Marijuana legalization may go more smoothly than you think: Washington governor
VANCOUVER — Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee has a message of reassurance for Canadians who may fear that legalization of recreational marijuana next week will come with a wave of negative consequences: It’s not as bad as you think.
Washington and Colorado became the first U.S. states to broadly legalize recreational marijuana in 2012 and Inslee says few of the concerns expressed at the time became a reality.
“The decriminalization of marijuana by all ways of judging it, I believe, largely has been a success in the sense that the fears of those who were not supportive of our efforts really have not been realized,” Inslee told reporters at the Cascadia Innovation Corridor Conference in Vancouver on Wednesday.
“We’ve not had crime associated with it, we’ve not had adverse health effects, there is not evidence of significant increase in youth usage.”