ALEX BERENSON: Trump's marijuana order pushes a dangerous lie about drugs

On Friday, I debated cannabis legalization astatine AmericaFest 2025, the yearly normal for Turning Point USA, the radical led by Charlie Kirk until his assassination successful September. Here’s my opening argument:

My hostile this day is Katherine Mangu-Ward, the editor-in-chief of Reason mag and a staunch libertarian. Katherine’s pinned station connected X calls for the legalization of heroin, truthful astatine slightest she is consistent.

I excessively americium consistent. I judge the wide and libertarian effort to destigmatize, normalize, legalize, and adjacent beforehand the usage of "drugs of abuse" has been a catastrophe for the United States. 

We are a planetary outlier connected this issue. We person reaped thing but symptom for a procreation of ideologically driven decisions to marque drugs much accessible to some young radical and adults.

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By "drugs of abuse," I mean drugs that nutrient a subjective precocious that makes radical privation to support utilizing them and to usage much implicit time. The precise biochemical mechanics and whether the precocious is stimulating, sedating, oregon intoxicating matters little than the information of its impermanent pleasure. Of people those drugs see cannabis. Yes, intoxicant is simply a cause of maltreatment too. So are medically prescribed drugs, from Oxycontin to Adderall to Valium.

Cannabis Culture store successful Manhattan, New York, connected October 21, 2022. (Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Unfortunately, Thursday’s determination by President Trump to "reschedule" cannabis and marque it much accessible volition lone worsen this self-imposed situation and pb to much drug-driven misery and death.

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Let’s beryllium wide astir cannabis. Cannabis — peculiarly cannabis today, which is precise precocious successful THC, the chemic that intoxicates users — is precise overmuch a cause of abuse.

When they person been tested successful rigorously controlled trials — and they person been tested implicit and implicit — cannabis and THC person shown astir nary aesculapian benefits. But they person galore broadside effects, to some encephalon and body.

Normalizing cause usage normalizes cause use. Pretending drugs of maltreatment are medicine normalizes it adjacent faster.

Cannabis tin origin psychotic episodes wherever users suffer interaction with world and go paranoid that friends oregon household members privation to wounded them. It tin sometimes origin those users to go convulsive successful response. It tin origin episodes of prolonged vomiting that nonstop users to exigency rooms. It is associated with postulation accidents and deaths. It raises the hazard of bosom attacks successful users dramatically. And, yes, it is simply a gateway drug.

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Overall, cannabis is astir apt astatine slightest arsenic unsafe arsenic alcohol. It is little evidently physically harmful, for contempt its cardiovascular risks, it does not origin nonstop overdose. But it is much psychiatrically harmful.

Now we travel to the simple, facile libertarian argument: but intoxicant is legal! Cannabis should beryllium ineligible too. In fact, each drugs should beryllium ineligible — and again, I bash admit the information Katherine was honorable capable to accidental that retired loud.

My drug, my body, my choice.

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Sounds good. Except that to usage drugs is inevitably to hazard consequences some to yourself and to different radical that cannot beryllium foreseen. Drugs travel their ain logic.

Some drugs — particularly opioids — often termination their users from overdose. Many drugs origin users to behave successful antisocial ways — to go violent, oregon simply to halt caring astir the imaginable consequences of their actions. And each drugs of maltreatment person addictive potential.

The libertarian solution to this occupation is to disregard it, to accidental that users are liable for their ain behavior. If they go addicted, excessively atrocious for them.

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This mentation sounds nice. But it ignores reality.

The children and families astir users and addicts inevitably carnivore the brunt of their antisocial behavior, and the remainder of america cannot disregard its nationalist harms. Even erstwhile it does not pb to full-bore addiction, cause usage that is much than casual astir inevitably worsens the problems users person turned to it to solve. It is the astir selfish of acts. It divorces users from the lives of radical astir them — and their ain lives.

Two studies uncover stronger marijuana strains summation paranoia rates, particularly among users who crook to cannabis for symptom and accent relief.  (iStock)

A spiritual idiosyncratic mightiness telephone that behaviour immoral. But 1 doesn’t person to beryllium spiritual to admit it has what economists telephone externalities. The idiosyncratic feels the subjective pleasure, portion everyone other faces the imaginable consequences.

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As a society, we look to person go desensitized to the perchance horrific consequences of cause use.

We should not be. We indispensable not be.

We — arsenic individuals, and arsenic a federation — indispensable bash everything imaginable to punctual radical of them. We indispensable discourage it astatine each turn. That means stigmatizing drugs of abuse, not legitimizing them, not gathering industries that nett from dense usage and addiction.

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It means driving up the terms — successful dollars and imaginable ineligible consequences — of cause usage to discourage radical who person not utilized from doing so, alternatively than making drugs cheap, openly advertised, and easy accessible.

It means knowing that each cause is simply a gateway drug, not conscionable biochemically but societally. Normalizing cause usage normalizes cause use. Pretending drugs of maltreatment are medicine normalizes it adjacent faster.

Legalization is simply a reddish herring. Alcohol is legal, but we apprehension radical for intoxicant depletion each the clip — for underage use, for nationalist drinking oregon intoxication, for drinking and driving. We volition proceed to apprehension radical for utilizing cannabis too, adjacent if the cause is afloat legalized astatine the authorities and national level.

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But immoderate the ineligible presumption of cannabis, we are not going to enactment each — oregon adjacent galore — cannabis users successful jail. We don’t now, and we didn’t a procreation ago. 

The question is whether we privation promote use: of cannabis, of Adderall, of alcohol, of OxyCONTIN, of fentanyl, of cocaine, of each ineligible and amerciable drug. Legalizing cannabis is different measurement connected that way to ruination.

I anticipation we bash not instrumentality it.

Editor's note: This file archetypal appeared connected the author's Substack, "Unreported Truths."

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