“From 1992 to 2022, there was a 15-fold increase in the per capita rate of reporting daily or near daily use. Whereas the 1992 survey recorded 10 times as many daily or near daily alcohol as cannabis users (8.9 vs. 0.9 M), the 2022 survey, for the first time, recorded more daily and near daily users of cannabis than alcohol (17.7 vs. 14.7 M). Far more people drink, but high-frequency drinking is less common. In 2022, the median drinker reported drinking on 4-5 days in the past month, versus 15-16 days in the past month for cannabis. In 2022, past-month cannabis consumers were almost four times as likely to report daily or near daily use (42.3% vs. 10.9%) and 7.4 times more likely to report daily use (28.2% vs. 3.8%).”
For some reason, people are far more likely to regulate alcohol consumption than they are marijuana. I can’t speak to the chemical process of addiction, but these numbers suggest addictive behavior if nothing else.
We have been lied to. We were all told there was no cost to the decriminalization of marijuana, that it wasn’t addictive at all. Instead, we have massive rates of daily marijuana use.
Pro-legalization here. I certainly never said either of those statements.
That’s nice. But you also never said that there were serious mental health risks to marijuana use, that it is in fact addictive for some people, and that daily marijuana use would far outpace alcohol use, to our detriment.
The weakness of the libertarian argument is that all of us have to live in a society affected by everyone else. No one wants a government dictating everything that enters our bodies. The real question is, what kind of society do we want to live in? Do we desire a world in which everyone can get high as often as they like with no public consequences? I would argue that we have that now in certain urban areas in America, in which the homeless are allowed to do more or less whatever they want. I’m prepared to accept some government regulation of substances, in order to avoid the kind of nightmare society that comes with widespread addictive drug use.
This is the libertarian weakness. They are just children saying you are not the boss of me. Everyone has responsibilities, we need taxes, we share the spaces. Libertarians are just kids saying saying everyone leave me alone with their fingers in their ears and stomping their feet.
“Recent research suggests that if you start to use marijuana at a young age, use it frequently, and for a long period of time, you could be at risk of having schizophrenia or other mental conditions that involve psychosis. This risk could be higher in young men or people assigned male at birth, especially those 16 to 25 years of age. Studies also note that if you're at risk of a mental condition, you may be more likely to smoke marijuana at an earlier age, maybe as a way to medicate yourself. Once you have schizophrenia, stopping marijuana use won't make the condition or its symptoms go away.”
