The Impact of Marijuana Legalization on Youth and The Need for State Legislation on Marijuana-Specific Instruction in K-12 Schools

Abstract

State legalization of marijuana is a divisive and polarizing issue that has resulted in fragmentation between governments and citizens. In contravention of federal law, voters in Colorado and Washington in 2012 and voters in Alaska and Oregon in 2014 approved ballot initiatives that legalized the state-regulated sale of marijuana to adults for their recreational use and possession. All of these measures continue to make marijuana unlawful for anyone under twenty-one, which is reflective of the shared understanding of the myriad harms that occur when non-adults access marijuana. Based on this understanding, this Article argues that any state that fully legalizes marijuana has a concomitant duty to amend its K-12 public school drug and alcohol instructional statutes to explicitly include marijuana education. Although none of these four states has enacted such legislation, this Article provides two, straightforward and necessary statutory alternatives to do so. These statutes would provide the predicate for the development of correlative marijuana-specific educational regulations and academic content standards in these states. This legislation is necessary as alternative current attempts to educate about marijuana in these states do not provide sufficient safeguards for their youth. Additionally, this legislation will help to ease the fracturing between federal and state governments as it would expressly comply with the federal funding conditions of the recent 2015 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. Due to the Rawlsian overlapping consensus about the need to prohibit non-adult access to marijuana, this statutory amendment would not require a herculean political effort and could be a bridge between the partisan opponents on the issue of marijuana reforms. These legislative actions could also provide a model for future states that may legalize marijuana in the future. Finally, by enacting these statutes, these states will take strides to cure a significant legal deficiency that has the potential to cause irreparable harm to their children and greater populaces.