Politics
Addressing Cannabis Safety Issues Is A Strength, Not A Weakness, For The Legalization Movement (Op-Ed)
“Acknowledging these problems is not a concession to prohibition. Solving them is how we protect the future of cannabis access.”
By Steph Sherer, Americans for Safe Access
For much of the modern cannabis movement, raising concerns about safety has been politically complicated. Advocates have spent decades fighting exaggerated claims about cannabis harms, and opponents have been eager to turn every adverse event, regulatory failure or unanswered scientific question into an argument for prohibition.
That history created an understandable reflex: When someone raises a cannabis safety concern, defend cannabis. It also helps explain why cannabis policy debates often center on two opposing narratives. One side presents cannabis as uniquely dangerous and promotes prohibition or restriction as the answer. The other minimizes legitimate concerns out of fear of giving opponents ammunition.
Historically, medical cannabis policy has advanced by addressing public concerns. We have developed product-safety standards, improved patient and professional education, challenged government misinformation with evidence—including forcing the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to remove the “gateway drug” theory and other unsupported assertions from its materials—and fought to remove research barriers. Entrepreneurs have also built cannabis-specific infrastructure where traditional systems did not exist, from specialized laboratories and manufacturing equipment to services designed for the unique needs of the cannabis marketplace.
The takeaway is that facts, standards, research and practical solutions have advanced medical cannabis despite fearmongering.
That lesson matters now more than ever.
The future of cannabis access depends on our ability to distinguish between rhetoric designed to undermine access and legitimate questions that deserve real solutions. Confusing labels, contaminants in products, inconsistent dosing, accidental ingestion, impaired driving, youth access, inadequate professional education, gaps in testing, misinformation and barriers that push patients outside regulated systems are all real issues.
Acknowledging these problems is not a concession to prohibition. Solving them is how we protect the future of cannabis access.
We need to be able to say: Here is a problem. Here is what the evidence tells us. Here is what we do not yet know. And here is what we are doing about it.
Medical cannabis raises the stakes
The future of medical cannabis will depend on more than whether state or federal law permits a patient to obtain it. Integration into healthcare requires an infrastructure of trust.
Healthcare professionals need education. Patients need understandable information. Researchers need support to answer unresolved questions. Products need greater consistency and transparency. Regulators need standards that work in practice. Patients need ways to report problems and navigate discrimination. Businesses need incentives to exceed minimum requirements through a marketplace that rewards innovation.
The people and organizations building those systems today are helping define what medical cannabis will look like tomorrow.
Safety is a competitive advantage
The next stage of cannabis market development will not be built primarily around potency, novelty, branding and price. Companies that invest in transparency, usability, testing, quality, safety and consumer education are helping build the standards and infrastructure that a mature cannabis marketplace and the integration of cannabis into healthcare will require.
Addressing safety concerns should not be viewed simply as a compliance obligation. It can strengthen patient and consumer trust, distinguish responsible businesses, reduce preventable problems and show that the legal marketplace can respond to public concerns. Legitimacy requires accountability, professional standards, continuous improvement and a willingness to solve problems before regulators, journalists, consumers or class-action lawsuits force us to.
Opponents of cannabis reform are increasingly using legitimate cannabis safety concerns to argue for broader restrictions. Cannabis safety should not be a political weapon, and it should not be an uncomfortable subject cannabis communities avoid. It should be an area of innovation, collaboration, investment and competition.
The Backlash is Being Organized
Communities across America have legitimate questions about cannabis safety and public health. In 2024, the National Academies published Cannabis Policy Impacts Public Health and Health Equity, which documented mounting concerns and called for cannabis policies that protect the public from potential harms, including accidental ingestion, impaired-driving crashes, secondhand smoke and environmental impacts, while also protecting people who use cannabis from harm and ensuring access to dependency treatment when needed.
Public safety concerns are real and are no longer a fringe messaging problem. They are the foundation of an organized political backlash against cannabis access that is gaining steam.
Opposition campaigns are using public anxiety to portray current cannabis policies as failures and build support for a return to prohibition or more restrictive approaches. Their arguments increasingly focus on impaired driving and roadway safety, contaminated products in legal markets, emergency visits and accidental exposures, workplace safety and other legitimate concerns that deserve thoughtful responses.
Opponents are raising money around rescheduling and public fears, fueling support for aggressive enforcement proposals. Leadership in Congress is responding. They are organizing opposition to rescheduling and holding hearings linking cannabis safety concerns to criminal-enforcement and national-security narratives. At the state level, national organizations are backing ballot and referendum campaigns to overturn and restrict cannabis laws.
They have money, infrastructure, trusted messengers and a clear policy agenda.
Raising up problem-solvers
Many people are stepping up to address legitimate concerns about cannabis safety, but their work does not always make its way into the public debate. Every day, researchers are expanding the evidence base, patient advocates are identifying failures in healthcare and public policy, elected officials are pursuing workable reforms and organizations are creating better public education and professional training.
Companies and innovators are also tackling practical problems through safer storage, better dosing and measurement, improved product preservation, clearer testing and labeling information, whole-flower vaporization technology, sustainability efforts and tools for responding safely to uncomfortable THC overconsumption.
What we choose to celebrate and highlight signals what we value as a community. Focusing primarily on revenue, expansion, potency and stock prices while overlooking innovations that address patient, consumer, professional and community concerns is a missed opportunity to shape what comes next.
Recognition can help good ideas travel. It can bring attention to solutions that deserve investment, encourage companies to compete on safety as well as performance and show policymakers and the public that the cannabis community can confront difficult issues.
Help identify the work worth scaling
Our challenge is to identify solutions that are working and make them visible. That is why Americans for Safe Access created the first Cannabis Safety Awards. Across 18 categories, the awards are intended to shine a light on people, programs, products and innovations that identified a cannabis safety problem and decided to be part of the solution.
Our goal is not simply to hand out awards. It is to demonstrate to the media, policymakers and the public that concerns about integrating cannabis into healthcare and society are being heard and that the cannabis community is already helping address them.
Steph Sherer is the founder and executive director of Americans for Safe Access, which is organizing the 2026 Cannabis Safety Awards for which nominations are open through September 10.
