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Opinion


COLUMN: MARIJUANA ISN’T REALLY FUELING THE CARTELS. IT’S U.S. LAWS THAT DRIVE
THE VIOLENCE

Officers clear an illegal grow operation in California’s Siskiyou County in
2021.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
By LZ GrandersonColumnist 
Feb. 3, 2024 3 AM PT
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Police found six people shot to death last week near U.S. Highway 395 — roughly
50 miles outside of Los Angeles. The gruesome scene was another example of the
kind of violence that shadows illegal marijuana operations in California and
beyond.

In 2020, seven people were killed in a rural community in Riverside County. In
2021, a father and son were not only shot but also dismembered and burned in the
Emerald Triangle in Northern California. All the deaths were somehow connected
to illegal pot, some involving a cartel, explaining why many of the murders
mirror the type of message-sending bloodshed that defined the country’s
Prohibition era nearly a century ago.

Opinion Columnist

LZ Granderson

LZ Granderson writes about culture, politics, sports and navigating life in
America.

Read more from LZ Granderson

“All I do is to supply a public demand,” Al Capone once said. “Somebody had to
throw some liquor on that thirst. Why not me?”

Opinion


OP-ED: WHY LEGAL WEED IS LOSING THE WAR TO ILLEGAL WEED

The licensing, taxing and regulatory system imposed on those who hope to sell
cannabis legally are crippling and put them at a huge disadvantage.

May 22, 2022

To his point, Americans kept drinking despite ratification of the 18th Amendment
in 1919, providing organized-crime bosses like Capone a lucrative underground
business that was violently protected. Similarly, society has never waited for
Congress to legitimize usage of marijuana. The 1969 stoner film “Easy Rider” may
have been characterized as “counterculture,” given only 12% of Americans thought
pot should be legal at the time, but in hindsight that picture of recreational
drug use in America wasn’t “counter” as much as uncomfortably accurate.


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Opinion


GRANDERSON: THE BORDER CRISIS IS REAL. THAT’S WHY TRUMP IS BLOCKING SOLUTIONS

House Republicans are ready to kill any measure that might improve security at
the southern border, because sustaining the danger could help Trump in November.

Jan. 31, 2024

Some of the biggest names in music, including the Beatles, were making songs
about pot back when President Nixon began his misguided war on drugs. Today we
have celebrities with careers built on a stoner persona, 70% of Americans want
it legalized, and roughly half the country’s states already allow recreational
marijuana.

And yet somehow marijuana prohibition is still the law of the land, as the Drug
Enforcement Administration considers it a Schedule I drug like heroin. Because
of that, this multi-billion-dollar industry is trapped between two worlds, and
organized crime is once again thriving in that murky space.



Opinion


GRANDERSON: TEXANS DON’T HATE MIGRANTS. WHY DO THEY ELECT SUCH A CRUEL GOVERNOR?

Greg Abbott’s policies are killing refugees trying to flee across the border.
Many voters oppose his methods but appreciate that he takes the crisis
seriously.

Jan. 23, 2024

This black market continues despite relaxed state enforcement in part because
the changes create a new problem: overtaxation. The sticker shock from getting
pot legally can feel like paying an exorbitant fee to stay out of jail. When
juxtaposed against what it costs to buy from the local dealer, shopping at a
dispensary feels less like commerce and more like extortion.

There are other practical concerns associated with an industry that is both
legal and illegal.

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For example, what do would-be entrepreneurs in the cannabis industry put on
their loan applications at federally regulated banks? In 2022, a 27-year-old
woman died from an asthma attack caused by cannabis dust while working at a
marijuana facility in Massachusetts. Her death was the first of its kind to be
reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention since legalization
began in 2012. To what extent can a federal agency such as the Occupational
Safety and Health Administration officially intervene in the work environment of
an industry that isn’t legal federally?

This week Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) joined other Senate Democrats in a letter
urging the Biden administration to lift the federal marijuana ban. Currently the
White House is considering downgrading weed from Schedule I, which is where
Nixon placed it without research, to Schedule III. However, that wouldn’t
totally solve the problem.

“Marijuana’s placement in the [Controlled Substances Act] has had a devastating
impact on our communities and is increasingly out of step with state law and
public opinion,” the letter read. “Criminal penalties for recreational marijuana
use, and for medical use of marijuana products that lack federal approval, would
still exist, disproportionately penalizing Black and Brown communities.”

Which is exactly what Nixon intended when he started his bigoted war on drugs in
the first place.

This wink-wink between Washington and the states also leaves the more than
400,000 people employed by the cannabis industry across the country vulnerable
to abuse. It’s a huge swath of people, more in California (83,000) than in any
other state. Florida ranks fourth.

You read that right: The state that Gov. Ron DeSantis described as “where woke
goes to die” is also the state where the smoke lives on — a political dynamic
that epitomizes just how ridiculous it is that we’re still debating this along
party lines.

Biden should listen to the senators and the 70% of Americans and remove the
federal marijuana ban altogether.

Old puritanical fantasies about who we are as a society are a harmful relic, as
are the punitive tax structures surrounding cannabis. Not only that, marijuana
prohibition continues to create an environment in which more and more desert
communities are encountering cartel activity, and local authorities are finding
dead bodies on dirt roads.

The failed Prohibition era of the 1920s revealed the pitfalls of trying to
legislate morality. And here we are again. Surely we can all recognize that the
cartel is killing far more people than smoking cannabis ever could.

Lift the ban. Stop the overtaxation. Save lives.

@LZGranderson


MORE TO READ


 * WHY THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE WOULDN’T LET GO OF CHARLES LYNCH’S 16-YEAR OLD
   MARIJUANA CASE
   
   Jan. 31, 2024


 * A MASSACRE THAT KILLED 6 REVEALS THE TREACHEROUS WORLD OF ILLEGAL POT IN
   SOCAL DESERTS
   
   Jan. 31, 2024


 * EDITORIAL: BIDEN’S MARIJUANA PARDONS ARE WELCOME, BUT FEDERAL DRUG LAWS MUST
   CATCH UP WITH REALITY
   
   Dec. 27, 2023

OpinionOp-EdCannabis
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LZ Granderson

Follow Us

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LZ Granderson is an Opinion columnist for the Los Angeles Times. He arrived in
2019 as The Times’ sports and culture columnist. Granderson is also a political
contributor for ABC News. A fellow at the Institute of Politics at the
University of Chicago as well as the Hechinger Institute at Columbia University,
the Emmy award winner appears regularly on The Times’ Spectrum News 1’s daily
news magazine program, “L.A. Times Today.” Granderson joined CNN as a political
contributor and columnist in 2009 before joining ABC in 2015. He spent 17 years
at ESPN in a variety of roles, including NBA editor for ESPN The Magazine,
senior writer for Page 2 and co-host of TV’s “SportsNation.” In 2011, Granderson
was named Journalist of the Year by the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists
Assn., and his columns have been recognized by the National Assn. of Black
Journalists as well as the Online News Assn. His podcast for ABC News, “Life Out
Loud with LZ Granderson,” has won numerous honors, including a GLAAD award. His
TED Talk on LGBTQ equality has more than 1.7 million views.


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