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…