By Greg Schaller

Thirteen years after Colorado became one of the first two states to legalize recreational marijuana, the verdict is in: it has been a public policy failure of historic proportions. What began as a slick, well-funded campaign promising tax revenue for schools and the end of the black market has instead created new public health crises, empowered “Big Marijuana,” and left lawmakers nationwide reconsidering whether legalization was a terrible mistake.

Even Massachusetts, long considered a progressive trailblazer, is now taking steps to roll back legalization. Anti-marijuana activists there have submitted over 74,000 signatures to put a repeal before the legislature and, if necessary, before the voters in 2026. The problems that Massachusetts and other states are now confronting are the same ones that Coloradans have been living with for over a decadeColorado’s 2012 legalization campaign pitched voters a simple idea: to regulate marijuana like alcohol, generate new education funding, and eliminate the unregulated, illegal market. These arguments were not grassroots; they were bankrolled by a rapidly expanding marijuana industry with deep pockets and national ambitions to expand. As drug-policy expert Kevin Sabet discussed in a recent Free Press Interview what he has long warned: Big Marijuana’s strategy mirrors Big Tobacco’s. It downplays harms, promises tax revenue, and aggressively promotes usage to grow profits.

Coloradans were told that legal weed would provide significant new revenues to fund schools. When weighed against the social and healthcare costs associated with addiction, emergency room visits, traffic deaths, and declining youth mental health, newly realized revenues collected by taxes are not defensible. Massachusetts activists now point out the same mismatch between hype and reality as they seek to reverse legalization, arguing that the costs of legalization are far greater than the revenue produced by legal sales.

One of the great manipulations of the legalization movement has been the failure to tell the public that today’s marijuana is nothing like the low-THC weed of the 1970s and the 1990s. As Sabet explains, high-potency marijuana, sometimes 90% THC or more, is linked to serious mental health consequences, including psychosis and, in some cases, violent behavior. Researchers in London have found that heavy marijuana users are five times more likely to experience psychosis than non-users.

This is not theory. Across the country, law enforcement and clinicians have reported cases of marijuana-induced psychosis among adolescents and young adults. Sabet notes that among mass-casualty incidents, a disturbing number of perpetrators show heavy use of high-potency cannabis as a common denominator–not as the sole cause, but as a meaningful contributing factor.

In Colorado, youth exposure has been impossible to contain despite promises of strict regulation. THC-infused gummies, drinks, waxes, and vaping oils have flooded our communities. The drug that Coloradans believed they were voting for is not the drug that their children now encounter.

One of the biggest promises of legalization was that a regulated market would kill illegal sales. However, the opposite has occurred. Colorado’s black market has remained active, and in some areas, it has grown stronger, fueled by high taxes on legal products, interstate trafficking, and the rise of criminal grow operations exploiting loopholes in state law.

In Massachusetts, officials have concluded that legalization has not eliminated illicit sales. Instead, a legal market exists alongside unregulated sellers. This is now a central reason why repeal advocates are gaining momentum and why similar efforts are underway in Idaho to block future legalization efforts altogether.

The harms associated with widespread marijuana availability are not abstract. They include:

• A surge in addiction, especially among teens, driven by commercial products designed for heavy use, mirroring the “addiction-for-profit” model perfected by Big Tobacco

• More impaired driving incidents and associated fatalities.

• Higher rates of mental health crises among young adults, including suicidal ideation linked to psychosis episodes.

• Strain on public services, from treatment facilities to schools, attempting to manage rising behavioral and cognitive issues tied to heavy cannabis exposure.

Colorado now spends far more on addressing marijuana’s secondary effects than it ever earned in tax revenue. The marijuana industry’s profits are privatized, while the costs are socialized onto families, schools, hospitals and taxpayers.

For several years, legalization advocates have claimed that the policy is inevitable. However, the tide is turning. Seven of the past ten states that considered legalization voted against it. A bipartisan coalition is now pushing for the national restriction of synthetic THC products. Several states are openly reconsidering their earlier decisions.

Colorado led the nation in commercializing marijuana. It should also lead the nation in reconsidering it. This does not require returning to the days of arresting casual users, an approach that Sabet himself opposes. However, it does require admitting that the promises of legalized weed have failed and that the costs are too high to ignore. The health of our children, communities, and future demands nothing less.

Greg Schaller serves as the director of the Centennial Institute, the conservative think tank of Colorado Christian University. He has taught politics at CCU, Villanova University and St. Joseph’s University. He holds a B.A. in political science and history from Eastern University and an M.A. in political science from Villanova University.