For the 32nd consecutive year, The University of Alabama’s Office of Media Relations offers predictions from faculty experts for the coming year.
Following votes to decriminalize marijuana in Washington and Colorado, more states in 2013 will begin to look at legalizing the drug, a University of Alabama criminal justice expert says.
“Once states start enjoying increased tax revenue and having a budget surplus instead of a deficit because of taxing legalized marijuana sales, more states are going to follow suit,” says Dr. Mark Lanier, chair of the UA criminal justice department.
Along with the prospect of increased revenue, Lanier says states will re-evaluate marijuana laws because of the heavy burden of keeping drug offenders in prison.
“About 30 percent of people incarcerated in this country are in jail for nonviolent drug offenses, and we incarcerate more of our citizens than any other nation in the world,” Lanier says. “We can’t afford it. It’s bankrupting our country.”
In addition, Lanier notes that research suggests the cost of marijuana use to society on the whole is less than the costs of alcohol abuse.
“It criminalizes a whole group of people for whom nothing else in their lives is criminal,” Lanier says. “Years of data show that alcohol is much more costly and detrimental to the health of our society than marijuana, if you took the criminal aspect out of it.”
Lanier says that conservative states, like Alabama, are unlikely to move on decriminalizing marijuana as quickly as states such as Colorado, Washington or New York, which tend to lead the nation in changing laws.
“We’ll probably be one of the last states,” he says.