Why legalizing marijuana would make N.C. worse

Normalizing another psychoactive intoxicant would lower quality of life, not improve it.

In both my newspaper column on Gov. Josh Stein’s new cannabis committee and an Instagram post on the same topic, I posted a rhetorical question: Do you really think legalizing marijuana would make N.C. a better place to live?

The answer was treated as basically self-evident, an obvious no. But the more I’ve thought about it, and the more responses I’ve gotten, the less satisfied I am with leaving it there.

North Carolina is genuinely approaching a decision point, so those of us who oppose full marijuana legalization need to do more to make the case. There’s no possible way to cover every single argument and objection here, but I’ll give a short version a shot.

The shortest answer is that I believe marijuana legalization would degrade the quality of family life in North Carolina.

That phrase can sound soft or vague, but it is important. Every state makes choices about what kind of place it wants to be. Philosophers as far back as Aristotle have recognized that the civic law is a moral teac…