By Jim Geraghty
Tuesday, February 10, 2026
It’s always a good day when the New York Times editorial
board catches up to our Charlie Cooke.
Back in November, Charlie wrote a typically insightful
and well-thought-out magazine piece lamenting that “marijuana
legalization is a good idea with bad consequences”:
The United States
has some of the greatest and most interesting cities in the world — New York,
Chicago, San Francisco — and, over the last five or so years, almost all of
them have become unpleasant to walk around in thanks to the ubiquitous smell of
weed. Truly, it is everywhere — including, most distressingly, wafting through
open-air restaurants and sidewalk cafés. There is a reason that the colloquial
name for marijuana is “skunk,” and there is a reason that one tries to avoid
skunks: They are not, in any circumstance, nice to be around. . . .
Nobody seems to
believe that the omnipresent smell of weed is the inevitable consequence of
their viewpoint. And they’re right: It’s not. Toleration of the public
consumption of marijuana — whether explicit or implicit — is a choice that
exists wholly independently of the underlying legal status of the drug. Indeed,
when one stops to think about it for a moment, it’s rather peculiar that we
have ended up in this position in the first instance. The go-to comparison for
cannabis is alcohol. And, in almost every major city in the United States, it
is illegal to drink alcohol on the street. How can it possibly be the case that
we are more permissive toward a drug that has just been legalized than toward
the one that has been a mainstay of our culture (including during Prohibition!)
since the beginning of the republic?
We could have just put piles of burning tires
interspersed throughout the downtowns of major U.S. cities and achieved the
same olfactory effect.
Charlie also pointed out the absurdity that a culture
that has effectively banned tobacco smoking in every public space is now
completely fine with smoking marijuana in those same public spaces. A major
argument that drove the ban on tobacco smoking in public places was the danger
of secondhand
smoke. Apparently, both the broader public and most lawmakers have decided
that when it comes to marijuana smoking, we’re just not going to worry about
that sort of thing.
In February 2024 the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention addressed the issue of secondhand smoke for marijuana:
Secondhand
cannabis smoke contains many of the same toxic and cancer-causing chemicals
found in tobacco smoke and some in higher amounts
Secondhand
cannabis smoke also contains tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the compound
responsible for most of cannabis’s psychoactive effects (or the “high”). THC
can be passed to infants and children through secondhand smoke, and people
exposed to secondhand cannabis smoke can experience psychoactive effects, such
as feeling high. Recent studies have found strong associations between reports
of having someone in the home who uses cannabis (e.g., a parent, relative, or
caretaker) and the child having detectable levels of THC.
American public life would be better if more leaders of
institutions could come out and say, “Hey, I got that decision wrong.” The editors of the New York Times did that Monday:
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.
It is now clear
that many of these predictions were wrong. 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.
If those 18 million Americans who use marijuana nearly
daily were to form their own state, they would be the fifth largest, ranking
between New York and Pennsylvania.
More than 61
million Americans used marijuana at some point in 2024, including almost 26
percent of high school seniors. Almost 32 percent of first-time marijuana users
in the past year were between the ages of twelve and 17. I seem to recall legalization proponents insisting that legalizing marijuana
would reduce its use by teens, because “permitting sales in a regulated
environment would detract from the illicit market and minimize youth access.”
The Times editorial board continues:
This wider use has
caused a rise in addiction and other problems. Each year, nearly 2.8 million
people in the United States suffer
from cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, which causes severe vomiting and
stomach pain. More people have also ended up in hospitals with marijuana-linked paranoia and
chronic psychotic disorders.
In these discussions, it’s common to find intense
disagreement over whether marijuana is addictive or can lead to psychotic
disorders, with some people citing their experiences of trying it years ago and
never becoming addicted or having bad reactions. But we should not be surprised
that different human beings with different body chemistries can experience
dramatically different reactions to a psychotropic drug. Research on Hunting Four Horsemen was an eye-opening exercise in
learning how much human beings’ bodies and body chemistry can differ; there are
groups of human beings who are extremely resistant to anthrax
and malaria. The “Baiju sea nomads” of the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia can hold their breath
underwater for more than five minutes.
One young American might find marijuana addictive, while
another does not, and our policies regarding weed ought to be crafted with that
in mind.
Keep in mind, a decent number of people who use marijuana
are getting behind the wheel stoned out of their gourd. A December Washington Post op-ed by Keith Humphreys, a
professor of psychiatry at Stanford University, and Beau Kilmer, a co-director
of the Rand Drug Policy Research Center, reported:
Third,
policymakers and advocates in many states did not follow up marijuana
legalization with adequate regulations for the industry they created, the
higher potency products it produced or the aggressiveness or accuracy with
which those products were marketed. How states would detect and deter
cannabis-impaired driving is one of many policy problems that did not receive
sufficient thought.
The consequences
are easy to see. A 2024 survey indicated that at least 11.7 million people in the United States had driven under
the influence of cannabis in the prior year. That’s not far below the 14.2 million estimated to have driven under the influence
of alcohol. Another national study found that in the month before being
surveyed, 13 percent of high-school student drivers had driven when
they had been using cannabis.
