Connor Kubeisy, Simi Valley, Calif.

It was reported Friday that Healthy and Productive North Dakota, which I help lead, had filed to oppose Measure 2, the ballot measure to legalize marijuana. I would like to respond to a few points that were mentioned in the article.

The article acknowledged that “the measure doesn’t explicitly address” our campaign’s concerns about how Measure 2 lacks critical safeguards and would harm public health. Measure 2 includes no potency cap on consumable products, no ban on the industry from targeting kids, and no requirement for products to have warning labels and child-resistant packaging. Are these commonsense safeguards really too much to ask for?

As reported, New Approach North Dakota’s response for omitting these safeguards from Measure 2 was, “If we spelled out every last detail in the actual legislation, the bill would be extremely long and cumbersome for voters.” Since when has the length of legislation been a serious justification for omitting critical points from it? Legislation should be as long as it needs to be. Notably, the 2016 measure for medical marijuana was more than 25% longer than Measure 2, but I doubt anyone complained about its word count back then. Even taken at face value, the campaign’s explanation doesn’t hold up because Measure 2 had already broached the topic of potency and concentrations.

Measure 2 requires topical products, like marijuana-infused lotions, to be capped at 6% THC and edibles, like brownies, to be limited to 10mg of THC per serving and 100mg per package. THC is the psychoactive component of marijuana. Having addressed the potency of topical products, they chose not to impose a similar cap on the strength of consumable marijuana products. For instance, Measure 2 does not prohibit the sale of 99% THC vapes, 65% THC concentrates, or 40% THC flower (Montana capped the potency of flower at 35%; Vermont capped the potency of flower at 30% and concentrates at 60%). This is because the supporters of Measure 2 favor the use of near-pure THC products and want no limitations on the strength of the consumable products themselves.

Users of high-potency marijuana are four times more likely to develop addiction than users of low-potency products, and daily users of marijuana above 10% THC are nearly five times more likely to develop psychosis than non-users. Moreover, nearly 1-in-3 users are unaware of the potency of their products. Measure 2’s intentional lack of a potency cap places all users at risk.

What’s more, the campaign attempted to respond to the claim about youth use rates in part by citing a study from the Journal of the American Medical Association (the American Medical Association also opposes the legalization of marijuana and recommends “limiting the potency of cannabis extracts and concentrates”). However, the article failed to mention that the study had been retracted and was co-authored by a researcher who disclosed a conflict of interest as a recipient of funding from the pro-legalization Charles Koch Foundation, which we told the reporter twice before publication.

While youth use rates have been trending downward nationwide, this is not because of the state-level legalization of marijuana. These trends preceded legalization: in 2002, 15.8% of 12-17-year-olds used marijuana in the past year, compared to 13.5% in 2012 (when Colorado became the first state to legalize) and 10.1% in 2020. However, states that have legalized marijuana have higher rates of youth use, and a 2022 study in Addiction found that minors were more likely to become marijuana users in states that had legalized marijuana than in states that had not.

North Dakota has the nation’s second-lowest rate of past-year use among 12-17-year-olds, at 8.72%. In comparison, Oregon, Vermont, and Colorado — all of which infamously legalized marijuana — have rates at 19.80%, 19.57%, and 16.01%, respectively. There’s little wonder why.

At 19 pages and nearly 10,000 words, some may think Measure 2 is already “long and cumbersome.” Even so, we’re confident that voters wouldn’t have minded a few additional sentences if they had been used to address critical matters of public health and public safety. Given its lack of critical safeguards, we urge you to vote NO on Measure 2.