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It’s Time for America to Admit That It Has a Marijuana Problem (NYT) [I do not endorse this editorial]

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https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/09/opinion/regulate-legalized-marijuana.html

Thirteen years ago, no state allowed marijuana for recreational 
purposes. Today, most Americans live in a state that allows them to buy 
and smoke a joint. President Trump continued the trend toward 
legalization in December by loosening federal restrictions.

This editorial board has long supported marijuana legalization. In 2014, 
we published a six-part series that compared the federal marijuana ban 
to alcohol prohibition and argued for repeal. Much of what we wrote then 
holds up — but not all of it does.

At the time, 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.

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.
Surging pot use

Number of U.S. residents consuming marijuana, by frequency of use per month

Source: Jonathan Caulkins (Carnegie Mellon), based on National Survey on 
Drug Use and Health

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

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. Bystanders 
have also been hurt, including by people driving under the influence of pot.

America should not go back to prohibition to fix these problems. The war 
on marijuana brought its own costs. Every year, authorities arrested 
hundreds of thousands of Americans for marijuana possession. The people 
who suffered the legal and financial consequences were 
disproportionately Black, Latino and poor. A society that allows adults 
to use alcohol and tobacco cannot sensibly arrest people for marijuana 
use. We oppose the nascent efforts to re-criminalize the drug, such as a 
potential ballot initiative in Massachusetts this year that would ban 
recreational sales and home growing.

Yet there is a lot of space between heavy-handed criminal prohibition 
and hands-off commercial legalization. Much as the United States 
previously went too far in banning pot, it has recently gone too far in 
accepting and even promoting its use. Given the growing harms from 
marijuana use, American lawmakers should do more to regulate it. The 
most promising approach is one popularized by Mark Kleiman, a drug 
policy scholar who died in 2019. He described it as “grudging 
toleration.” Governments can enact policies that keep the drug legal and 
try to curb its biggest downsides. Culture and social norms can play an 
important role, too.

The larger point is that a society should be willing to examine the 
real-world impact of any major policy change and consider additional 
changes in response to new facts. In the case of marijuana, the recent 
evidence offers reason for Americans to become more grudging about 
accepting its use.

Over the past several decades, supporters of marijuana legalization 
often called for a strategy of “legalize and regulate.” It is a smart 
approach. Unfortunately, the country has pursued the first part of it 
while largely ignoring the second.

We want to emphasize that occasional marijuana use is no more a problem 
than drinking a glass of wine with dinner or smoking a celebratory 
cigar. Many Americans find it enjoyable to smoke a joint or eat an 
edible, with friends or alone. Some people with serious illnesses have 
found relief with marijuana. Adults should have the freedom to use it.

Still, any product that brings both pleasures and problems requires a 
balancing act, and marijuana falls into this category. Yes, it is safer 
than alcohol and tobacco in some ways, but it is not harmless. The 
biggest concern is excessive use. At least one in 10 people who use 
marijuana develops an addiction, a similar share as with alcohol. Even 
some who do not develop an addiction can still use it too much. People 
who are frequently stoned can struggle to hold a job or take care of 
their families. “As marijuana legalization has accelerated across the 
country, doctors are contending with the effects of an explosion in the 
use of the drug and its intensity,” a New York Times investigation 
concluded in 2024. “The accumulating harm is broader and more severe 
than previously reported.”

Jennifer Macaluso, a hairdresser in Illinois, experienced these harms. 
She turned to marijuana to treat severe migraines, and the drug helped 
at first. After months of use, though, she started getting sick. Her 
nausea and vomiting became so bad that she had to stop working. Only 
after months of seeing doctors did one finally confirm marijuana was the 
problem. “Why don’t more doctors know about it?” she told The Times. 
“Why didn’t anyone ever mention it to me?”

Part of the answer is the power of Big Weed. For-profit marijuana 
companies, made possible by legalization, have a financial incentive to 
mislead the public about what they are selling. Marijuana and CBD 
companies have made false claims that their products can treat cancer 
and Alzheimer’s. Others have sold products, such as “Trips Ahoy” and 
“Double Stuf Stoneo,” in packages that mimic snacks for children. The 
companies’ executives know they can increase profits by downplaying the 
harms of frequent use: More than half of industry sales come from the 
roughly 20 percent of customers known as heavy users.

The legal pot industry grew to more than $30 billion in U.S. sales in 
2024, close to the total annual revenue of Starbucks. As the industry 
has grown, it has increased lobbying of state and federal lawmakers, and 
it has won some big victories. Marijuana companies, not casual smokers, 
are the biggest winners of Mr. Trump’s decision to reclassify the drug 
from Schedule I to Schedule III. The change will increase the profits of 
these businesses by causing the tax code to treat them more favorably. 
This does not qualify as grudging toleration.

