Professor Terry Meyers of William and Mary queried forum members about something he'd seen in the New York Times.
Just now I sent the following to the Times's corrections page under the subject line "Monticello says Jefferson didn't puff hemp":
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Though the Feb. 27 page A16 article "Suit to Legalize Marijuana Nationwide Is Rejected" noted skeptically that the reported-on lawsuit "employed some novel legal arguments," the article also reported unskeptically that concerning hemp, the lawsuit "pointed out that ...Thomas Jefferson puffed it for his migraines."
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/26/nyregion/legalize-marijuana-lawsuit-rejected.html
It seems to me that in these reporting circumstances, the Times is responsible for posting a correction based on the Thomas Jefferson Foundation's statement on the Monticello website that "there is no evidence to suggest that Jefferson was a habitual smoker of hemp, tobacco, or any other substance."
https://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/some-my-finest-hours-have-been-spent-my-back-veranda-smoking-hemp-quotation
I suppose you could focus on that qualifier _habitual_, but it seems to me that you'd only be asking for the proof of a negative--and contributing to further propagation of misinformation.
Thanks.
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If the correction is invalid, blame me for mishandling information.
If it's valid, credit the Charlottesville independent genealogist and historian Cynthia Burton, who suggested how to get the answer.
Wantonly appended semi-departure from the topic:
If the correction is valid and the Times doesn't post it, the Times will be living down from the standard I've seen it respect in the past, but living up to the goofy one I saw it follow last year. Helene Cooper, aboard an aircraft carrier, had misreported that an aviator there commanded one of the ship's aircraft squadrons. In fact, the aviator commanded the ship's entire air wing. I got the air wing public affairs officer to correct the misinformation publicly, but the Times corrections editor weaseled anyhow, saying that well, golly, if he's the air wing commander, he commands each individual squadron too, doesn't he? Sheesh. By that logic extended, Gen. Eisenhower at Normandy was a platoon commander.
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