If someone would have told me 40 years ago that the Minnesota Legislature would someday legalize marijuana, I’d have told them that it would never happen.

I was a Nancy Reagan “Just Say No” kid back in the 1980s. We were taught that marijuana was bad, that people who smoked it were losers and druggies.

That upbringing carried over into my adult life. I’m proud to say that I’ve never smoked a joint and that I never will. I’ve never seen the appeal of getting high on a controlled substance.

The world has changed. I honestly don’t have enough 20-something friends to know how their generation feels about recreational marijuana. I don’t know enough people from the urban metro area to know what they think.

It’s possible that I’m a voice from the past. I’m maybe a middle-aged man who’s lived his entire life in Greater Minnesota who doesn’t see the other side of the issue.

I think there are concerns, however, that have been glossed over in the state media. The Star Tribune published an editorial calling it a failure to prohibit marijuana in the 21st century. Members of the DFL party said during the legislative debate that legalization was “long overdue.”

I question that. I question whether it’s wise to jump from the frying pan into the fire by making marijuana legal. It opens up a whole new set of issues. It opens up a can of worms.

The potential for hard core drug addiction is one reason. Research has shown that those who dabble and experiment as young people are likely to graduate to harder drugs.

They’re likely to need more of a hit to get the high they seek. They’ll probably connect with people in the illegal drug trade, people who will gladly take their money and turn them into loyal customers who come back repeatedly for their latest fix.

Legalization will only make those situations worse. One of the biggest challenges faced by alcoholics is that alcohol is perfectly legal. Millions of people consume it almost every day and never have a full blown addiction.

The alcoholic is the exception, the person who simply can’t handle it. We’re bound to have the exact same situation with people who can’t control their marijuana use.

It would truly be nice if we could always let people do things and use their own judgment. It would be nice if we could let drivers go through stop signs and red lights if there isn’t any traffic, with the idea that they’d all use good sense. The problem is that many people wouldn’t be sensible.

We have to consider how our teens will be affected by adults who aren’t sensible, who bend the rules with legalized marijuana. People in their early 20s often know teens, and often might furnish marijuana for them. It will be very difficult to monitor, very difficult to enforce unless someone complains.

Part of me still thinks that we were right back in the 1980s to call marijuana users losers and druggies. It was in some ways an attempt to exert positive peer pressure, a way to tell them to seek natural highs with sports, other school activities, church, youth groups and true friendships.

Mostly though I think it’s too bad that there wasn’t more of an attempt to reach them on a personal level. It’s too bad there wasn’t an effort to show them that they had choices. Many of them turned to people who let them do what they felt like doing, who at first glance appeared to be their real friends.

That negative peer pressure is sure to get worse with legalization. The state is creating a whole new dimension of enforcement, one that will carry a huge cost to taxpayers. I could come up with at least 100 things for which I’d rather have the state spend money than marijuana regulations, licensing and enforcement.

With all that in mind, I would have vetoed the legalization bill if I were Gov. Tim Walz. I would have sided with Republicans and vetoed it. I wouldn’t have cared if I made national headlines.

There are worse things to be called than a clean cut anti-dope governor. It’s probably going too far to call the bill’s supporters enablers, but I’d have felt like one had I backed the bill.

We’ll see how it all plays out. The state lottery and casino gambling have been well managed since they became facts of life, and there’s a possibility that legalized marijuana might fall into the same category. For now I’m still skeptical. I still think it might be better to “just say no”.

— Jim Muchlinski is a former reporter and contributor to the Marshall Independent