A fact-checked debate about legal weed
A fact-checked debate about legal weed
2 opposing perspectives and 6 true facts about cannabis legalization.
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Chapters:
00:00 Introduction to format
1:04 Fact #1: Public opinion
2:11 Will’s Introduction
2:41 Fact #2: Road safety
4:03 Paul’s Introduction
4:24 Fact #3: Marijuana arrests
5:41 Fact #4: Cannabis business owners
7:14 Fact #5: Illicit market
9:15 Fact #6: Corporate interest
10:10 Closing statements
There are few places in the world where you can walk into a licensed shop and buy marijuana for recreational use. Uruguay is one (sold in pharmacies). Canada is another. They’re joined by 21 US states, representing 48 percent of the American population, up from zero states in 2013.
That means that in Idaho, people caught growing or selling weed face mandatory jail time and tens of thousands of dollars in fines while their counterparts next door in Washington can enroll in a state-funded mentor-ship program for cannabis business planning and development. And states like Washington are violating both US federal law which prohibits any use of marijuana, and also international law, which prohibits non-medical uses.
That’s messy. But it reflects that although large majorities agree that the criminalization of cannabis use was a mistake, there’s less consensus about how exactly to move forward.
Will Jones III, the Director of Community Engagement & Outreach at Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), maintains that the commercialization of weed would lead to more harm than good. He prefers decriminalization instead, which removes criminal penalties, treating marijuana possession more like a traffic ticket. (Six US states have decriminalized recreational cannabis without legalizing.) However, SAM prioritizes fighting legalization and reducing drug use over promoting decriminalization.
SAM co-drafted the Medical Marijuana and Cannabidiol Research Expansion Act which makes it easier to study marijuana and develop marijuana-derived drugs but without descheduling marijuana as a schedule I illicit substance. President Biden signed it into law in December of 2022.
Paul Armentano, the Deputy Director of NORML, has spent decades advocating for legalization of marijuana and says decriminalization doesn’t go far enough. NORML represents the interests of cannabis consumers and has been advocating for the removal of criminal penalties for recreational marijuana since 1970.
We thought both of their perspectives were worth hearing but didn’t want to stage a traditional debate where viewers so often come away confused about what to believe. So we created a format that would help establish a shared foundation of facts while still communicating what each of these advocates believe is the most important information to know.
In this new take on a debate, we asked both participants to identify facts that their opponent would have to concede are true. They were given an opportunity to review their adversary’s facts in advance and in a video call agreed on a set of six. In the video, you’ll see those facts presented, with each participant given the opportunity to add a “footnote” to their opponent’s facts.
Sources:
https://news.gallup.com/poll/356939/support-legal-marijuana-holds-record-high.aspx
https://emersonpolling.reportablenews.com/pr/us-marijuana-policy-study-january-2022
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33731424/
https://mjbizdaily.com/chart-19-cannabis-businesses-owned-founded-racial-minorities/
https://www.aclu.org/report/tale-two-countries-racially-targeted-arrests-era-marijuana-reform
Perils of the tipping point of Big Tobacco 2.0 taking over the legal cannabis industry
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/30/cannabis-drinks-companies-hope-to-capitalize-on-growing-market.html
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beautiful format!!! that much greater than just a basic debate podcast without rules
I think it’s relevant to mention that the most recent studies on fatal car crashes and marijuana use suggest that if you control for COVID, there’s no significant increase. COVID made people drive terribly between roughly 2020 and 2023 and we all know it. We saw it ourselves.
A fact based debate??? in 2024?? daring arent we…
Vox and fact check don’t belong together
Denial of Reality is Not A Solution for Anything! Legalization & Monitoring is!
i want a re-up of this same video in a couple years. would be interesting to see how things have changed.
Loved this
I liked it but the format was too strict. You could tell they both wanted to say more at multiple points, but couldn’t because of the format. A debate ought to have room for points, counterpoints, counter-counterpoints, and so on as long as it remains civil and truthful.
I want to hear their talk about how weed is moving to schedule 3, and how the having regulations isn’t directly bad but the top 3 largest companies that sell canibis were the ones who helped craft the laws in their favor, I think if we basically treated weed like alcohol we’d fix alot of issues, but I see that the leagal roots that caibis is built on is just corrupt even tho it’s brand new and making it schedule 3 probably won’t change much and may possibly be the reason to tighten restrictions
I didnt think that i would be on wills side at the start of this, but after he made his points i cant not agree
This is awesome. Independent infotainment ftw!
