On Tuesday, efforts to legalize recreational marijuana failed in Florida, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Florida’s Amendment 3 failed to clear the state’s 60-percent threshold for amending the state’s constitution; the Dakotas’ ballot initiatives stayed below 50 percent.

Florida’s legalization effort came up short despite the fact that anti-legalization forces were seriously outgunned: It was the most expensive such campaign ever, as the Manhattan Institute’s Charles Fain Lehman notes in City Journal. But Governor Ron DeSantis deserves credit for putting himself fully into the fight, as he also did with the state’s abortion amendment, which likewise did not clear the 60-percent threshold.

For a time, marijuana legalization seemed to enjoy a trajectory of inevitability familiar to social issues over the past few decades. But voters are now resisting it, further attesting to the highly contingent and non-determined nature of politics. Even the Washington Post is admitting that these and other votes on Tuesday signal that “drug policies across the United States have drifted too far to the left.” And even the New York Times is worrying that with “more people consuming more potent cannabis more often, a growing number, mostly chronic users, are enduring serious health consequences.”

The mainstreaming of marijuana is nothing to celebrate, as I wrote earlier this year. As the negative effects of widespread use are becoming harder to ignore, voters are beginning to act accordingly.