November 19, 2023 - 4:20pm
Last Friday, the rapper Snoop Dogg made a grave announcement. “After much consideration and conversation with my family, I’ve decided to give up smoke,” the rapper posted on social media. “Please respect my privacy at this time.” The terse seriousness of the statement could well be tongue-in-cheek: perhaps Snoop, already a serial entrepreneur in all things weed-related, is about to launch a smoke-free product, like a marijuana vape or edible.
But many people certainly have stopped smoking weed. ONS data from last year shows that 16.2% of British 16–24-year-olds had smoked cannabis over the past 12 months — a decline from 28% about 25 years previously. This trend is mainly youth-led: for 16-59-year-olds, the drop is less pronounced, from 10% to 7.4%.
Weed’s cultural power has waned, too. Classic stoner comedies of yore, such as Seventies and Eighties flicks by the American duo Cheech and Chong, imprinted upon us an archetype of the laid-back, snack-loving smoker. Nowadays, the drug is treated as one among many. Guy Ritchie’s 2019 film The Gentleman, about an American-born cannabis king who wants to retire, doesn’t make much of his chosen product aside from a half-statement about class — he grows his crop on the estates of hard-up aristocrats.
The drug was once a low-risk form of rebellion. It was illegal, but it wouldn’t particularly screw you up. That has changed — and not just in the US, where it’s fully legal in 24 states. In Britain, medical weed is legal in certain circumstances, while CBD oil, which isolates marijuana’s therapeutic compound, is on sale at every high street health shop. The weed you get from dealers, though, can hardly be called a soft drug: skunk, bred for intense levels of psychoactive THC and linked in multiple studies to psychosis, now accounts for 94% of cannabis seizures by police. Weed has become not so much an uncool drug as a background drug, taken in high-status medicinal form or as a mind-curdling palliative to poverty.
In its place, other substances have jumped on the zeitgeist. Nitrous oxide — or laughing gas, or nos, or “hippy crack” in tabloid-ese — was taken by 9% of 16–24-year-olds in the late 2010s. Dealers would hang around club entrances and sell balloons of the stuff to departing punters, as ubiquitous as ushers with trays of ice creams at theatre intervals. Even then, usage has since deflated to 4%, and earlier this month it was banned in the UK.
To some extent weed, and in a less gentle way acid and ecstasy, epitomised utopian summers of love. That optimism is alien to young people today: a January study by the Prince’s Trust found that the overall wellbeing of UK 16-25-year-olds was at its lowest point since research began 14 years ago, largely due to economic pressures. This has polarising effects. Some people “quiet quit”, resigning themselves to the bare minimum, while others are driven on by anxiety. Maybe it’s a sign that Gen Z-ers see no alternative to getting ahead. The laidback life of the stoner has gone up in smoke.
Josiah Gogarty is assistant editor at The Knowledge, an email news digest, and a freelance writer elsewhere.
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SubscribeYou claimed that smoking weed is down from 28% to 16.2% among youth. But you don’t explain whether this number includes edibles and vaping. Presumably it doesn’t. My guess is that when you include those smoking substitutes, marijuana usage has actually increased. Frankly, this is a pretty sloppy and undeveloped article.
Personally, I find any article which references Mr Dogg hard to take seriously.
All very interesting but I suspect there are too many confounding factors to draw less than 10 conclusions from an essay like this. Or no conclusions at all.
It would be nice if I didn’t have to get whiffs of the stuff several times a day when I’m out and about. Disgusting smell, even worse than the overpowering perfume some women seem to take a bath in.
My posts are all deleted, ‘thanks Mods’, but I continue anyway….
Remember the Dr Strangelove’ of the 2000s? Yuval Harari? The WEF nightmare AI Philosopher/scientist who wishes to create Gods of the Elite, and hell for the regular people?
”Instead of morphing into omnipotent, all-knowing masters of the universe, the human mob might end up jobless and aimless, whiling away our days off our nuts on drugs, with VR headsets strapped to our faces. Welcome to the next revolution.Harari calls it “the rise of the useless class”” (from the Guardian)
Yuval says the useless class will evolve, within the life of us now living, to be the majority, and drugs and VR headsets will fill their days to keep them docile till they finally make that trip to the voluntary euthanasia center as even that becomes stale to the point of despair and their health is gone. 15 minute cites, pods, bugs, sex robot companions, drugs and VR….. haha, this is the future, and we are being readied, the trials being done.
