CounterSpin interview with Tauhid Chappell on cannabis justice.
This is a lightly edited transcript.
Janine Jackson: As media critics, we encourage people to write letters to the editor, noting that even if your letter doesn’t run, it may help another letter with a similar point get in. Because a paper that gets one letter may not feel obliged to represent that view, but if they get 20, they may figure they should run one.
All of which is to say, the New York Times must have got a boatload of letters scoffing at columnist Ross Douthat’s sad sack May 17 piece about how legalizing marijuana is a big mistake, not least because his opposition to it is making people call him a “square.”
Unsurprisingly, Douthat isn’t being a principled contrarian, just obfuscating. As noted by Paul from Washington and Jeff from Queens and Peter from Boston, he sidesteps comparative mention of legal drugs like alcohol or tobacco, and dismisses decades of society-wide harms of racist enforcement of anti-marijuana legislation by saying cops who used weed as a pretense to stop and frisk Black people will just find other reasons, so: so much for that.
For the Times columnist, it all comes down to the wicked weed as “personal degradation,” which, in 2023, sails like a lead balloon.
There is an informed, good-faith conversation to be had about the impacts of marijuana legalization, and especially the effort to see some of the benefits of this newly legal market, in some places, go to those most harmed by its illegality.
Our guest works on precisely these intersections. Tauhid Chappell is a founder of the Philadelphia CannaBusiness Association, and also a project manager for Free Press’s News Voices project, focusing on that program’s Philadelphia initiative to reimagine how local newsrooms approach coverage of crime, violence, and the criminal justice and carceral systems.
He joins us now by phone. Welcome to CounterSpin, Tauhid Chappell.
Tauhid Chappell: Thanks for having me.
JJ: So Douthat’s column was headlined “Call Me Square, but Facts Show the Error of Legalizing Weed,” which, OK, the invocation of “facts” is a rhetorical device: You all are vibing, but I’m a grownup who only traffics in facts. It’s a frankly boring tactic that people use to discount the humanity of others and think they’re doing something.
But I love a good fact as much as the next guy. So, in terms of public opinion, in terms of reported social harms, in terms of the information that we do have, would an observer say that marijuana legalization, where it has happened, has been a big, dangerous mistake?
TC: No, in fact. I am happy to say that, because legalization, for both medical and adult use, has been around, especially on the West Coast, in places like Colorado, Washington, Oregon and California, we are now starting to see the long-term studies of the impact of legalization.
There has been a fear that teen use is going to go up. That’s been debunked by the studies on these various states over the last decade of legalization. There’s been fear about higher road rage, or higher traffic accidents, due to being “under the influence of cannabis.” That’s also been debunked. There’s been ongoing fear about marijuana use being some sort of gateway into harder drugs. That has been debunked, and we’ve also seen a decrease in opioid use in states that have legalized cannabis for medical use as well.
And so there has been a lot of reefer madness that continues to point at unscientific, non-peer-reviewed data that does not actually support the ongoing fears that people continue to fearmonger across the country. We have a plethora of data, a plethora of government-backed studies as well, to show that the legalization of marijuana has been nothing but a net positive overall.
JJ: Let me ask you another side of information: Are people still being arrested for marijuana possession? Because media would tell me that it’s all the Wild West, and that’s why we might think about putting the genie back in the bottle, but it’s not exactly the case.
TC: Yeah. In states such as New Jersey—and we’re pulling from data from the West Coast, because they’ve legalized longer, as well—we have seen an overall decrease in arrests for cannabis possession. But that does not mean that Black people are not still being disproportionately targeted for cannabis. We are still seeing that across the country.
In fact, the ACLU did a wonderful report that shows that incarceration, especially for Black Americans, still has not significantly decreased, despite legalization of marijuana.
And an example of this is in Pennsylvania, where medical marijuana is legal. However, if you are not a medical marijuana–registered patient in the state, and you are not in a city like Philadelphia or Harrisburg or Pittsburgh which has decriminalized cannabis possession—if you are caught with marijuana with you, and you’re not a medical marijuana patient, you still could be criminalized and potentially incarcerated from police if you step out of those decriminalization areas.
