Philip Smith is editor of the AlterNet Drug Reporter and author of the Drug War Chronicle. At Alternet, he writes—4 Ways Using Even Legal Marijuana Makes You a Second-Class Citizen:
Marijuana is now legal in nine states constituting about one-fifth of the U.S. population, and medical marijuana is recognized in a total of 29 states. That means people in those states can possess and use marijuana without fear of criminal prosecutions (if they have a doctor's recommendation in the medical marijuana-only states).
But even in legal marijuana states, pot smokers face restrictions that in effect turn them into second-class citizens, unable to do things non-drug users or users of legally sanctioned drugs, such as alcohol, can do, or somehow punished for doing them. While legalizing marijuana is a giant breakthrough, as long as marijuana users face stigma, discrimination, and worse over their choice of substances, the job is only half-done.
Here are four ways even legal marijuana users get screwed.
1. Employment Rights
You may be able to smoke pot legally, but it can still cost you your job. Even in legal marijuana states, legalization laws generally are careful not to intrude on the rights of employers to conduct drug testing for pot and to fire people who test positive—even if they're not high or impaired at work. [...]
2. Gun Rights
If you smoke pot, you can't legally purchase or own a gun. [...]
3. Parental Rights
In both medical marijuana states and full-blown legal pot states, parents have lost custody of their children over their marijuana use. Part of the problem is that marijuana remains federally illegal, turning the pot-using parent into a criminal in the eyes of courts of child protective services workers. Another part of the problem is discrimination and subjectivity about what constitutes "the best interest of the child." [...]
4. Housing Rights
[...] Even people who don't live in federally subsidized housing face problems, especially if they live in rental housing. Landlords can prohibit tenants from using marijuana, and rental apartment industry associations typically counsel their members that "banning the use or possession of marijuana on site does not violate any landlord/tenant or fair housing laws, even when marijuana has been legalized by local ordinance or state statute." [...]
TOP COMMENTS • HIGH IMPACT STORIES
QUOTATION
“When the President does it , that means that it is not illegal.”
~Richard M. Nixon, Frost Interviews, 1977
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
On this date at Daily Kos in 2006—Joe Wilson Responds to Washington Post Editorial:
The world awakened this morning to a puzzle of ridiculousness: a Washington Post op/ed that can only be described as a hit piece on Joseph Wilson's "absurdly over-examined visit" (the editorial's words, certainly not mine) to Niger, in which the editorial staff claims there was no effort at the White House to discredit Mr. Wilson ... while its news pages headlined an investigative piece on the front page entitled "A `Concerted Effort' to Discredit Bush Critic."
The ironic juxtaposition of the two articles was not lost on Mr. Wilson, who in a private communication to me this morning (sorry, no link) made the following statement:
Sunday's Washington Post lead editorial once again misrepresents the facts as the paper's own reporting in the Barton/Linzer article in the same edition makes clear. While I respect the separation of news and editorial function it might be helpful to the Post's readers if the editorial board would at least read the news before offering its judgments. One of the reasons my trip to Niger has been overanalyzed, as the Post editorial says, is because people like those who wrote the editorial continue to misconstrue the facts and the conclusions."
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: The same dumb gun things keep happening. Greg Dworkin discusses flipping the flipping Congress, how Trump's trade war hits losers he doesn't care about, and the GOP Plan E: admit Trump should be impeached. Kushner gets his mystery bailout.
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