Reason.com by Jacob Sullum
When Sen. Marco Rubio (R–Fla.) was seeking the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, a local paper noted that he had “a long history speaking out against marijuana legalization.” Given that history and the fact that Rubio’s position is rejected by two-thirds of Americans, you might think he would be prepared to defend marijuana prohibition with cogent arguments.
If so, you would be wrong. In a recent interview with a Pensacola TV station, Rubio worried that legalization would encourage teenagers to use cannabis, which would be a “gateway” to other drugs, and warned that black-market marijuana is “laced with fentanyl.” All three arguments are logically and empirically dubious. If this is the best that Rubio can do, he’d be better off changing the subject.
“When you decriminalize something, the message that you’re basically sending people is it must not be that bad,” Rubio said. “Now, suddenly, you’re an 18- or 17-year-old, [and you] say, ‘Well, I know marijuana, you tell me not to smoke it, but you know what? It can’t be that bad, because the federal government made it legal.’ And so all of a sudden now, you’re going to have a problem in this country, because that becomes a gateway. We know that marijuana use is often the first thing that people use before they move on to something else. We’ve also seen, by the way, marijuana being purchased off the streets that’s laced with fentanyl and other drugs, and it’s killing people.”…
