The Dopes Are The Losers, But Who Are The Winners?

So, I searched “who makes money off cannabis legalization”. My curiosity was sparked by this article:

Deaths Of Despair Now Significant Among The Young

Authored by Yves Smith via NakedCapitalism.com,

We first wrote about what came to be called about deaths of despair when the landmark work by Angus Deaton, the 2015 Nobel prize winner in economics, and his wife Anne Case, on the dramatic rise in the death rate of middle-aged, less educated whites. Even though this study and a follow-on did garner a great deal of major media attention, there was almost nothing in the way of action to try to alleviate this crisis.

The cancer of inaction seems to be working its way through its host, as in the US. The Wall Street Journal reports Young Americans Are Dying at Alarming Rates, Reversing Years of Progress. You’ll see many of the causes parallel those of lamented but not acted upon deaths of despair. And as you’ll also see. both tragedies are acute in the US, not so much in other advanced economies.

Yves Smith draws most of the data from the WSJ article, linked above. The data compares the deaths of “despair” originally studied among “middle-aged, less educated whites” with the rise in deaths among younger people. This picture will tell you the story—”poisoning” includes overdoses of all sorts, drugs and alcohol.

So I asked myself, What about suicide? What’s that about? It certainly fits in with the overall concept of deaths of despair. Which reminded me of this article that I picked up at FR—depression leading to suicide sounds like despair to me:

Recreational Cannabis Use By Teens Linked to Risk of Depression, Suicidality
columbiapsychiatry.org/ ^ | 5/5/2023 | Ryan Sultan, MD et al

A Columbia University study has found that teens who use cannabis recreationally are two to four times as likely to develop psychiatric disorders, such as depression and suicidality, than teens who don’t use cannabis at all.

The research, published in JAMA Open Network(link is external and opens in a new window) May 3, also finds that casual cannabis use puts teens at risk for problem behaviors, including poor grades, truancy, and trouble with the law, which can have long-term negative consequences that may keep youth from developing their full potential in adulthood.

"Perceptions exist among youth, parents, and educators that casual cannabis use is benign,” said lead study author Ryan Sultan, MD, assistant professor of clinical psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, Columbia, and a pediatric and adult psychiatrist, NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center. “We were surprised to see that cannabis use had such strong associations to adverse mental health and life outcomes for teens who did not meet the criteria for having a substance use condition."

The Columbia study, Dr. Sultan said, is the first to identify that subclinical, or nondisordered, cannabis use—symptoms and behavior that do not meet the criteria for clinical disorder—has clear adverse and impairing associations for adolescents.

(Excerpt) Read more at columbiapsychiatry.org ...

OK, so here’s a concept: Why not legalize cannabis so it will be widely available to this vulnerable demographic—which it clearly is, based on this article. Nothing could possibly go wrong, and someone might stand to make big money, because there’s no shortage of dopes.

That’s why I did that search. As far as I could tell the biggest winner from legalization is Big Brother—the government. And that, apparently, includes the federal government in some roundabout way I didn’t fully understand. So go figure—the very institutions most concerned with the welfare of the subject population might be doing harm to its subjects. How would that happen? I dunno—political contributions to legislators? Yeah, I’d be less surprised at that than Dr. Sultan was at his findings. But what would you expect from a country that allows doctors to mutilate children for fun and profit.

Speaking of drugs and government and money …