Marijuana-use disorder is soaring among the very populations advocates of legalization aim to help.
State and local governments have a long history of using taxpayer dollars to subsidize bad economic development projects—everything from movie productions to sports arenas to industrial facilities. Now those governments are pumping tens of millions of public dollars into an even worse idea—legal pot businesses—as scientific studies increasingly demonstrate the health risks of regular marijuana use.
Since 2012, advocates in 24 states have successfully engineered legalization campaigns by arguing that commercialization would bring marijuana businesses out of the shadows, produce safe, state-supervised weed for recreational use, and swell government coffers. Predictably, pot use has soared. The portion of the population 19 to 30 using pot in the past 30 days has increased to 28.7% from 16.6% since 2012, according to the University of Michigan’s national survey on drug use. Among those 35 to 50, it’s risen to 19.2% from 7.6%.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the Wall Street Journal (paywall)
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Steven Malanga is the George M. Yeager Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a senior editor at City Journal.
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