles and something very different in Louisville.

Until then, don’t talk to us about freedom. Don’t talk to us about progress. Don’t tell us the war is over when we are still counting casualties.

The numbers are in. The people have spoken. And still, the arrests keep coming.

That is the legalization myth.

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