Tyler Cowen, a renowned libertarian economist at George Mason University, recently wrote in The Free Press that his assumptions about the legalization of marijuana were wrong. He said, “I hardly know anyone who is happy with how this has turned out, and if I do, they may be too busy inhaling pot to express their opinions to me.”
Cowen explained, “Initially, I had the core libertarian intuition that consenting adults should be able to do with their own bodies as they wish. I have stayed at that point, but my intuition that this process would go smoothly has taken a real battering.”
His position has changed because of the unintended consequences of legalization, such as the rise in public marijuana use and car crashes due to impairment. He acknowledged that today’s marijuana is much stronger than it used to be. The National Institute on Drug Abuse reported that the potency of marijuana quadrupled between 1995 and 2022.
Cowen also pointed to how the legalization of marijuana has failed to displace the illicit market for marijuana. This has occurred in part because regulated marijuana is more expensive than unregulated tax-free marijuana.
Recognizing the shortfalls of legalization, he said that he now favors “a regime that gives a civil fine to anyone caught smoking or vaping marijuana in public.” He also favors giving people “better options for self-constraint,” given that they are vulnerable to addiction.
Notably, Cowen has become increasingly skeptical of legalization in recent years. In August 2024, he wrote in Bloomberg that the observed outcomes associated with legalization “stand in jarring contrast to what advocates promised: an end to black markets, safer marijuana and a better-protected user population.”
Cowen has joined a growing group of individuals who have begun to change their minds about legalization and realize that the policy has failed to deliver as promised. For example, in February 2026, the editorial board of The New York Times wrote, “The unfortunate truth is that the loosening of marijuana policies — especially the decision to legalize pot without adequately regulating it — has led to worse outcomes than many Americans expected.”