4/20: The Honest Discussions One Expert Says Need To Happen Before Legalizing Pot In Indiana

INDIANAPOLIS — Today is the biggest day for enthusiasts of marijuana in many places where it is legal.

4-20 is the unofficial holiday for recreational pot smokers, which has its origins dating back to the mid-80s when a group of teenagers in California would meet at 4:20 every day in a secret location to smoke pot.

Pot smokers cannot legally celebrate the holiday in Indiana because pot is still illegal here, but Scott Watson, an addiction expert with Heartland Intervention, reluctantly tells Indy Politics that legal pot in Indiana will be happening soon.

“I’m not sure when, I’m not sure how, I’m not sure if it’s a good idea,” Watson said. “But, if I read the tea leaves it’s going to happen.”

For Watson, pot is a unique subject. Over the past four decades, he has worked with many people who suffer from drug addiction, all of whom he says can trace their addiction to harder drugs like heroin or meth to at some point using marijuana.

With that in mind, he says the flip in public opinion on marijuana since the 1980s has made his job challenging to help people who struggle with addiction, especially with the push for medical marijuana as a way for some people to cope with struggles they may be facing.

“I’m not saying it’s right, I’m not saying it’s wrong,” Watson said. “We are throwing traditional coping skills, whatever that might look like for an individual, to the wayside and we are saying that chemical coping is becoming more the norm, and I think, regardless of what the substance is, the move in our society to chemical coping can be problematic for some folks.”

Watson said drugs and alcohol hit certain people differently. Some people are able to use both substances without any issues, while others may use them the same amount and develop a problem.

Overall, Watson said lawmakers and ordinary citizens need to take all of this into account in discussions of whether pot should be legal in Indiana or not. In Watson’s opinion, if legal pot does happen, it should happen in a sense of “all or not.”

“If you’re going to do it, let’s do it. To me the idea of ‘medical marijuana’ is a grand fallacy,” he said. “Someone is going to be making money off of this, and what are the downsides, because all ‘medications’ have downsides. How are you going to access it, how are you going to pay for it. Also is this something that Medicare and Medicaid is going to pay for?”

Finally, Watson said something needs to be figured out on the law enforcement side on how to screen someone for marijuana impairment in real-time, like a breathalyzer with alcohol. He doesn’t expect there to be a technological solution to that question in the next year, but he says five years down the road he hopes something comes up to address it.

Gov. Eric Holcomb has said many times that he will not support the legalizing of pot in Indiana until it is legal on the federal level. More than 30 other states in the U.S. have already legalized pot in some form.