Marijuana's Reclassification Is Wrong | Opinion

America has recently been feeling the ill effects of one of the biggest "bait and switch" scams in our history. That is, the packaging of new marijuana laws as if they were just about decriminalization, when they have really been about the government taking an active role in marketing a drug it once severely restricted.

In other words, Uncle Sam has gone from pot narc to pot pusher almost overnight.

The latest salvo in this startling transformation is the Biden administration's push to have the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) downgrade marijuana to a Schedule III drug, equal in classification as Tylenol with codeine. As Newsweek has reported, this move is essentially being made to help states advance their regulated marijuana business operations.

But actual public health is clearly not much of a consideration in this move, because the relaxation of marijuana restrictions has already caused some serious health care complications. Numerous studies released since the legalization trend began have provided much more data proving how harmful marijuana is to teenagers and even older adults.

But every time anyone raises these concerns, they are usually met with pushback consisting of statistics about the high cost of criminal enforcement of drug laws, et cetera.

That's the bait and switch. While many Americans have long been in favor of relaxing harsh penalties for cannabis possession and freeing up police budgets to fight more violent crimes, proponents of the marijuana industry in America are well past the decriminalization stage and now act almost in full partnership with the government in marijuana sales and worse.

The "worse" is the naked marketing of marijuana to teens. Make no mistake, much of the legal pot industry is marketing products to teens in the same way vaping companies and the makers of the hard lemonade and spiked seltzer have been accused of doing for years. Those edibles that look like candy and other flavored marijuana products are all about the youth market.

The other part of the bait and switch is the fact that the massive tax revenues and budgetary savings that were promised by the legalization forces have simply not come to pass. Moreover, the illegal pot industry hasn't been dented by legalization as much as it's been augmented by it as many aspects of the business have been ripe for them to take advantage of in several areas of the country.

There's something else at play here as well that's just as disturbing as the public health dangers and economic letdowns associated with state sanctioned and promoted marijuana businesses and use. You'd have to be blind not to notice the extreme cynicism and low bars set for society by a government that seems to think the best way to placate voters is to give them legal pot, legal sports betting, and universal basic income. Somewhere along the line, our politicians and even top private industry leaders have abandoned any semblance of promoting an aspirational society. It's the Roman "bread and circuses" again, and we all know what eventually happened to the Roman empire.

Expect the pushback on this to focus on the high costs and evils associated with strict anti-marijuana enforcement. But that's not the argument. The argument is that the Biden administration and state after state is now promoting an often dangerous drug that should be seen as a sometimes helpful palliative in certain medical situations, not some officially sanctioned opiate of the masses.

The new DEA classification will just be another step in this destructive road—because we're a long way from trying to simply right a wrong about over-incarceration for drug crimes now, aren't we?

Jake Novak is a political and economic analyst with 30 years as a veteran producer of national and local TV news.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.