Arizona’s Governor Doug Ducey (R) and other opponents are claiming that legalization of marijuana in the state would unleash a host of public health hazards.
An official voter guide argument was published this week against a proposed initiative that’s likely to be on the November ballot. In it Ducey called legalizing cannabis “a bad idea based on false promises.”
“We know from states that have fully legalized marijuana that it has real consequences: more deaths on highways caused by high drivers, dramatic increases in teen drug use, and more newborns exposed to marijuana,” Ducey explained.
The proposal from Smart and Safe Arizona may or may not make it to the ballot as county officials have until August 7 to validate hundreds of thousands of signatures submitted by activists last month.
The arguments against marijuana legislation will be printed and mailed to registered voters.
Governor Ducey has also claimed that Colorado has a particularly high rate of teen cannabis use compared to other states, is true. However this was true before the state legalized the drug.
State Sen. Sine Kerr (R) has also wrote that she was “deeply saddened by the prospect of how this initiative would harm children.”
“Kids would become easy prey for an industry hungry to create a new generation of users,” Kerr argued. “The industry will succeed in hooking too many of our kids and stealing their potential early,” she wrote.
“In Arizona, positive marijuana workplace tests have nearly tripled over the past eight years since legalization of medical marijuana,” remarked Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk. “Workplaces with higher rates of drug use have employees that are less productive, suffer higher absenteeism, and have more accidents.”
“As for their argument that legalizing recreational pot will empty our prisons? Not a single state has seen a reduction in prison population because of legalization,” she argued. “This is because, contrary to the myth, our prisons are not filled with people serving time for marijuana possession.”
“The war on drugs failed,” wrote Chad Campbell, who is the chair of Smart and Safe Arizona, the organization behind the proposed ballot measure. “Marijuana is safest when it’s sold in a taxed, tested and regulated environment—not on a street corner.”
