With legalization of marijuana in Colorado and Washington and interest elsewhere to follow that path, it might seem that decriminalization’s time has come. Not so fast, Brett Harvey says in “The Culture High.” Too many entrenched interests benefit from the status quo, he contends, to assume that a tipping point has been reached.
Mr. Harvey, who first examined marijuana’s prohibition in “The Union: The Business Behind Getting High,” gives a brief history here. The federal government effectively criminalized marijuana in 1937, but it wasn’t until 1971, under President Richard M. Nixon, that marijuana’s inclusion in the new “War on Drugs” proved politically popular. Among other consequences, billions of dollars have been spent policing pot, and hundreds of thousands of users have been jailed – even as alcohol and tobacco have had far more harmful health and social effects.
