“A free society should be capable of learning to live with potentially risky substances without the government banning them.”
By Jeffrey A. Singer, Cato Institute
As a physician, I don’t dismiss recent reports of increases in problematic cannabis use. But we should avoid letting them trigger another drug-war moral panic.
Cannabis use has increased as more states have legalized it for adults. That should surprise no one. When a widely used substance moves from an illicit market to a legal one, some who previously abstained will try it, some occasional users will use it more often and people will be more willing to admit they use it.
Yet these recent patterns don’t tell us what cannabis use will look like going forward.
History should make us cautious about extrapolating from the early years of legalization. When Americans repealed Prohibition in 1933, alcohol consumption did not immediately settle into the pattern we recognize today. Consumption rose substantially over the following decades, eventually peaked around 1981 and then declined for more than a decade. Today, the share of Americans who report drinking alcohol is at its lowest level since Gallup began tracking it in 1939.
Along the way, Americans learned to live
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