A better approach would acknowledge that many people end up worse off 
when they start to use marijuana more frequently. The goal should not be 
elimination. It should be to slow the recent rise, and perhaps partly 
reverse it, while acknowledging that many people use marijuana safely 
and responsibly. Alcohol and tobacco offer a useful framework. Both are 
legal with limitations, including relatively high taxes, open-container 
laws and regulations on alcohol and nicotine levels. The goal is to 
balance personal freedom and public health.

Marijuana, however, is less regulated in several crucial ways. The 
federal government taxes alcohol and tobacco, for example, but not 
marijuana. And increases in tobacco taxes have been a major reason that 
its use has declined during the 21st century, with profound health benefits.

The first step in a strategy to reduce marijuana abuse should be a 
federal tax on pot. States should also raise taxes on pot; today, state 
taxes can be as low as a few additional cents on a joint. Taxes should 
be high enough to deter excessive use, on the scale of dollars per 
joint, not cents. (Federal alcohol taxes, which have failed to keep pace 
with inflation since the 1990s, should rise, too.)

An advantage of taxes is that they fall much more on heavy users than 
casual smokers. If a joint cost $10 instead of $5, it would mean a lot 
of extra money for someone now smoking multiple joints a day and may 
change that person’s behavior. It would not be a big burden for someone 
who smokes occasionally.

A second step should be restrictions on the most harmful forms of 
marijuana, which would also be similar to regulations for alcohol and 
tobacco. Today’s cannabis is far more potent than the pot that preceded 
legalization. In 1995, the marijuana seized by the Drug Enforcement 
Administration was around 4 percent THC, the primary psychoactive 
compound in pot. Today, you can buy marijuana products with THC levels 
of 90 percent or more. As the cliché goes, this is not your parents’ 
weed. It is as if some beer brands were still sold as beer but contained 
as much alcohol per ounce as whiskey.

Not surprisingly, greater THC potency has contributed to more addiction 
and illness. The appropriate response is both to make illegal any 
marijuana product that exceeds a THC level of 60 percent and to impose 
higher taxes on potent forms of pot, much as liquor is taxed more 
heavily than beer and wine.

Third, the federal government should take action on medical marijuana. 
Decades of studies on the drug have proved disappointing to its 
boosters, finding little medical benefit. Yet many dispensaries claim, 
without evidence, that marijuana treats a host of medical conditions. 
The government should crack down on these outlandish claims. It should 
issue a clear warning to dispensaries that falsely promise cures and 
then close those that do not comply.

The federal government needs to be part of these solutions. Leaving 
taxes and regulations to the states threatens to create a race to the 
bottom in which people can cross state lines to buy their pot. Congress 
can set a floor, as it has done, however inadequately, with alcohol and 
tobacco, and states can build on it as they choose.

The unfortunate truth is that the loosening of marijuana policies — 
especially the decision to legalize pot without adequately regulating it 
— has led to worse outcomes than many Americans expected. It is time to 
acknowledge reality and change course.

-- 
Joel W. Crump

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It’s Time for America to Admit That It Has a Marijuana Problem (NYT) [I do not endorse this editorial] "Joel W. Crump" <joelcrump@gmail.com> - 2026-02-10 21:13 -0500
  Re: It’s Time for America to Admit That It Has a Marijuana Problem (NYT) [I do not endorse this editorial] "Joel W. Crump" <joelcrump@gmail.com> - 2026-02-10 21:49 -0500
  Re: It’s Time for America to Admit That It Has a Marijuana Problem (NYT) [I do not endorse this editorial] Bobbie Sellers <bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com> - 2026-02-10 21:55 -0800
    Re: It’s Time for America to Admit That It Has a Marijuana Problem (NYT) [I do not endorse this editorial] "Joel W. Crump" <joelcrump@gmail.com> - 2026-02-11 02:45 -0500
      Re: It’s Time for America to Admit That It Has a Marijuana Problem (NYT) [I do not endorse this editorial] Bobbie Sellers <bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com> - 2026-02-12 16:00 -0800
        Re: It’s Time for America to Admit That It Has a Marijuana Problem (NYT) [I do not endorse this editorial] "Joel W. Crump" <joelcrump@gmail.com> - 2026-02-13 11:39 -0500
          Re: It’s Time for America to Admit That It Has a Marijuana Problem (NYT) [I do not endorse this editorial] Bobbie Sellers <bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com> - 2026-02-13 09:43 -0800

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