Well, this has been a long time coming. But I suppose eventually even The New York Times has to admit their mistake.
Time to Acknowledge Reality’: The New York Times Warns America Has a ‘Marijuana Problem’
As errors go, this was something of a howler. The truth is that many in the treatment field were already howling about it more than a decade ago, throughout the debate over cannabis legalization. “You can’t just legalize the drug without regulating it,” they argued.
At the time, not enough people were listening.
Here’s a quote from the article:
“In 2014, we published a six-part series that compared the federal marijuana ban to alcohol prohibition and argued for repeal… supporters of legalization predicted that it would bring few downsides. In our editorials, we described marijuana addiction and dependence as ‘relatively minor problems.’ Many advocates went further and claimed that marijuana was a harmless drug that might even bring net health benefits. They also said that legalization might not lead to greater use.”
I recall hearing that nonsense repeatedly, including in the mainstream media. Yet even the distinguished editorial staff at the Times seems to have swallowed it, hook, line, and sinker.
I suppose some of them had smoked pot in college, like most folks of my acquaintance (including me). Their experience led them to believe the drug was harmless. That personal experience must have overridden contrary information from other sources.
As a result, the debate over legalization was conducted in an atmosphere I would characterize as “willful ignorance.” It reminded me of those presentations at medical conferences where “experts”, usually representing a particular Big Pharma firm, actively promoted the use of OxyContin to receptive audiences — insisting that, when used under medical supervision, opioids were not going to result in abuse or addiction.
An astonishingly naïve approach, given our millennia of experience with opioid abusers. And yet, many physicians seemed open to it.
From the NYT article: “It is now clear that many of these predictions were wrong. [Cannabis] Legalization has led to much more use. Surveys suggest that about 18 million people in the United States have used marijuana almost daily (or about five times a week) in recent years. That was up from around six million in 2012 and less than one million in 1992. More Americans now use marijuana daily than alcohol.”
Of course, there are those in the cannabis industry who will argue that this is actually a good outcome.
For commercial pot, at least, it probably is.
