The New York Times is setting its sights on cannabis, again. Their primary concerns? Marijuana is too strong and too many people are using it.
However, a deeper dive into both issues reveals that there’s far more to the story than the NYT is reporting.
First, sensational claims of increases in marijuana’s potency are nothing new. In fact, the Times first began sounding the alarm about the prevalence of supposedly super-potent pot nearly five decades ago (‘A More Potent Marijuana Is Stirring Fresh Debates,’ December 28, 1978).
Today, a wide range of cannabis products are available in the marketplace – some of which, like concentrates – are far stronger than others. But uniquely high potent products like hashish have always existed. Typically, when consumers encounter higher strength marijuana, they ingest lesser quantities of it. This self-regulatory process is known as titration.
And higher strength marijuana products don’t dominate state-legal markets. Retail sales records from legal states show that most consumers tend to prefer and gravitate toward lesser strength products, like flower.
Third, unlike alcohol (which is readily available in many states in a variety of potencies, including highly-potent formulations like grain alcohol and absinthe), THC is incapable of causing lethal overdose, regardless of its potency or the quantity consumed.
Finally, nearly all state-legal markets impose limits on certain products’ potency or on the total amount of THC permissible per single serving. This trend speaks to one of the primary advantages of legalization. It provides governments with the ability to oversee the market, establish regulations and best practices for those who participate in it, and sanction those who don’t play by the rules.
The New York Times is also raising the alarm over a reported uptick in the percentage of people suffering from so-called ‘cannabis use disorder.’ But context is key here.
People are defined as suffering from CUD if they meet two out of 11 possible criteria. Notably, these diagnostic criteria have been revised on multiple occasions during the past four decades, making comparisons with previous years’ data murky at best.
Included among the criteria are ‘withdrawal’ and ‘tolerance,’ two experiences that are typically associated with more habitual use. Importantly, no exceptions to these criteria are made for the tens of millions of patients who consume cannabis regularly for therapeutic purposes, almost all of whom are improperly classified as experiencing the ‘disorder’ under the current standards. By contrast, patients taking opioids medically are not defined as suffering from ‘opioid use disorder,’ even if they meet both criteria.
More importantly, the real-world relevance of CUD is undercut by the federal government's own substance abuse treatment data. According to 2026 data published by the US Department of Health, the percentage of Americans seeking drug treatment for cannabid has declined steadily for the last half-decade. By contrast, more than four times as many people are admitted to treatment annually for alcohol use disorder. Remarkably, those numbers have continued to climb steadily despite historically low rates of overall alcohol consumption.
Also ignored by the Times is the fact that adult-use legalization is not associated with any uptick in cannabis use by young people. Rather, the opposite is true. Since states began legalizing and regulating cannabis markets, teens’ use of cannabis has fallen to all-time lows, proving once again that taking products off the streetcorner and placing them behind the counter is the best way to keep them out of the hands of young people.
Unfortunately, none of these points are apparent in the NYT’s largely one-sided cannabis coverage. By contrast, the Times’ editors take a very different tack when discussing alcohol – acknowledging its very real health risks while almost waxing philosophical that fewer Americans are consuming it (‘What Else Do We Lose When People Give Up Booze?’ August 3).
In doing so, the Times anti-cannabis bias becomes even more apparent. Its readers should expect better.
Paul Armentano is the Deputy Director of NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.