Is she a commie or what!
I’m just jesting but it illustrates how certain elements are clutching at straws when the normal USA mantra of open markets doesn’t suit a specific brand of politics
In essence I don’t disagree with many of her arguments but looking at most state regulatory bodies and their inability to find their way out of a plastic bag I’d be very wary of letting the blind lead the blind.
Marijuana Moment
A top federal drug science official is suggesting that a model for government-run marijuana sales could promote public health, similar to what’s been observed in states that control alcohol sales.
In a blog post published on Tuesday, National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) Director Nora Volkow laid our her thoughts on a cannabis research agenda, discussing recent survey data on marijuana use, trends in state markets and various regulatory policies that she says could offset health concerns.
While Volkow isn’t endorsing marijuana legalization, she recognized that the state-level reform movement continues to expand and indicated that some states’ programs are more robustly structured than others. She said that one framework in particular that is of interest—but has yet to be implemented anywhere in the U.S.—is a model of “state monopolies” for cannabis distribution.
State policies “could include different forms of taxation and even state monopolies,” Volkow said. “While state monopolies have not yet been tried with cannabis, they have proven effective at reducing the public health impacts of alcohol.”
Lawmakers in certain states such as New Hampshire and Pennsylvania have considered proposals to enact legalization through a state-run model as an alternative to the usual system of sales being conducted by licensed private businesses, but no state has implemented such an approach so far.
On a more granular level, the official pointed to several other policies that may be “likeliest to have the greatest impact protecting public health,” which includes “restrictions on retail sales, pricing, and marketing; putting limits or caps on THC content in products; and laws about cannabis-impaired driving.”
The blog post largely draws on findings from a government-commissioned report that NIDA contributed to that was released last September, finding that the “the federal government has been noticeably missing from this dialogue” as more states across the country have legalized cannabis for medical or adult use.
“The report underscores the need for more detailed information on health and safety outcomes associated with specific policy frameworks,” Volkow said. “This includes more data on outcomes associated with different regulations for how cannabis products are sold and marketed, whether they can be used in public spaces, and whether more restrictive rules about how cannabis can be sold, such as those existing in other countries like Uruguay, are associated with improved health and safety outcomes.”