One survey published in October found that more than 40 percent
of “drivers who died in motor vehicle collisions tested positive for active
delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in their system, with average blood levels
far exceeding those considered to cause impairment.” Another study
from 2022 found “legalization of the recreational use of marijuana was
associated with a 6.5 percent increase in injury crash rates and a 2.3 percent
increase in fatal crash rates, but the subsequent onset of retail marijuana
sales did not elicit additional substantial changes.”
Oh, and non-users may not have noticed that dispensaries
and weed marketers are apparently rife with nonsense claims about the health benefits from marijuana:
Dispensaries
operating under the brand of another leading company, Cookies, have promoted
“powerful medical benefits,” including “cancer fighting” qualities. A
cannabis-infused chocolate bar was, until recently, described as containing
properties “beneficial to those suffering” from glaucoma, bacterial infections
and Huntington’s disease, a devastating genetic illness.
More than a decade
after states began legalizing recreational marijuana, businesses are enticing
customers with unproven health claims, while largely escaping rigorous
oversight. A New York Times review of 20 of the largest brands found that most
were selling products with such claims, potentially violating federal and state
regulations. And as companies compete, potency has gone up — with some products
advertised as having as much as 99 percent THC — and prices have gone down. . .
.
The Times examined
product listings on Weedmaps — a major cannabis e-commerce website — posted for
20 of the country’s top-selling cannabis brands. Of those, 16 had products that
potentially violated F.D.A. rules, because the descriptions included health
claims.
They invoked
dozens of conditions, including depression, anxiety, insomnia, inflammation,
post-traumatic stress disorder, swelling, migraines, cramping, hypertension,
arthritis, muscle spasms, mood swings, asthma, anorexia, P.M.S. and attention
deficit hyperactivity disorder. . . .
Legal marijuana in the U.S. is now a $47
billion industry. In the state of Massachusetts alone, retailers recorded 46.3 million transactions in 2025.
We, the American public, have been on the receiving end
of a bait and switch. We were told that mere decriminalization of marijuana, or
use in medical prescriptions, was not enough. We were told that legalization
and the development of a commercial weed industry would solve states’ budget
problems, create jobs, and have no serious harmful effect on children or teens.
We were assured that producers, marketers, sellers, and adult users would be
responsible, know their limits, and recognize the likely consequences of their
actions.
The editors would likely disapprove if I directly quoted
the great
legal mind Vinny Gambini.
Instead, we’ve got a massive new industry, with plenty of lobbyists at the federal level and state
level. We were assured that this new industry would be
appropriately overseen and regulated by the states, but clearly that isn’t
happening, and the state governments are now de facto partners in the business,
collecting $25 billion in tax revenues. We can all see the
harmful effects of people who can’t control their use of it and grow addicted,
but . . . those frequent users are now a reliable source of tax revenue for the
state.
Up until late last year, under federal law, marijuana was
a Schedule I drug, “defined as drugs with no currently accepted medical use, a
high potential for abuse, and a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug
under medical supervision.” In December the Trump administration reclassified it as a
Schedule III drug, with “potential for abuse less than the drugs or other
substances in Schedules I and II, a currently accepted medical use in treatment
in the United States, and a potential for moderate or low physical dependence
or high psychological dependence in the event of drug abuse.”
As the Washington Post editorial board wrote at the time:
Rescheduling would
be a tax windfall for marijuana businesses currently unable to claim deductions
for operating expenses, such as rent, payroll and marketing. A Schedule III
classification allows sellers to write those costs off on their taxes. Anyone interested
in helping cannabis corporations make more money — and seeing a lot more
advertising for their products — will be thrilled.
Moreover, its
redesignation would mean regulators at the Food and Drug Administration lack
any authority to address the drug’s many negative consequences.
The Post argued, “Remove the federal government’s
restrictions and let the states sort it out.” Eh, based on what we’ve seen so
far, it’s hard to feel all that confident in state governments’ abilities to do
all that sorting.
Yesterday, the New York Times editorial board
concluded the answer was a new federal tax on marijuana. Yes, if you tax
something, you usually get less of it, but that doesn’t seem like an adequate
response to the scale of the problem, either. It just creates another level of
government that gets to collect cash from potheads and white guys with
dreadlocks.
I like libertarians. I could live very happily in a world
or country run by libertarians. But the heart of the libertarian philosophy is
the notion that human beings are responsible adults who — and this is the
important part — accept the consequences of their own actions and recognize the
likely consequences of their actions on others.
The problem is that every day we encounter examples of
people who don’t. If you get behind the wheel stoned, you are ignoring the
likely consequences of your actions on others.
One of my favorite pieces of reporting from National Review in recent years was Ryan Mills’s
work out in Portland, Ore., where advocates of the decriminalization of
hard drugs started living with the consequences of that policy and determined
they had made a terrible mistake, with deadly consequences. We must wonder if
Americans are belatedly recognizing that the development of a legal weed
industry has offered a more widespread but less severe version of that grim
outcome — and similar lessons to the ones that Portland learned the hard way.
ADDENDUM: In case you missed it yesterday, Noam and Valeria Chomsky have served up some absolute hot
garbage excuses for their “deep and sincere and everlasting” friendship
with Jeffrey Epstein.
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