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N.Y. Times endorses marijuana legalization

The New York Times editorial board endorsed the repeal of federal law banning marijuana use on Saturday, a landmark moment in the decades-long fight for legalization.

The Times is also rolling out an interactive six-part series with more editorials discussing issues related to marijuana use. In the first interactive editorial, which turns the stars of the American flag into marijuana leaves as the user scrolls down, the editorial board argued that the ban on marijuana has caused “great harm on society just to prohibit a substance far less dangerous than alcohol.”

“There are no perfect answers to people’s legitimate concerns about marijuana use. But neither are there such answers about tobacco or alcohol, and we believe that on every level — health effects, the impact on society and law-and-order issues — the balance falls squarely on the side of national legalization,” the board wrote. “That will put decisions on whether to allow recreational or medicinal production and use where it belongs — at the state level.”

The Times is the biggest U.S. newspaper to endorse the legalization of marijuana. In recent years magazines like National Review and a few state newspapers like the Las Vegas Review Journal and the Star-Ledger Editorial Board have endorsed legalization.

The Times editorial board compared the 40-year federal ban on marijuana to the 13 years known as ‘prohibition’ when the government banned alcohol, “in which people kept drinking, otherwise law-abiding citizens became criminals and crime syndicates arose and flourished.”

The series, available at a section of the Times website dubbed “High Time,” will look at topics around the legalizing marijuana, such as federalism and the states and questions of health and safety. It will continue over the next several weeks.

Editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal said in a statement they wanted to deepen the engagement with readers with this series.

“These signed editorials explore a variety of issues critical to the national conversation about marijuana. We will continue to experiment in the future on different ways to use the power of the unsigned editorial, along with new and different ways to signal the author of other editorial articles,” Rosenthal said.

Hadas Gold is a reporter at Politico.