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The half-century campaign to legalize marijuana was a big success. Until now.
A handful of billionaire donors and their advisors guided the movement. They were persistent and pragmatic.
As the founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, Ethan Nadelmann led the movement to legalize marijuana in the US. So he felt a surge of pride when New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, signed legislation to make marijuana legal in the state.
Nadelmann doesn’t ordinarily smoke weed–he prefers edibles–but when he got the news, he left his apartment on Manhattan’s upper West Side, found his way to a bench by Central Park and lit up a joint. “Just so I could experience the freedom,” he says.
It was March 31, 2021–a landmark moment for the campaign to reform marijuana laws that had begun more than a half century earlier. That day, New York became the 15th state to permit the recreational use of marijuana, and, importantly, one of the very few to do so in a way designed to remedy the harms caused by the war on drugs.
U.S. public support for the legalization of marijuana has risen from just 12 percent in 1969 to 70 percent last year, according to Gallup. Today, 74 percent of Americans live in the 40 states where marijuana is legal for either medical or recreational use or both.
“We’ve won the hearts and minds of the American people,” says Keith Stroup, a lawyer who founded the National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws, or NORML, back in 1971.
Stroup was a true pioneer. Early on, he could not find a single member of Congress to introduce legislation to legalize cannabis. Time and Newsweek refused to run NORML ads. His work laid a foundation for the changes to come.
This week, the Chronicle of Philanthropy published my story about the movement to reform marijuana laws in the US, the activists who made it happen and the handful of billionaires who financed the campaign. If you’re one of the tens of millions of Americans who regularly enjoy cannabis, you can thank these people next time you smoke, vape or consume an edible.
