AI transcript
0:00:04 [MUSIC]
0:00:08 On a recent Monday morning, we found ourselves up in the Berkshire Mountains in the town of Sheffield,
0:00:14 Massachusetts. There is a dark gray building with a big front porch right on Route 7.
0:00:21 It is home to a retail shop called The Pass. It was pretty busy, especially for Monday morning,
0:00:25 and the customers were happy to tell us why they were buying what they were buying.
0:00:31 It helps me with pretty much everything. Get through the day, wake up, eat, my anxiety.
0:00:37 This is pretty much the only way to get my brain to shut off, to actually fall asleep.
0:00:42 There’s so many different ways you can use it. This is my relaxation. It just takes the edge off.
0:00:47 For me, it just makes everything a little bit better. Everyone could benefit off of it in their
0:00:55 own way. It’s, you know, medicine without medicine. What is this alleged elixir? This medicine without
0:01:03 medicine? I got some weed. It’s all cannabis. I absolutely love it. It’s just nice to know that
0:01:13 it’s legal now. You may know it as weed or marijuana or hemp or pot or, if you’re old enough, maybe
0:01:22 know it as grass or reefer or herb. It has gone by many names in many places and many times.
0:01:30 Mary Jane, sticky icky, chronic, devil’s lettuce, gas, ganja, 420 dope, green goddess,
0:01:37 flower, zaza, bud, shape, skunk, greenery, kush. We are just going to call it cannabis. That’s
0:01:45 the name of the actual plant. The most famous component of the plant is THC or tetrahydrocannabinol.
0:01:51 That’s the one that gets you high. The second best known component is CBD or cannabidiol,
0:01:55 which is not intoxicating and tends to be used for things like pain relief.
0:02:01 But there are more than 140 cannabinoids found in different strains of the plant.
0:02:07 You probably already know that cannabis is now legal in many states, even though it remains
0:02:13 illegal federally. And you may know that it comes in many forms. Flower, which is just the dried
0:02:19 plant for people who smoke, but also edibles, tinctures, beverages, chewing gum, chocolate,
0:02:24 nasal spray, quite a few more. But here’s something I bet you don’t know. In the U.S.
0:02:31 today, there are more DND users of cannabis that stands for daily or near daily than there are
0:02:38 daily or near daily users of alcohol. Let that sink in for a minute. Here’s what we heard
0:02:44 up at the pass. It’s better if you’re going to use it every day, you know, you can drink every day
0:02:49 and be okay. If I’m in like a social situation, I’m not going to grab a drink. I’m going to
0:02:55 grab some weed. I was a teenage alcoholic, but now I’ve been smoking weed for 60 years and I’m
0:03:01 still alive. Alcohol is still overall much more popular in the U.S. But for a significant group
0:03:08 of people, cannabis has become the drug of choice. In a recent Gallup survey, 17% of Americans reported
0:03:16 using cannabis that’s up from 7% just 10 years earlier. How did this happen? And what does it mean?
0:03:22 That’s what we want to find out in this special four-part series on cannabis.
0:03:29 I think if everyone who was using alcohol was instead using cannabis, it would be a much safer,
0:03:35 healthier world. In today’s episode, part one, the harms of alcohol are well-established. How about
0:03:43 cannabis? You’re talking about needing a whole army to study the effects of cannabis from these
0:03:49 new products that we still do not know anything about. In part two, we will get into the bizarre
0:03:55 economics of this industry, which haven’t worked out the way anyone predicted. It’s hard to articulate
0:04:02 the regulatory complexity of every single thing you have to do. In part three, we will visit the farm.
0:04:11 Smells good, doesn’t it? And in part four, we will try to sort out a future. Americans, Democrat,
0:04:16 Republican, independent are all supportive of seeing major cannabis change. Along the way,
0:04:22 we will hear from cannabis industry insiders, medical doctors and legal scholars, regulators and
0:04:32 politicians, and a few happy customers. It tastes good. I’m really energized. I thought I would be
0:04:37 asleep. Oh, I’m enthralled. I’m so excited. I’m excited too. We’ll see you after the…
0:04:54 This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything with your
0:05:08 host, Stephen Dubner. So let me tell you how this series began. It did not begin as a series about
0:05:14 cannabis. We thought we were going to make a series about the economics of the alcohol industry.
0:05:19 Well, we say cheers and we raise our glasses. We’re doing something extremely ancient.
0:05:24 Our first interview was with Tom Standage. He’s an editor at The Economist in London.
