“Cannabis is not for everyone. Adults should still have the freedom to decide whether it is right for them—just as they may decide whether to drink alcohol, take a prescribed medication or use neither.”
By Tiffany McElrath
Cannabis is not for everyone. Neither is alcohol. Neither are antidepressants, benzodiazepines or opioids. Every one of them can carry risks, cause side effects or be used irresponsibly.
Only one of them can still get me arrested simply for choosing it.
I live in Alabama, where adults may legally buy enough alcohol to drink themselves into oblivion. They may drink in front of their children, keep a fully stocked liquor cabinet at home and joke publicly about needing wine to survive parenthood. Unless their behavior becomes dangerous, the law generally treats their alcohol use as a personal decision.
To be clear, alcohol and prescription medications can also lead to arrest. A person can be charged with DUI, public intoxication or disorderly conduct when alcohol use results in dangerous or unlawful behavior. Possessing prescription medication without a valid prescription can also be illegal.
But that is not the comparison I am making. Those laws address dangerous conduct or unauthorized possession. Cannabis prohibition allows an otherwise responsible adult to be arrested for possession itself—even when that person is at home, harms no one and creates no threat to public safety.
An adult who discreetly uses cannabis at home after putting the children to bed is treated differently. That person may face arrest, a criminal record and potentially devastating consequences for employment, housing or child custody—not because anyone was harmed, but because the substance they chose remains illegal.
I am not defending becoming dangerously impaired while responsible for children. I am asking why responsible alcohol use is socially acceptable while responsible cannabis use is treated as evidence of criminality or parental unfitness.
This is personal for me. I have struggled with clinical depression and severe anxiety. At one point, I was prescribed Xanax and antidepressants. My experience was not pleasant. The medications made me extremely sleepy. I was knocked out early and unable to be present for my family. The antidepressants also destroyed my libido, which could have created serious intimacy problems in my marriage had I continued taking them.
Cannabis affected me differently. It helped ease some of my symptoms without leaving me completely sedated and disconnected from my life.
That is my experience, not a universal medical claim. Cannabis can impair judgment and coordination. Frequent or high-potency use can lead to dependence, and it may worsen anxiety or other mental-health symptoms in some people. It should be accurately labeled, kept away from children and treated like any other adult substance: responsibly.
But acknowledging those risks does not justify prohibition. It strengthens the case for legalization and regulation.
People deserve honest, evidence-based information about both the benefits and risks of cannabis so they can make informed decisions. That means leaving “Reefer Madness” exaggerations in the past, but it also means refusing to pretend cannabis is harmless. Adults should be able to discuss every reasonable treatment option with their healthcare providers. They should also be allowed to decide what they put into their own bodies without being jailed for conduct that harms no one else.
Our laws do not reflect a rational comparison of risks. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, excessive alcohol use is responsible for approximately 178,000 deaths in the United States each year. Yet alcohol remains legal, regulated and widely available.
Meanwhile, police made at least 218,152 marijuana-related arrests nationwide in 2025, according to FBI data. That number is an undercount because approximately 13 percent of law-enforcement agencies did not report arrest data.
Alabama reported 8,583 marijuana-possession arrests in 2025, the tenth-highest raw total in the country. But raw numbers do not account for the size of each state, so I looked at the same information on a per-capita basis—and the picture became even more striking.
FBI age data show that 8,242 of Alabama’s possession arrests involved adults. Compared with Alabama’s adult population of 4,075,161 in the Census Bureau’s 2025 estimates, that equals approximately 202 possession arrests for every 100,000 adults. After applying the same calculation to all 50 states, Alabama had the nation’s ninth-highest reported adult marijuana-possession arrest rate.
The consequences of prohibition now depend largely on geography. The same behavior that can saddle someone with an arrest and criminal record in Alabama is legal for adults in nearly half the country. Changing the state line does not make the conduct more dangerous. It merely changes who the government has chosen to punish.
Alabama’s medical-cannabis experience makes the contradiction even more obvious. State lawmakers approved a medical program in 2021, but patients waited more than five years for the first dispensary to open. Alabama’s first medical-cannabis dispensary opened on June 4 of this year, followed by a second location in August. Access remains extremely limited, and state law prohibits raw cannabis, smoking, vaping and conventional edible products.
During those five years, patients legally recognized as deserving access were still waiting while Alabama continued arresting people for cannabis possession.
That is not a coherent public-health policy. It is prohibition surviving long after its original justifications stopped making sense.
Legalization does not have to mean encouraging everyone to use cannabis. We do not need to pretend that every product is therapeutic or that every pattern of use is safe. We can establish age limits, require testing and accurate labels, restrict advertising to children, punish impaired driving and hold adults accountable when their behavior genuinely endangers someone.
What we should stop doing is destroying people’s lives merely because they chose cannabis.
Cannabis is not for everyone. Adults should still have the freedom to decide whether it is right for them—just as they may decide whether to drink alcohol, take a prescribed medication or use neither.
Regulate it. Educate people honestly about it. Keep it away from children. Punish genuinely dangerous behavior.
But stop treating responsible adults like criminals.
Tiffany McElrath is an Alabama writer, entrepreneur and former family caregiver who writes about personal freedom, mental health and the everyday consequences of public policy.
