This story in the NYTimes is becoming common.

Five months after Colorado became the first state to allow recreational marijuana sales, the battle over legalization is still raging. Law enforcement officers in Colorado and neighboring states, emergency room doctors and legalization opponents increasingly are highlighting a series of recent problems as cautionary lessons for other states flirting with loosening marijuana laws.

Everyone who had been making big money from the war on weed is screaming bloody murder about legalization. There are legitimate arguments against some of this, but the general tone suggests the prohibitionists are unlikely to make them.

There is the Denver man who, hours after buying a package of marijuana-infused Karma Kandy from one of Colorado’s new recreational marijuana shops, began raving about the end of the world and then pulled a handgun from the family safe and killed his wife, the authorities say. Some hospital officials say they are treating growing numbers of children and adults sickened by potent doses of edible marijuana. Sheriffs in neighboring states complain about stoned drivers streaming out of Colorado and through their towns.

“I think, by any measure, the experience of Colorado has not been a good one unless you’re in the marijuana business,” said Kevin A. Sabet, executive director of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, which opposes legalization. “We’ve seen lives damaged. We’ve seen deaths directly attributed to marijuana legalization. We’ve seen marijuana slipping through Colorado’s borders. We’ve seen marijuana getting into the hands of kids.”

One of the features of the modern social welfare state is official lying. That is people telling obvious lies, but everyone pretending they are just alternative opinions. Calling your organization “Smart Approaches to Marijuana”, when you’re clearly not smart or interested in anything other than prohibition, is an obvious lie. What Kevin Sabet goes onto to say is clearly made up nonsense that no adult would ever believe. Yet, here we are with the Times treating this crook like a legitimate source of knowledge.

Despite such anecdotes, there is scant hard data. Because of the lag in reporting many health statistics, it may take years to know legal marijuana’s effect — if any — on teenage drug use, school expulsions or the number of fatal car crashes.

It was only in January, for example, that the Colorado State Patrol began tracking the number of people pulled over for driving while stoned. Since then, marijuana-impaired drivers have made up about 1.5 percent of all citations for driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

Proponents of legalization argue that the critics are cherry-picking anecdotes to tarnish a young industry that has been flourishing under intense scrutiny.

The vast majority of the state’s medical and recreational marijuana stores are living up to stringent state rules, they say. The stores have sold marijuana to hundreds of thousands of customers without incident. The industry has generated $12.6 million in taxes and fees so far, though the revenues have not matched some early projections.

Marijuana supporters note that violent crimes in Denver — where the bulk of Colorado’s pot retailers are — are down so far this year. The number of robberies from January through April fell by 4.8 percent from the same time in 2013, and assaults were down by 3.7 percent. Over all, crime in Denver is down by about 10 percent, though it is impossible to say whether changes to marijuana laws played any role in that decline.

That’s not a lot to go on, but at least it is honest. Maybe the Times highlighted the hysterical nonsense as a way to support the legalization case. It is hard to know. Propaganda sheets like the Times are expert at this sort of subtle campaigning.

The potheads are winning right now. They are handing the pols money in the form of new taxes. They have avoided any trouble, which keeps the suburban moms off their back. Most important, their critics sound foolish. Being blessed by the right enemies is always the key to winning public debate.

I’m not enthusiastic about legalization, but I was never enthusiastic about prohibition. I’d prefer a world where people did not smoke pot. It makes you stupid and it causes you to think idleness is a good thing. That said, it is not going to bring down civilization if some people smoke pot. There are other ways to discourage bad behavior that don’t require the state shooting citizens and locking them in cages. Just look at cigarettes.

Still, there are trade-offs to everything. We don’t know what else comes with legalizing weed, but we do know something does come with it.