Over the past several decades, America has undergone a marijuana revolution. In 2003, just 1 in 3 Americans supported legalization, and recreational pot was illegal nationwide. Today, 2 in 3 support legalization, including a majority of Republicans and regular church-goers. Recreational use is legal in 19 states and the District of Columbia, while a further 18 states permit “medical marijuana,” often under highly permissive regimes.
But while marijuana has become widely available, public debate has remained stuck in the past, endlessly repeating decades-old talking points. Because of that, we are only now beginning to understand the social implications of the heavy consumption of marijuana by a subset of the population—a pattern which almost certainly contributes to, among other things, the malaise that has settled over contemporary singlehood.
Remarkably, as marijuana has become more abundant, the share of the population with exposure to it has held roughly steady. In 2002, about 40.5% of Americans over 12 had ever used marijuana; today, that figure is 45 percent. Advocates of legalization point to this, along with the fact that the share of high schoolers who report marijuana use is roughly flat, as evidence that legalization had little impact on actual consumption, contrary to opponents’ fears.
While it’s true that the number of people reporting marijuana use has not changed dramatically, that does not mean that the volume being used has not increased. In fact, as drug policy expert Keith Humphreys recently noted, the number of daily users has risen dramatically since the early 1990s.
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Charles Fain Lehman is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Follow him on Twitter here.
This piece originally appeared in Institute for Family Studies