RALEIGH, N.C. (WTVD)
Opponents of marijuana legalization have often cited safety concerns, a point brought up by Jordan Davidson, who serves as the Government Affairs Manager for Smart Approaches to Marijuana.
“We want people to have safe and effective medicine that’s able to be prescribed by doctors that go through (rigorous scientific) review. Unfortunately, that is not how medical marijuana has panned out across the United States, and it’s not how it’s playing out in North Carolina,” said Davidson.
Davidson entered addiction recovery treatment as a teenager for cannabis use disorder and expressed concern about the prevalent use of the drug.
“Marijuana today is really kind of everywhere. And the biggest difference is we have a lot of young people who are my age who aren’t just smoking marijuana, in higher numbers, but more often every single day, (with) higher rates of cannabis use disorder,” said Davidson.
According to the CDC, cannabis is the most commonly used illegal federal drug in the United States, with at least 19% of Americans using it in 2021. Further, the agency cited research that the risk of developing cannabis use disorder was higher in individuals who started using marijuana before turning 18 years old, as Davidson himself did.
He, and Smart Approaches to Marijuana, support criminal justice reform surrounding marijuana, including the Presidential Pardon issued by President Joe Biden in 2022 for federal and Washington, D.C. offenses for simple marijuana possession. However, he described the push for medical marijuana as a “Trojan Horse” to usher in recreational legalization.
“Most Americans also don’t want addiction-for-profit industries funded by big tobacco that are selling their products as it’s just medicinal. We saw this with tobacco doctors recommending cigarettes. We saw this with opioids. Purdue Pharma saying that they’re less than 1% addictive. We saw it with marijuana,” said Davidson.
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