The political economy of cannabis legalization: moral ideas and the limits of economic analysis

ABSTRACT This article is an essay. Its objective is to examine, from the point of view of normative economics, public policy regarding the legalization of cannabis for recreational use. There are conflicting moral ideas when analyzing the legalization and regulation of this market. It is also intended to highlight that this is a field of study in political economy. The main argument is that the analysis of market legalization must be normative, and empirical evidence derived from economic analysis is relevant to regulating the legalized market. The essay initially analyzes the expected functioning of the legal market and then presents the available empirical evidence. The essay also describes the central moral ideas underlying public health policy evaluations. The essay defends an alternative moral idea to the traditional ones, based on maximizing individual freedom that is restricted to the freedom of others and on the fact that consumers’ autonomy is limited. Finally, the discussion section speculates how tolerance could produce gains in mutual well-being. The discussion is fundamental in the results obtained from the paradoxes of Amartya Sen and Karl Popper. There are distributional conflicts around subjective perceptions of well-being. In this sense, the conflict would be dissipated by a win-win outcome in prevailing tolerance, implying a Kaldor-Hicks optimal status quo. However, this conclusion is speculative and suggests an agenda for theoretical and empirical research in economic analysis.

• Publication year

  2025

• Venue

  Brazilian Journal of Political Economy

• Publication date

  Unknown publication date

• Fields of study

  Not labeled

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1590/0101-31572025-3682
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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