Look, there may be no definitive decision on who the next President of the United States is, but there is a clear winner in the 2020 election: drugs. Drugs won! You can do drugs now. You probably want to do drugs now.
On Tuesday, New Jersey, Arizona, Montana, and South Dakota—you read those last two correctly, I was fucking flabbergasted—voted to legalize the recreational use of marijuana, BuzzFeed reports. In New Jersey, 60 percent of residents voted in support of the legalization. In Arizona, the new decision allows those with past marijuana convictions to petition the courts for expungements. Great news for restorative justice, moving the needle on cannabis criminalization, and your ex-boyfriend Brian’s extremely embarrassing weed leaf tattoo.
According to The New York Times, Mississippi legalized medicinal marijuana, which also feels noteworthy—the Mississippi Department of Health is now tasked with developing regulations for the program by July of next year, issuing patient cards by August.
For those of us who prefer better drugs, Washington, D.C. voted to decriminalize psychedelics—much like the fun, psilocybin mushroom-loving cities before them to do the same: Oakland and Santa Cruz in California; Denver, Colorado; and Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Meanwhile, voters in Oregon passed a law, Measure 110, to decriminalize possession of hard drugs, including heroin, cocaine, meth and LSD—the first state ever to do so in these United States, The Guardian reports. While it does not legalize any of those drugs, it will bar arrests for petty possession charges. If caught, violators will be made to pay a $100 fine, or will be “referred to options for addiction treatment,” according to Vice. Those found with large “drug-dealer sized” quantities still face criminal prosecution, but the goal is that eradicating punitive drug laws will allow the state to invest more into public health. I hope other states do that same. Maybe there’s still hope for progress yet… knock on wood.