Creating a new politics of freedom doesn’t require constant hostility and opposition. In the case of marijuana, an object is to end stigmatization.

This movement is making telling progress: state after state and local governments are making marijuana legal. As is true of life: do something big and there must be problems.

But telling people that legal pot is especially strong and may not be fun is very different from saying pot is dangerous and shouldn’t be used. In fact, some doctors have a specialized knowledge and prescribe pot to alleviate unpleasant symptoms. Pot, for many people, relieves insomnia or negative feelings like anxiety.

Publications like Marijuana Moment that track news about pot regularly publicize studies that are balanced and even recommend pot. Ashley Bradford from Georgia Institute of Technology recently completed a study showing that “in states where both medical and recreational marijuana are legal, fewer patients are filling prescriptions for medications used to treat anxiety,” like antipsychotics, benzodiazepines, and antidepressants. They found “consistent evidence that increased marijuana access is associated with reductions in benzodiazepine prescription fills.”

In other words, powerful medications that have a potential for addiction are no longer used. Symptoms are treated by pot. Such research is spreading, and it is now commonplace to concede that marijuana has medical uses. Traditional researchers are still trying to tie marijuana use to bad outcomes, but research like that done by Ashley Bradford are finding positive outcomes.

It should come as no surprise that there are good and bad results. That is the way the real world works.

But getting researchers to look at the good as well as the bad is a continuing struggle.

Of course, users still enjoy getting high and find, for example, that pot enhances sex. Although I must admit I have seen no studies on pot and erectile dysfunction. I am quite confident that users can make up their own minds about these pleasures.

At 82, after 65 years of marijuana use, I got stoned over Christmas. It was a disaster. My sense of balance was challenged, and it took over a week for the ill effects to dissipate. Without any physical withdrawal, I concluded no more pot; I had reached a point where it harmed me rather than pleased me.

This is a world of difference from the harsh, even hostile, atmosphere that surrounded pot when I was young. Being mean was not even recognized. Frequently we were told that only dopes do dope. Telling a person that they are stupid undermines confidence and agency. It certainly doesn’t help a person gain control of their lives.

We are in a new era, where it is recognized that some people use it, others don’t, just as at the start of the century it finally became clear that some people are LGBTQ+ and others aren’t. What is important is doing no harm to users and treating marijuana users as sinners is harmful.

In fact, so preposterous were the arguments against marijuana that it became widely assumed that pot was natural and therefore even good for you. It is certainly true that some weed smokers saw their lives improve, but it is equally true that pot can provoke anxiety, vomiting. In other words, don’t turn a pleasure into a general rule for everyone.

The most dangerous drug is obviously alcohol, and we don’t tell everybody, “Drink.”

The big task facing us is helping people who use hard drugs like heroin and meth believe they can face problems however painful without using these drugs. It is equally important to recognize that somebody who gets high on a weekend night isn’t necessarily harmed. They should probably have access to pharmaceutically manufactured drugs where their potency and effects are carefully calculated. Once again, we face the rule that some people take drugs even when it causes them problems while others simply find it a moment of pleasure. In other words, society should give people the freedom to discover.

Freedom is about letting doctors and the public find a healthy path. One rule doesn’t fit everybody. In short, we must spread knowledge and avoid setting rules that harm people who are doing nothing wrong.