The title of this post sounds like a bad made-for-television movie from the 1970s, but it’s based on some fascinating developments in the news.
On Election Day (November 8, 2016), Massachusetts voters went to the polls to help elect a new U.S. president and vote for other candidates for other offices. Massachusetts also voted on whether to make marijuana legal for recreational purposes. They voted yes (approved) this measure.
Massachusetts, then, becomes of one of a handful of states that allows people to use marijuana for recreational purposes. More states allow residents to use marijuana for medical reasons.
Massachusetts, like other states, has restrictions on such marijuana use. Residents who use the drug must be twenty-one years old or older and possess only certain amounts of the drug. They can’t grow entire fields of marijuana, either, but six plants.
These restrictions sound like the restrictions state governments place on people who want to drink alcohol or use tobacco products. But the alcohol industry is not pleased. Alcohol distributors in Massachusetts created a campaign to discourage people for voting for marijuana’s legalization. The distributors worried that, if marijuana became legal, people would use more of that substance than beer.
This is despite the fact that the state of Colorado has experienced increases in alcohol sales since it became one of the first states to legalize recreational marijuana in 2012. It appears that the beer distributors didn’t need to spend all that money and energy worrying about marijuana’s effects on their sales.
People frequently use alcohol and marijuana together, just as they combine alcohol and other drugs, or how they combine different drugs. Combining different substances can be very dangerous. After all, using just one substance at a time, such as marijuana or alcohol, can really affect the body. Using a combination of such powerful substances can intensify the effects of each. Instead of warning people about marijuana, then, maybe beer distributors should warn people about the effects of using more than one substance at a time. Of course, since these substances might include their own beer, we’re skeptical.
