This is underscored when I take a photo of a “buy weed from women” stall on my way home from a work function (I’ve got my glad rags on) and a card is pressed into my hand assuring me that the lady will deliver bougie edibles discreetly to me and my fancy friends, if we have a naughty hankering.

The fact that marijuana use is still a class indicator post-legalisation is surprising. Why has the free market not delivered a champagne equivalent for status stoners? The class stratification points to some of the flaws in the logic of legalisation, at a time when the same arguments are being presented in Australia.

One of the strongest arguments made by US advocates was that legalising marijuana would reduce the needless incarceration of minorities. The Centre for American Progress argued that “discriminatory enforcement of marijuana laws is one reason that black and Latino Americans make up two-thirds of the US prison population despite only comprising 12 per cent and 17 per cent of the US population, respectively”.

But Fordham University criminal justice expert John Pfaff pointed out as far back as 2018 that incarceration for marijuana possession was only a tiny part of America’s over-incarceration problem, because arrests didn’t usually result in prison terms.

It looks like marijuana advocates might have been guilty of pushing their favourite solution, instead of working harder to diagnose the actual problem.

Another part of the argument for legalisation – that it would become taxable and therefore a boon to state’s bottom line – also hasn’t quite worked out as planned. There is now a legal market for taxed marijuana and an illegal market for tax-free, and therefore cheaper, weed. So just last month, New York passed laws to crack down on illegal sales.

This will supposedly ensure the safety of the community, as only licensed product will be available, and it will support employment and state revenue. But now you can again get arrested for possessing weed, so even the benefit of reduced policing has evaporated.

Given that Australia’s movement to legalise cannabis, supported by the Australian Greens and the Liberal Democrats, relies on the same arguments the US did to push legalisation, these outcomes are worth monitoring. If the aim is to reduce minority incarceration and save money on policing, maybe legalising pot isn’t the way to go. That’s not to say it shouldn’t be legalised. For crying out loud, not everything that adults do for fun needs to cure what ails us, socially or individually.

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Which brings us to my purchases. Plagued by jetlag-related insomnia one night, I ate a peach-flavoured gummie. And when that didn’t work, another. And another. Pro-tip: it turns out there are plenty of psychoactive ingredients – but those ingredients don’t necessarily help you sleep. Instead, I lay there incapacitated, locked in my brain while my psyche carried out a white-knuckle performance review of my life, retrospective to at least my early 20s. It hasn’t been all bad. But on balance, it’s probably been better since I gave up toking and started working to afford champagne.

Parnell Palme McGuinness is managing director strategy and policy at award-winning campaigns firm Agenda C. The company was engaged to work for a Liberal Party MP during the federal election. She has also worked for the German Greens.

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