A Century Later, The New York Times Rejects the Anti-Pot Propaganda It Peddled

On Sunday The New York
Times officially
turned against marijuana prohibition, and this week it has
followed up on that historic editorial with a series of essays on
various aspects of the issue. Tuesday’s
installment, headlined “The Federal Marijuana Ban Is
Rooted in Myth and Xenophobia,” accurately describes the irrational
origins of that policy. But as I point out in my latest
Forbes column, the Times conspicuously
overlooks its own role in disseminating the propaganda underlying
the war on marijuana. Here is how the column begins:

According to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center,
54 percent of American adults support marijuana legalization.
That’s around 130 million people. It turns out that some of them
are members of the New York Times editorial
board, which on Sunday declared that “the federal
government should repeal the ban on marijuana.”

Given its timing, the paper’s endorsement of legalization is
more an indicator of public opinion than a brave stand aimed at
changing it. Andrew Rosenthal, editorial page editor at
the Times, told MSNBC’s
Chris Hayes that the new position was not controversial among the
paper’s 18 editorial writers and that when he raised the subject
with the publisher, Arthur Sulzberger, “He said, ‘Fine.’ I think
he’d probably been there before I was. I think I was there before
we did it.” Better late than never, I guess, although I confess
that seeing a New York Times editorial in favor
of legalizing marijuana briefly made me wonder if I’ve been wrong
about the issue all these years.

In their gratitude for the belated support of a venerable
journalistic institution, antiprohibitionists should not overlook
the extent to which the Times has aided and
abetted the war on marijuana over the years. That shameful history
provides a window on the origins of this bizarre crusade and a
lesson in the hazards of failing to question authority.

Read the whole thing.