0:05:29 And I’m also the author of a book called A History of the World in Six Glasses.
0:05:34 A History of the World in Six Glasses is a very good book. And the interview with Standage
0:05:40 was interesting for sure. He told us that beer is probably the oldest alcoholic beverage and
0:05:46 that it was discovered accidentally. People would have made a sort of barley or wheat rich soup,
0:05:50 and then they might have left it out and it would have naturally fermented with wild yeasts.
0:05:54 There are these pictures of people drinking beer in Mesopotamia from 5,000 years ago,
0:05:57 and they’re all drinking through straws from the same vessel.
0:06:00 Standage told us that beer was central to ancient economies.
0:06:05 We know that the workers who built the pyramids as long thought that they were enslaved.
0:06:09 Actually, they weren’t. They were paid. And they were paid partly in beer.
0:06:15 And he told us about the beer theory of civilization. That’s the idea that the human embrace of alcohol
0:06:21 predated the age of agriculture. The beer theory of civilization is that people settled down
0:06:26 close to wild stands of things like barley in order to be sure that they would have a reliable
0:06:32 supply and therefore a reliable supply of beer. But growing barley and wheat on purpose, cultivating
0:06:39 them as crops, that would produce even more raw material for more beer, as well as food for eating,
0:06:44 of course. Man does not live on booze alone, although I have known a few people who tried.
0:06:50 But the reality is that many people have really liked alcohol for a really long time.
0:06:56 You have to look at alcohol as a source of intellectual stimulation, as a source of joy,
0:06:58 a source of calories to keep people alive.
0:07:03 How important historically was alcohol just to plain human survival in terms of delivering
0:07:08 water that didn’t make people sick and delivering calories that were substantial and affordable
0:07:13 and portable? Yes, alcohol does both of those things. If you’re worried about safe water supply,
0:07:17 it does work as a purification technology. For example, the Greeks mixed water and wine.
0:07:22 They thought that this was to make the wine safe, that if you drank undiluted wine,
0:07:27 you’d go nuts. But actually, the wine was making the water safe because the tannins were antibacterial.
0:07:32 So alcohol has played a key role in human civilization since the early days,
0:07:38 and in many places, it still does. We drink to celebrate. We drink to sanctify. We drink to mourn.
0:07:43 We drink with old friends and with people we’re just getting to know. We drink when we want to
0:07:48 shift a mental gear. Tom Standage, for instance, plays drums in a band.
0:07:53 I play the drums better after a pint of Guinness. I’m more relaxed, but also I’m not
0:07:57 overthinking things too much. I’m probably prepared to take a few more risks and
0:08:01 try a few more creative things. I do think there is a sort of useful
0:08:05 blurriness that can come from drinking the right amount of alcohol.
0:08:11 The pursuit of that useful blurriness is, in some places, a national pastime.
0:08:17 In the US, more than 60% of us drink, at least sometimes, and that has been true for over 150
0:08:22 years, and COVID produced a 5.5% rise in per capita alcohol consumption.
0:08:28 But how much you drink has a lot to do with how old you are and not in the way you might expect.
0:08:32 The main thing that we’ve observed on both sides of the Atlantic is that younger people
0:08:37 are drinking less, or not at all, in many cases. And certainly my generation, so I’m in my 50s,
0:08:44 we seem to be drinking a lot more. Indeed, 85% of Americans aged 35 to 50 now drink a much
0:08:50 higher number than in the past. And binge drinking among this group, defined as four drinks within
0:08:56 two hours for a woman and five drinks for a man, that is now at 30%, the highest ever recorded.
0:09:03 So yeah, we’re talking to Tom Standage about alcohol, and it’s super interesting. I’m thinking
0:09:09 about that Mesopotamian history. I’m thinking about alcohol as a social lubricant. I’m thinking
0:09:16 about its antibacterial benefits. But then I start digging into the data about the harms of alcohol,
0:09:24 and I am just blown away. According to the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, roughly 180,000
0:09:29 Americans die every year from excessive alcohol use. And that number has been rising lately,
0:09:36 driven by an increase in women dying from alcohol use. Around 15,000 of these alcohol-related
0:09:41 deaths come in motor vehicle crashes. And NHTSA, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration,
0:09:48 reports that alcohol use is up in their data too. But let’s put aside death. The CDC estimates that
0:09:55 alcohol use costs the US about a quarter of a trillion dollars annually. Most of that in lost
0:10:03 workplace productivity, but there’s $28 billion in healthcare costs, $25 billion in criminal justice
0:10:10 costs, on and on. And so I got to thinking. I know that alcohol has been around for a long time,
0:10:17 and I know it serves many purposes for many people, and I personally like it. But if you take all the
0:10:23 advantages of alcohol and weigh them against the harms, alcohol does not come out looking very good.
