As first published on Cultivated.
Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal — I should say, a newspaper that I admire and many friends work for or have worked for in the past — published an op-ed on cannabis legalization that missed the mark, for many reasons.
The piece claims that legalizing cannabis has been an abject disaster, and urges President Trump to stop federal cannabis reform in its tracks.
Here’s my response as the editor-in-chief of Cultivated Media and an advocate for truthful reporting.
Let’s dive in: The argument in the op-ed boils down to, “legal weed causes disorder,” which both the writer, Charles Lehman, and his organization, the right-wing Manhattan Institute, have been pushing on social media and in other outlets.
It’s not a strong argument. It’s polemic.
The first study linked in the piece — in which much of the research is cherry-picked — shows the opposite of the author’s claims: It found no significant association between cannabis use disorder and legalization. And other experts have said the definition of cannabis use disorder, which Lehman relies on to illustrate the evils of legalization, is too broad to be a useful diagnosis.
In fact, the vast majority of researchers say more studies are needed to generate useful conclusions about many of the claims in the piece, and that changes seen in traffic accidents, hospital admissions, and homelessness pre- and post- legalization may have more to do with increased population or other policy shifts rather than legalization itself.
Many of Lehman’s other claims don’t meet scrutiny as well. While it is true that legalization has not killed the illicit market, much of that is because of:
Federal bans on interstate commerce — cannabis can’t cross state lines so supply/demand is usually misaligned within states, leading …
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Author: Jeremy Berke / High Times