Is weed not legal?
Stopping at decriminalization is literally just protecting the black market and all the dangers that come from dealing in it.
The way the disposible vape industry in the UK, in just a few short years, has caused a large percentage of the youth to become completley addicted to nicotine should serve as a warning.
Alcohol and Tobacco are bad enough, putting another drug in the hands of consumer-facing companies is a horrible idea. It will cause relentless marketing campaigns that will create far more addiction and substance dependancy in the population. Pretending weed is not a serious drug, or that putting it in the hands of businesses will lead to prosperity in marginilised communities is a delusional dream. I absolutley stand by Will on this issue.
As someone who has worked in black, grey and legal cannabis – The legalization scheme keeps the money away from the criminals, smugglers and gangs. Who else is gonna come up with $150k cash for a duffle bag of illegal substance?
3:18 my own argument is that in those states before medical marijuana, there was still a higher number of fatal car crashes than other places simply because of population.
This is one of my favorite debates I’ve ever seen
love these two debaters
Does Will know about the German Decriminalisation? I think he’d like that
Seemed like a good conversation until it switched to race.
What a great format! This is exactly what is needed at this current time.
"something new" you mean a formal debate?
Why is a company trying to make a profit a concern? That’s the goal isn’t it? That’s the beauty of Captialism.
1 year later, germany has partially legalized it and as speaking for myself, I’m totally quitting getting it on the streets and growing it myself
Both of them had really good points. I think the best scenario would be legalization with CORRECT regulation and anti-monopoly laws set in place from the jump as well as banning any advertisement of cannabis products (just like they did with tobacco).
That was an amazing debate
Great points, Will. Why don’t you bring those to the alcohol industry first considering the amount of deaths directly caused by it on a DAILY basis, but let’s make sure that’s in almost every store.
Marijuana is medicine. It needs to be legalized and regulated.
No one will see this but I would love to see this again so many changes on the laws and the worlds view on weed
I like the idea, but thats not a debate – by disallowing the debaters to answer to each other more then ones there is no flow and im missing the part where good debaters can boil a debate down to the real divide in opinion, for example the question how exactly does the other side wants to structure the law if its not the way suggested
What a great format I hope it makes comebacks
Ah yes a marijuana discussion that becomes yet again about race.
this is so insanely healthy
Why don’t you have the government sell it? No money for big corporations, the dollars go back to the people, well regulated..
This worked so well
Legalization is the only correct one.
It’s REALLY hard to get past the terrible track record of decriminalization. It’s like we have a working clock and a broken clock and one side is trying to fix the broken clock and one side just says hey this clock works right here but it’s just a few minutes slow.
This is lowkey a brilliant way to debate
It’s odd to not show a clip of them shaking hands afterwards. Just a thought for future episodes. Otherwise, this was great!
What are other topics you’d like to see in this format? Let us know in a comment below 👇
loved this video
LEGALIZE IT!
Will did a terrible job.
There’s a problem with advertising. Not legalization.
I was actually heavy aligned with legalization, but Will made excellent points for decriminalization.
When weed was just decriminalized in Oregon, I was transporting my collection of pipes and bongs from a friends home to my own home, I was pulled over(by was out of weed) the cops made me destroy all my pieces. Decriminalized is not enough.
There’s no debate, alcohol is significantly worse and it was only illegalized cause of racism
5:41
I have issue with the phrasing around the statement that “81% of cannabis business owners are white”
Yes this is true, but it is also true that in 2024 68% of the population is white.
There is an imbalance in the ethnic distribution, but that is only by 10%.
The fact as stated makes it seem much more.
I love this format of debate, we need this more often.
Wow, this is very good. As someone who enjoys using weed myself, I’m 100% for legalization, however I think Will’s points in this debate are really well made. Even though I still do not agree with him that cannabis should remain illegal, I do think that giving huge companies the monopoly of weed might be a real problem going forward and any attempt to legalize marijuana should come with great public policies that also minimize risk to users and society as a whole.
the white dude literally just said good things for the entirety of the 4-minute marker