So that’s to say, yes, overall we are seeing a positive decrease in arrest, but that does not mean that Black people are still not being disproportionately targeted for marijuana use or possession.
JJ: I know that you have a Philadelphia focus. Are there things that are happening right there that are emblematic, that you think point to larger issues? What’s going on in Philadelphia that you think is useful to think about?
TC: We’ve noticed that municipalities, ultimately…. When it comes to cannabis legalization, the state will create, usually, sometimes broad categories of how the cannabis markets should be rolled out.
But municipalities, at the very local level, determine what types of cannabis businesses they can allow in their cities, right? They have zoning ordinances, they have permits, they have specific locations that businesses can and can’t operate.
And so something that I encourage everybody, especially those that are interested in getting into the industry, is to start educating your council members, your county commissioners, because this is something that’s completely new to them.
Many of them have never been exposed to marijuana as a legal business. Many of us have gone through decades and generations of marijuana as a harmful drug, it’s a narcotic….
And so to see this become legalized, where there are actual business and economic considerations? Many people, especially lawmakers and politicians, still don’t have enough information to make the best decisions on how to make an accessible and equitable and friendly cannabis market, where people can be participants without the fear of any sort of retribution or incarceration.
So education, education, education. Philadelphia, specifically, we had just a big primary where we are going to have a new mayor coming up this year. That means more education for them, because they may be the mayor that has to oversee legalization in their city. They’re going to have to figure out what types of cannabis businesses they’re going to want to allow in Philadelphia, who should have those licenses to operate, and where should they be able to operate, and what types of support should they be receiving.
So municipality to municipality, you have varying levels of education. Some mayors embrace legalization. They’re excited for it. They want to see the financial returns of these new businesses.
Others are very much NIMBY, not in my backyard. They’re still afraid of it. They still think it’s going to create a drug market in their backyard.
And so we have a lot of level-setting to do at the local level.
JJ: Let me ask you, finally, about journalism. A million years ago, except it was actually January 2018, I talked with Art Way from Drug Policy Alliance, and this is at a moment where Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, was saying, “Good people don’t smoke marijuana.”
And we had a Kansas State representative, Steve Alford, who said—in 2018, not 1918—that we need to remember why marijuana was outlawed, which was because
African Americans, they were basically users, and they basically responded the worst off to those drugs just because of their character makeup, their genetics and that.
So there’s obviously an opinion shift, a culture shift happening, but in terms of media, what would you like to see, new questions asked, new ways of approach? What would you like to see in terms of media coverage of the issue?
TC: There are three people that I like to point to as really good examples of good reporters asking tough questions, holding politicians accountable, calling out agencies that are supposed to be doing the job of rolling out legalization, but have not.
One of them is the former Boston Globe journalist Dan Adams, who covered the Massachusetts legalization for years. Great reporter.
Jelani Gibson, who is the first Black reporter in a traditional newspaper to cover cannabis. He works for NJ.com. He holds the state accountable, asking a lot of politicians, asking a lot of regulators questions about expectations, realities, what the law has said and what has actually happened pertaining to the law.
And then, from a national perspective, Mona Zhang from Politico does a great job in analyzing how different governments are trying to address the ongoing inequities that we see in cannabis legalization.
And I think that continues to be a point that we need to emphasize, is that despite legalization, the people who have been harmed the most are either still locked up, or being released but not being supported into the reentry of society, and they’re not able to benefit from the true legalization, which is being able to legally run their own cannabis operation and be supported in that too.
So I would love to see more media reporting on the ongoing inequities, and the solutions that other municipalities and states are trying to do to rectify the situation. I think more awareness of that is going to lead to a lot more, I guess, inspiration for cannabis advocates and stakeholders to bring these solutions to their lawmakers and politicians in the respective localities.
JJ: All right. I suspect we’ll speak with you more in the future. Tauhid Chappell is founder of the Philadelphia CannaBusiness Association, as well as a project manager for Free Press. Thank you so much, Tauhid Chappell, for joining us this week on CounterSpin.
TC: Thanks for having me. Appreciate everything that you do. Truly an honor to be included in this interview.