51. Airing Some Dirty Laundry in the World of Marijuana Scholarship

How Richard Bonnie and Charles Whitebread misread R.F. Smith's 1917 report on cannabis

Dear Readers,

I’m in Michigan. Shockingly, the sky is grey, the clouds are low, and there’s snow on the ground. But it’s quite warm for January, and beautiful in its own way.

I thought this post was done yesterday. And then, while taking a break from the road in Van Wert, Ohio, I decided that it was, as the kids say, a “fail.” It got WAY too deep in the weeds. It was a post that only a historian could love.

If you ever go to a historical conference, you will inevitably hear someone say the following: “I’d like to complicate what we think we know about this.” A mentor of mine once told me that he hated it when historians said that. “Why are you complicating it? You are supposed to be clarifying it!!!”

I mostly agree.

Though often our standard narratives about historical events or phenomena are just way too simple to even approach capturing the reality of it all. Originally, I wanted this post to demonstrate how important and interesting all of the complexity is. But it was getting dull, …