Results on Drug Votes

Magic mushrooms didn’t have enough ballot magic to be legalized in Massachusetts, David Ovalle reports for the WaPo.

In three red states, voters opted not to legalize recreational marijuana.

In blue Massachusetts, residents rejected a plan making therapeutic use of psychedelics plants legal.

And in liberal California, voters embraced stiffer penalties for certain drug crimes.

The state ballot decisions Tuesday signal voter concerns that drug policies across the United States have drifted too far to the left, according to some policy experts and political analysts. Each ballot question featured nuances specific to their states.

With time and experience, voters are coming to appreciate the nuances in laws about drugs. The right answers are not simple. “War on drugs” and “anything goes” are both neat, simple, and wrong.

Drug addiction wrecks lives and ultimately corrodes society. The simplistic libertarian claim of “hey, it’s my body” fails to account for the inevitable effects on others. At the other end, punishment alone is not the answer, particularly for people whose only crime is possession to feed their own habit. But punishment can be the needed incentive to get people to stay in treatment. It’s complicated.

For wholesale-quantity traffickers who destroy lives for pure greed, though, lock ’em up and throw away the key remains an option worthy of consideration.