My post went straight to moderation and was deleted within minutes after posting. Fortunately I took a screenshot of it before it disappeared and wrote to customer services at Unherd asking for an explanation as i honestly could see no reason why it was deleted.
It is quite disturbing.
This tends to happen far more frequently at weekends, which suggests it’s a matter of not having enough oversight to allow comments to be posted. It does seem to be intermittent though, but probably a personnel issue rather than anything sinister.
I’m not sure why Unherd can’t just come clean on this, and prevent the probably unnecessary expressions of concern.
I believe Aldous Huxley wrote something of the ilk.
It stopped being funny. It went from US comedy to the reality of paranoid, weed stinking deadbeats.
Spot on. When I was young, it had the allure of middle-class hippies, or at least the “weekend hippies” who hung around the trendy pubs and universities. They were, without weed, the successful and attractive ones anyway: educated, trendy, pacifistic, and without too many serious psychological issues.
How things have changed, and once the expanding market hit the dullards and the underclass and the mentally ill, one could see things how they really are.
If one were still capable of it, of course.
Economic pressures certainly are undermining their optimism but it’s not only that. They face much greater competition for everything from places at university, to jobs and housing. That’s without the fact that achieving a degree goes hand in hand with being saddled with enormous debt at a young age, .
They face all of that with a great loss of confidence which was once the preserve of younger generations. How could they possibly have that natural hope when it has been relentlessly ground out of them by the doom narratives they’ve imbibed throughout their school years? Education on the whole no
longer sought to equip them with resilience and resolve to apply ingenuity to issues both present and ahead but to get bogged down in ideological issues plus despair for the future survival of the very planet itself.
Optimism takes root in a foundation of confidence rather than victimhood or guilt but confidence has been systematically undermined by the relentless drip of the sub-Marxist perspectives and diatribes that have been rammed down their necks over recent decades. If people don’t think that has had an effect on the emotional well-being of younger generations then they are delusional. .
Mrs R., You must be a lot younger than I am; do you think the Summer of Love, the youthful counter-culture optimism of the 60s occurred in a cultural background without “doom narratives”? The world was poised for nuclear destruction; the cities erupted with riots; the Viet Nam war; the beatings and murders of civil rights workers; assassinations of Kennedys and King; need I go on? If in fact young people today lack resilience and resolve (I’m not at all sure this is a true generalization), it’s not because of Marxist diatribes or doom narratives…
Interesting take. I always thought the ‘summer of love’ was an expression of hope and youthful confidence. The civil rights movement was also about empowerment and justice and it was winning and pushing back against resistance and that gave a great deal of optimism and hope.
In what way was the world posed for nuclear destruction at that time? Are you thinking of the Cuban Crisis? I was very young then so do not have a clear recollection of that but from what I do know it was a scenario that, although intense and nerve racking for some, didn’t last very long. The climate crisis is posing a far greater sense of
long term threat to younger generations today for it casts a dark shadow on their future and many scenarios they’re confronted with via various different channels are truly fear inducing . Wars and the nuclear threat have not gone away either, far from it.
I do not accuse young people of lacking resilience and resolve – my criticism was entirely aimed at the educational establishment and media.
Er – growing up under the shadow of the bomb? It didn’t happen, so the fear of it now looks exaggerated, but it was a real source of pessimism at the time.
You either have a very rose tinted view of the past, or were too privileged at the time to realise how grim it was for many people.
A family of seven, I grew up secure and loved in two bedroomed accommodation without central heating or an indoor toilet. I consider myself privileged though probably not by your metric.
I don’t recall feeling I was ‘growing up ‘under the shadow of the bomb’. Sounds very dramatic. We were aware of it but I truly don’t remember feeling a sense of despair as I have seen with young people today – so traumatised by the fear of climate Armageddon. .
Actually sounds very much like my own background. Bucket toilet?
I remember there being a big upsurge in CND membership, so clearly I wasn’t alone. I’m not saying you are wrong though. Some people seem to have been oblivious to it.
My point, though, is that there was objectively just as much, if not more, to be afraid of in the past. And far more hardship for all but the well off. But in spite of that young people are more anxious and feel more hard done to now.
