by Rev. Mark Creech
RevMarkCreech.org
When The New York Times admits it was wrong, the nation should pay attention.
For years, the Times served as one of the loudest institutional cheerleaders for marijuana legalization. In 2014, its editorial board declared federal prohibition a “costly failure,” arguing that legalization would reduce crime, ease social inequities, and pose little risk to public health. Marijuana, the paper insisted, was largely benign.
That confidence has now collapsed.
In a striking editorial published this week, titled “It’s Time for America to Admit That It Has a Marijuana Problem,” the Times conceded that the country has gone “too far in accepting and even promoting” marijuana use. Legalization, it acknowledged, has produced far more harm than its advocates anticipated, driven largely by a dramatic increase in daily and near-daily use.
This reversal is astounding. But it is also overdue.
According to a 2024 Carnegie Mellon survey, approximately 18 million Americans now use marijuana daily or near-daily, a number that exceeds daily alcohol consumption. Between 1992 and 2022, daily marijuana use increased roughly 15-fold. These are not fringe users. This is habitual dependence on a national scale.
Even the Times now admits that cannabis is addictive, cognitively impairing, and far more potent than it once was. Average THC levels have climbed from about 4 percent in the mid-1990s to 20 percent or more today, with concentrates reaching 90 percent. This is not your parents’ pot.
The Medical Myth Is Crumbling
For years, legalization advocates leaned heavily on the claim that marijuana is “medicine.” But that claim, too, is unraveling.
A major new review published in JAMA, analyzing more than 2,500 scientific studies, found that evidence supporting most medical uses of cannabis is limited or insufficient. Outside a narrow set of FDA-approved cannabinoid medications, for chemotherapy-related nausea, appetite loss in HIV/AIDS, and rare pediatric seizure disorders, marijuana performs poorly in rigorous trials.
Dr. Michael Hsu of UCLA, the study’s lead author, put it plainly: there is a “significant gap between public perception and scientific evidence.”
In other words, marijuana is not the therapeutic panacea its boosters promised. Yet dispensaries continue to market it as a treatment for anxiety, depression, insomnia, PTSD, chronic pain, and more, often without credible evidence. Even the New York Times now calls for cracking down on these “outlandish claims.”
A Mental-Health and ER Crisis
The public-health consequences are no longer abstract.
Psychiatrists report sharp increases in cannabis-induced psychosis, paranoia, and mood disorders, particularly among young adults. High-potency marijuana has been linked to schizophrenia-like symptoms, bipolar disorder, and severe anxiety, often in individuals with no prior psychiatric history.
Emergency rooms are seeing the fallout.
One of the most alarming developments is Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome (CHS), a condition caused by long-term marijuana use that produces repeated bouts of violent nausea and vomiting. Social media has given it a grim nickname: “scromiting,” a combination of screaming and vomiting.
CHS now affects an estimated 2.8 million Americans annually and is so prevalent that the World Health Organization formally recognized it last year. Emergency physicians describe patients vomiting dozens of times a day, sometimes requiring hospitalization for dehydration. The only cure is complete cessation of marijuana use.
Here in North Carolina, doctors report seeing CHS cases weekly, particularly among young men. A statewide study found a 406 percent increase in CHS-related ER visits among adults aged 18-35 between 2016 and 2022. Cannabis ingestion-related ER visits among minors have surged 600 percent since 2019.
This is not harmless.
North Carolina at a Crossroads
Despite these warning signs, pressure to legalize continues.
In Congress, the MORE Act, which would deschedule marijuana nationwide and effectively end federal prohibition, is gaining momentum, with sponsors from 28 states. If passed, it would normalize marijuana at the federal level, expand commercial markets, and further entrench its use.
Closer to home, the North Carolina Senate has approved medical marijuana legislation, while the House has twice declined to take it up. That restraint has been wise.
There is little credible evidence that marijuana offers broad medical benefit, and growing evidence that it poses serious risks – especially to young people. Once legalized, regulatory “guardrails” tend to erode under commercial pressure, just as they have with alcohol, tobacco, and gambling.
Even the New York Times now warns that legalization without strict limits has led to “worse outcomes than many Americans expected.”
Reality Is Catching Up
Notably, the Times does not call for re-criminalization. Instead, it urges higher taxes, potency caps, and tighter regulation, an implicit admission that the original case for legalization failed.
That is a remarkable concession.
But for states like North Carolina, the lesson is simpler: don’t repeat the mistake.
Legalization has not delivered a healthier society. It has delivered addiction, psychiatric crises, ER overcrowding, and a new generation of dependent users exposed to ultra-potent drugs masquerading as wellness products.
The cultural tide may be shifting at last. When even the nation’s most influential newspaper admits that marijuana has become a serious public-health problem, lawmakers should pause, especially those still tempted to follow a fashionable but failing experiment.
The evidence is in. The warnings are clear. And North Carolina still has time to choose wisely.
