One of the most famous quotes about Cincinnati, my hometown, is apocryphal: “When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Cincinnati because it’s always 20 years behind the times,” allegedly said Mark Twain (or George Bernard Shaw . . . or Will Rogers . . . ). Whoever said (or didn’t say) it, the quip captures something about the city’s relatively old-fashioned nature, at least by the standard of modern municipalities, and definitely well describes Ohio itself.
Which is why recreational marijuana has been legal in Ohio since only December 2023, well after cultural vanguards initially pushed it. Ohio is thus less far along in the process that may eventually lead legalizing jurisdictions to regret what they have done. In City Journal, Seth Barron notes that K2, a synthetic cannabinoid, has been implicated in several high-profile instances of public disorder in New York City over the past few years. Recreational marijuana became legal in New York State in 2021. Legalization advocates argue that their preferred policies decrease the use of synthetic cannabis products. But Barron, citing these episodes, counters that legalization in New York may actually have increased its availability.
Barron, moreover, finds it unclear whether “regular” marijuana is benign:
Marijuana has been linked to the early onset of schizophrenia in young people and is widely recognized for intensifying serious mental illness in those already affected. While advocates often claim that pot has a calming effect on users, they overlook the fact that this mellowing typically gives way to irritability, crankiness, and anger as the drug’s effects wear off. Traffic fatalities in New York have risen sharply since marijuana was legalized. Pot advocates dispute this trend, but data from Canada reveal a similar surge in cannabis-related car crashes in the period immediately following national legalization.
Marijuana legalization in New York has coincided with a sharp rise in overdose deaths from stronger drugs. In 2019, the city saw 20.7 overdose deaths per 100,000 residents; by 2023, that number had more than doubled, to 44 per 100,000. This staggering increase in drug-induced morbidity far outpaces the national rise of 45 percent during the same period, suggesting that marijuana legalization may condition people to view the use of harder drugs as more acceptable and closer to the boundary of “safe” to consume. In this sense, pot may act as a societal “gateway drug.”
Unfortunately, it will take more time and evidence to get New York to understand fully what it has done. If Cincinnati and Ohio are earlier on the legalization timeline than New York, it could take even longer. That is, unless the skeptical sentiments espoused by Cincinnati residents last summer are a sign that Ohioans are already realizing that the mainstreaming of marijuana is nothing to celebrate. If so, then maybe Cincinnati and Ohio could finally be ahead of the times — in reacting accordingly.