Once you notice the proliferation of vice, it is hard to stop seeing it. Sometimes the drive-through operator is stoned; other times, it's the barista. A young man you know spends all his money on sports-gambling apps and goes five figures into debt. On Wall Street, news reports tell of young investment bankers popping amphetamines for work and pleasure. For a time, you could buy psychedelic mushrooms at a store 10 blocks from the White House. (You can still get them elsewhere in the nation's capital.) The men sleeping on the streets are on a cocktail of drugs we had scarcely heard of a decade ago: fentanyl, xylazine, nitazene. Elon Musk used drugs while campaigning for President Trump, as did Hunter Biden during his father's vice presidency.
The data corroborate these impressions. In 2023, a record 62 million Americans smoked pot; 17 million now use it daily or near daily. One in 12 young adults used a hallucinogen; one in 18 misused prescription stimulants such as Adderall. Another 2.6 million Americans over 12 took meth. Overdoses still claim the lives of 70,000 Americans annually; the majority died using synthetic opioids like fentanyl. Half of American men have a sports-betting account, up from almost zero seven years ago. "iGaming" — gambling via casino apps on your phone — is now legal in seven states. By some estimates, pornography now generates more revenue than Hollywood, and OnlyFans creators collectively make more than players in the National Basketball Association.
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Charles Fain Lehman is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal.
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