Emily Bazelon

Hermann, let's start with you.

Also, the strains of weed have become so much stronger.

Like as someone who rarely actually uses it or smokes it, I feel like with edibles, I have to be really careful and start with like a really small amount.

Just assume that it's going to be way too strong or else I'll wake up in the morning and still some kind of fog.

I won't ask either of you to divulge your personal pot use unless you feel like chiming in.

Yeah.

OK, let's turn to our editorial and the ways in which the country has changed that kind of set up this stance that we decided to take.

So 13 years ago, there was no state that allowed recreational use of marijuana.

And back in 2014, the editorial board published a whole series about legalization.

David, what did the issue look like then?

Hermann, you have been writing about drugs and drug policy for more than a decade.

How has your thinking about marijuana shifted in that time?

For me, what's been really unexpected is the health effects.

I just didn't understand that.

I mean, I remember in high school learning untruly that you couldn't be addicted to marijuana.

And I think that idea and the kind of culture, the like pretty benign culture of pot made me think that, yeah.

I didn't give a lot of thought to regulation, right?

I mean, there's always a distance from saying that something shouldn't be criminal anymore to deciding exactly what kind of place it's going to have in society.

And I think that's what we were wrestling with as we've been working on this editorial.

And it was kind of tricky for us to figure out how to frame it.