Slightly off topic, but I have to say I am totally mystified by the diametrically opposed trends of steadily increasing restrictions on the advertising, sale and consumption of tobacco on the one hand, and the urge to decriminalise cannabis on the other. Both are equally noxious: one destroys your lungs, the other destroys your brain. Replacing the stink of tobacco with the stench of cannabis is no sign of progress.
They are in no way equivalent. Anyone who advocates legalisation would happily see it regulated and available the same way as tobacco. You won’t get the same health warnings though because they simply don’t apply.
Surely a key part of this is the lack of a genuine counter culture. Contrast the sixties for example.
How can you be counter culture when there is no culture?
My grandson is now in a psychiatric ward suffering voices and paranoia. Two weeks of antipsychotic drugs and no improvement. May be schizo for life. One year’s heavy use of weed. We are in pieces. It doesn’t affect everyone the same and environment can have an affect (for better or worse). There is much research at present isolating the gene that makes some people more susceptible. Could be a game changer.
Among the 18-25s in Bristol and Bath, cocaine use is now normal and people discuss it openly. I don’t know if there has been a shift from weed to coke; many seem to do both. But maybe that’s just the places I visit.
Cocaine tends to be associated with selfishness, ambition, partying, going for it 24/7 – and originally at least, with status.
Cannabis is relaxing, chill, and goes with not having enough ambition to put another record on.
Their use is linked to very different pictures of what life should be like – and their effects roughly match this.
I’m proud to say I’ve been sober for over a week. I realized that while, yes, getting reefed up gave me deep mystical insights into the workings of the universe, it also made me drowsy and ate up huge portions of my day. Plus the stuff was losing its potency. So I’m off it completely. From here on out, it’s just mushrooms for me.
Be careful. Don’t know about UK, but in US, we don’t need anymore public shaming of self-treatment given the Pain Undertreatment Scandal–which is a driver of suicides of despair among chronically ill patients, of whom at very most 8% became addicted to opioids after chronic managed use (CDC 2016 report is based on demonstrably false data). The Opioid Hysteria is helping Suboxone investors profit. This new drug is being pushed as a replacement and causes a lot more direct harm to the body (jaw necrosion for one) than opioids. Oh, and it’s far more addictive. Any regular drug creates dependency, but suboxone is literally more physically addictive than reg opioids. But that Sackler money sure is nice, right?
Fortunately, pot is being legalized for prescription or OTC use for chronic pain, nausea, and cancer-related cachexia.
I’m so glad it works for some people. I only wish researchers could find a way to lighten up muscles–a surprisingly beneficial effect– w/out the horrible, paranoia-inducing psychoactive effects. How anyone finds that “recreational” is beyond me.
The only prohibitionist-type comment I’ll make is about a reality that comes in the US at least from state-by-state regs. Selling gummies with psychosis-inducing levels of THC w/ no imprint of content AND DOSAGE on them is MUCH more harmful than 2008 opioid prescribing levels. Any unsuspecting child, adult, or pet can get into them or worse be handed them socially, & find themselves permanently damaged.
Legalize them nationally, sell them OTC like sudafed behind pharmacies–let Big Pharma have the profits– if they’ll stop obstructing legit tx of chronically ill patients. Let people grow it at home for home use or small sales & o/w nationalize businesses. Just stop euthanizing chronically ill patients. Look up stories of chronic pain patients & their doctors. Male combat veterans & majority women 40+ w/ autoimmune, post-viral or congenital degenerative conditions–women who’re already 8 times more likely to be told their symptoms are psychopathological than men. Now treat them like criminals & require hundreds more out-of-pocket & face to face meetings w/ adversarial “pain” specialists who dole out desperately needed vasoconstrictors or pain meds to women who’ve already tried everything & are treated like they’re faking it. Story every day about someone going into a room and shooting themselves.
Or getting euthanized through MAID in Canada.
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I really doubt drug&alcohol use is in decline among the young, it’s just a different kind of stuff. GP data can be quite revealing.
Also, many people from this age group are on SSRIs and ADHD meds anyway, those are trending big time and the ‘benefits’ they offer (disability claims, setraline numb brain, mental health excuse card) way outweight those of the wacky tobacky.