#JonathanCaulkins wrote the book on legalizing marijuana
by Sam Wood, Updated: December 12, 2018
It’s not a matter of if the United States will legalize cannabis, it’s simply a matter of when, says Jonathan Caulkins, with an air of inevitability.
The important question the Carnegie Mellon University professor wants us to consider is this: What’s the best way of doing it on a national level that will have the fewest unintended and harmful consequences?
Caulkins is a rare bird. He’s a trained engineer with a Ph.D. from MIT in operations research. He has served as codirector of RAND’s Drug Policy Research Center. He’s a professor at CMU’s Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy Management. And he has a laserlike focus on marijuana, specifically, the social ramifications of legalization.
As the Americas rush to commercialize weed on an epic scale, Caulkins worries about aggressive marketing and entrepreneurs seeking to profit from abuse and dependence. He foresees a day when cannabis becomes a pure commodity selling for $1 a gram. He thinks of mechanisms to keep the industry behaving responsibly.
Caulkins -- along with coauthors Beau Kilmer and Mark Kleiman -- first published “Marijuana Legalization, What Everyone Needs to Know” (Oxford Press) in 2012. The book successfully debunked several marijuana policy myths. The trio called into doubt claims that legalizing weed would significantly save courts costs and empty prisons. It turns out most people “in jail for marijuana” are actually imprisoned
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