Step on any city subway, sidewalk, or even public park or library, and every observer with a functional sinus tract must admit: the great libertarian experiment to “legalize and regulate” marijuana has failed.

It has not merely failed in the sense that reasonable instinctively want to protect their neighbors from themselves, as cannabis use among adolescents — whose brain and grey matter development can be irreparably harmed by the drug, unlike fully grown adults — has skyrocketed by 245% since 2000, even while teenage alcohol abuse has mercifully fallen. Rather, the raw, negative externalities of cannabis consumption have exploded past the point of public tolerance.