Should we regret marijuana legalization? By one recent count, 24 states have legalized marijuana for recreational use since 2012. Seven additional states have decriminalized it to varying degrees, and the Trump administration, in April, moved state-licensed medical marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III.
But I hardly know anyone who is happy with how this has turned out, and if I do, they may be too busy inhaling pot to express their opinions to me.
A Pew Research Center survey in January showed that 55 percent of Americans support legal weed for medical and recreational use, but that’s down from a peak of 60 percent in 2021. I’m among that slice of people who have reconsidered whether legalizing would go well. Initially, I had the core libertarian intuition that consenting adults should be able to do with their own bodies as they wish. I have stayed at that point, but my intuition that this process would go smoothly has taken a real battering.
If you walk through major American cities such as New York or San Francisco, you (and your kid) may smell pot frequently. Yet it was never the intent of the law to have usage so plainly evident in public spaces. Instead, many of us were hoping for a libertarian paradise where everything would be tucked away at home, hidden from public view. That is not what we got, as it seems large numbers of people want to go around smoking marijuana.
Today’s marijuana is also much stronger than what was smoked or consumed by earlier generations. “Pot psychosis” is a common phenomenon, and an increasing body of evidence ties marijuana consumption to motor-vehicle crashes and poor workplace performance. Read more»
Tyler Cowen, “Legal Weed Is A Mistake We Had To Make,” The Free Press (June 26, 2026)
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My goodness Tyler only needed to ask your local friendly Canadian (we do exist) to know that this was a terrible idea. Canada is where all the bad ideas in the world go and as global benefactors we burn our fingers with all these bad ideas so you don’t have to!
Cannabis psychosis cases are exploding in hospitals – https://nypost.com/2022/10/22/san-diego-er-seeing-up-to-37-marijuana-cases-a-day/
We bought a social pig in a poke just as the ThC levels increased dramatically. 14-year old boys aren’t smoking Nebraska ditch weed, not that I know anything about that. LOL. I did not inhale. I really didn’t. Clinton did (he told us so in the UK in ’93 or ’94) but I didn’t. I feared my dad’s wrath more than I feared Cookie’s.
Hello, R. Scott, here I am again! This time re the issue of “Legal Weed”!
The title of a brief paper on Academia . edu is “A Satanic Masterpiece of Deception Wreaking Havoc around the world in 2025”, and the subtitle is: The Damning Sin of Sorcery Hidden In Open Sight.
https://www.academia.edu/172085115/A_Satanic_Masterpiece_of_Deception_Wreaking_Havoc_around_the_world_in
Naivete is not acceptable when the stakes are so high! We — the human species — are being immersed in the spirit of diabolic power and evil, and Satan’s “man of sin” (2 Thessalonians 2:3), who, although not revealed yet, nonetheless whose reception multitudes are being groomed for through the ubiquitous presence of extremely potent marijuana and other even stronger entheogens/psychedelics. Of all people, we in the churches of Jesus Christ ought to know about these things. The psychic “wavelength”, it can be discerned, is full of foulness, violence, and hatreds, and he will charm those who are not protected by God’s seal on their foreheads (Rev 9:4), with his charisma.
It is not appropriate for those who do not have personal experience with these dangerous elements to naively comment on them, however well-meaning, as I trust Tyler Cowen genuinely is.
At any rate, here’s a well-researched paper on a topic that is already contributing to the spiritual destruction of the U.S.