Emily Bazelon

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.

David, can you talk a little bit about that?

I feel like everybody knows at least one person for whom this is true, right?

It just seems like a pretty common phenomenon.

So, David, you explained the position that the editorial board took in 2014.

Our current editorial says governments can enact policies that keep the drug legal and try to curb its biggest downsides.

So we're looking for this kind of middle ground of regulation.