By “legalize,” I mean full-on, legal, recreational pot. Like Colorado or Washington. NOT medical pot, like… several other states.
Poll to follow. *And be patient, as it’s going to take a hot minute to fill in 51 poll options.
I expect it will be legalized at the federal level at some point and state criminal laws on the topic will just stop being enforced.
I went with Kansas, although I’d also pick Florida, Louisiana and Texas to round out the superfecta. Kansas is so conservative as to be borderline regressive, and the social conservatives that run the state legislature will die before legalizing pot. Florida and Texas have too much to lose by legalization- their police probably make tens of millions in asset forfeiture for legalization to be taken seriously. Louisiana is just Louisiana.
I’d also put money on Missouri to be one of the last- socially conservative, with a powerful beer lobby.
Missouri. Of course. Duh.
ETA: After this posted I saw the post above, but I note that I’m so far the only person to pick Missouri in the poll.
Utah is stepping out with an early lead.
I think imagining a situation in which it had become legal in all 49 other states without incident, I’d think that public opinion would be far enough along that all the states that have any sort of initiative or referendum structure wouldn’t be last.
So I’m thinking, super conservative in a more religious conservative than a pseudo-libertarian way, but no initiative system. That leaves much of the deep south, but I’m going to give the nod to Alabama.
I went with Utah. That state still has a ongoing argument over the issue of legalizing caffeine.
I doubt it. States have the authority to make marijuana illegal, just as they have the authority to make alcohol illegal.
I’m guessing this is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but the political landscape of Utah has definitely changed a lot since when they instituted their screwy (and now mostly repealed) alcohol laws. It used to be super-conservative because of the Mormon influence, but these days it’s super-conservative because it has the normal rural western state conservatism (which tends to be more libertarian in nature) sort of laid on top of the still present but now much less influential religious Mormon conservatism.
They’re still going to be a very red state for the foreseeable future when it comes to sending people to national office, but I’d say they’re a lot more likely to legalize pot than some states that vote Democratic.
It was hard to choose one. I went with Texas because it’s the biggest state that’s likely to hold out until the very last minute.
I voted NC. After all, it would compete with our main crop! But after seeing Utah as the leader, I have to admit, that’s likely.
See, and I think that’s sort of the same deal as Utah. Texas is only a reliably red state because of the coalition of social conservatives and the more libertarian-leaning conservatives. Not having an initiative system, I think it’ll take longer for the breakdown of the coalition on this particular issue to manifest itself in Texas, but I’d still bet it’ll be a lot faster than a state like Alabama where the social conservatives are dominant on their own.
This subject was the topic of a thread I started in Great Debates a few months ago. I believe the consensus there was some southern state or Utah would be the last hold-out.
As for my choice, I picked Mississippi but it was a soft pick mainly based on its reputation. I thought about Utah but then realized it’s right next to Colorado and being that close is likely to have some sort of spill over influence. I considered Idaho too mainly because it’s gotten so right-wing over the last few years that I wouldn’t be surprised if they tried to double-down on enforcing its anti-marijuana laws. However, like Utah, it’s next to a state that’s legalized pot (Washington) and that, coupled with its strong anti-government streak, will probably cause them to fall in line before many others do. Thus, if I hadn’t picked Mississippi, I could’ve gone with Alabama, Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, or Kansas (despite it also being adjacent to Colorado).
Utah. Conservative, authoritarian (unlike other nearby red-but-fiercely-individualist states like Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana), and dominated by a religion that thinks it’s sinful. Utah is one of the most tightly liquor-controlled states, possibly the most.
Short answer: I have no idea.
But it’s important to remember that there are all kinds of “conservatives,” and not all of them are ready to string up pot smokers.
Here in Texas, there are lots of rednecks who love Reagan and keep Confederate flags on their porch and drive pickup trucks and love their guns… but who ALSO like smoking weed.
There are also libertarian-leaning conservatives who hate pot but figure it’s none of the dadgum gummint’s business.
So, Southern states may surprise you.
My guess is a state with a large dealer/distributor population, like Texas or California. Those guys don’t want the competition. (Or restrict their operations to “20 plants or less”, whatever the last California proposition allowed.) Pretty sure this is the reason it California didn’t legalize it last time, and I’m betting as society comes around to the futility of the drug war, the drug dealers and distributors will be the last major lobbying group that opposes legalization.
I’m going with Utah.
BTW, Texas seems to be listed twice.
Not anymore. After the reforms around the time of the Olympics, most of the really screwy stuff is gone and Utah’s liquor laws are pretty much in line with the other states in the region (well, except for Nevada and Arizona which are unusually lax). Heck, in some ways Colorado is stricter and we know how that went. It’s certainly not like some of the Southern states that still have dry counties and weirdness with the “private clubs” and such.
Even the Mormon powers-that-be seem to be more or less onboard with letting the gentiles have their fun to keep the skiing and tourist bucks coming. I’d expect legalization to come in Utah at the point in which it becomes a detriment to those industries to keep it illegal, which I’m guessing will happen long before all 49 other states have legalized it.
Dude, I live here, and have since before the Olympics.
Yes, the private clubs law is gone, but some others remain, ranging from the merely draconian to the truly bizarre:
- 100% control. You can only buy liquor from a State Liquor Store - even if you are a bar owner or restaurateur, you have to walk into the State Liquor Store and buy your booze (at retail prices, which truly sucks for bars and their patrons). This is massively annoying, as the stores are fairly few compared to a non-control state, and there is no free market helping my prices.
- The 3.2% beer law. This is the most famous one, but I don’t think it’s a huge deal and other states, including Colorado, deal with the same thing.
- The law that I can’t order a drink in a restaurant unless I order food as well. This is a serious annoyance at places like restaurants with lounges that have live bands or comedy. Most of them have a $5 chips and salsa option on the menu as a workaround.
- The law that I can’t have more than a certain amount of alcohol on the table in front of me at one time in a restaurant, AKA the “finish that one first” law.
- The infamous “Zion Curtain” law, where restaurant/bars that serve patrons under 21 cannot prepare alcoholic drinks where minors might see them, so my margarita has to be shaken behind a makeshift wall, AKA the Zion Curtain.
Incidentally, I lived in Texas from 2005-2010 (the only time I’ve lived outside of Utah between 1994 and now), and I fully admit that dry counties (or dry parishes, across the border in LA) are a weird beast all their own. But as a state, I would love to hear of one that is more bizarrely restrictive of alcohol than Utah.
I won’t argue with them being the most bizarre (although Pennsylvania might give them a run for their money), but part of what’s so weird about them is that most of the rules that might have actually prevented someone from drinking are gone and all that’s left is the weird ritual and rules that make things difficult for bar owners.
There’s several other states that have the “only weak beer in grocery stores” rule, but Utah is actually more generous in doing it by weight instead of volume, so it’s 4.0% vs. Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, etc’s 3.2%. There’s also lots of states that don’t sell ANY alcohol outside of standalone liquor stores, have absolute limits on ABV, container and package sizes, cold beer sales, even more restrictive liquor sales hours, etc. And that’s not even including many states that allow even more restrictive laws on the county and municipal level up to and including complete prohibition.
A lot of states have weird liquor laws. Saying which ones are “the most restrictive” is going to be a bit subjective and depend on your preferred drinking M.O. but at least IMHO and in my experience Utah is no longer exceptionally restrictive. They’re definitely one of the more restrictive ones, but there’s probably a good dozen other states that are in the same ballpark.