0:10:29 Now, you may be thinking, what about the health benefits of alcohol? You’ve seen all those TV news
0:10:35 pieces about red wine, preventing cancer, that kind of thing. I started wondering about that too,
0:10:40 so I called up Michael Siegel, a public health researcher at Tufts. He said you have to follow
0:10:47 the funding. Most of the research which has been funded by alcohol companies has reported
0:10:53 that there is a benefit to drinking moderate amounts of alcohol. On the other hand, most of
0:10:59 the research that has not been funded by the industry has found that there actually is not
0:11:07 a benefit and that overall mortality is higher. Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised by this news.
0:11:13 The same thing happened with cigarettes and sugar. An industry will commission researchers
0:11:18 from a top university to produce a study that winds up miraculously highlighting only the
0:11:24 benefits of their product. Some public health experts still say that moderate alcohol use
0:11:30 isn’t a big deal, but others say that alcohol is essentially toxic. We are not going to be able
0:11:35 to settle that argument today. We are making a different argument. Here’s what we were saying.
0:11:42 Given that the societal costs of alcohol are so large and that any health benefits are probably
0:11:51 overhyped and given that cannabis use is soaring, is it possible that we have entered the era of
0:11:58 cannabis replacement? And if so, what will be the effects of that? Those seem like interesting
0:12:03 questions to me. I hope they seem interesting to you too, because that’s the series we wound up
0:12:09 making. Next step, now we need a little cannabis history. That’s coming up after the break.
0:12:12 I’m Stephen Dubner and this is Freakonomics Radio.
0:12:28 Okay, for some history on cannabis, we are going to rely on two people. The first is Ryan Stoa.
0:12:33 I’m an associate professor of law at the Louisiana State University Law Center.
0:12:39 Stoa has written a book called “Craft Weed – Family Farming and the Future of the Marijuana
0:12:44 Industry.” He also published a fascinating article in the MIT Press Reader called “A Brief Global
0:12:50 History of the War on Cannabis.” So you can see where he’s coming from. We’ve had a lot of attention
0:12:56 in the last several decades on the legalization question, should we legalize? And that feels
0:13:01 like it’s been answered. The next question is, how should we regulate it? And maybe the bigger
0:13:07 picture question is, what do we want the cannabis industry to be? The second person we’ll hear from
0:13:13 is John Culkins. I’m a professor of operations research and public policy at Carnegie Mellon
0:13:19 University’s Heinz College. And what does operations research mean? Operations research these days may
0:13:25 be better known as analytics. The name comes from World War II when it was analyzing military
0:13:30 operations. The best way to think about it is engineering and applied mathematics applied
0:13:36 to solving practical decision problems. And what does that have to do with cannabis or other drugs?
0:13:41 When I was in grad school, I wanted to study something that would help make the world a better
0:13:48 place. I assumed that was going to be energy, environment, telecommunications. But I recognized
0:13:53 that at that time, if you surveyed the American public, they said the number one problem facing
0:14:00 the nation was illegal drugs. And so I decided I would focus on that. Can I just ask, what’s your
0:14:08 personal view of drugs? And let’s use drugs to include, you know, nicotine, caffeine, marijuana,
0:14:15 etc. etc. etc. What do you like and not like? You can ask, I won’t answer. I’m highly committed
0:14:21 to the idea that science should be observer independent, dispassionate and objective.
0:14:29 Okay, let’s go with dispassionate and objective. By the way, Culkins is the researcher who put
0:14:36 together the data I cited earlier about the massive rise in daily or near daily use of cannabis
0:14:42 and how it has eclipsed alcohol. He pulled that data from the U.S. National Survey on Drug Use and
0:14:48 Health. For 15 years, I’ve been drawing this graph and every single year I’ve watched it
0:14:55 increase. Back in 1992, there were 10 times as many Americans who self-reported daily or
0:15:02 near daily drinking as self-reported daily or near daily cannabis use. But cannabis use has
0:15:12 grown enormously since that nadir in 1992. And finally, after the 2022 survey data became available,
0:15:17 that was the first year in which the cannabis line crossed the alcohol line.
0:15:22 Okay, so how did we get here? Let’s start the cannabis story at the beginning.
0:15:26 Cannabis has a long, long history going back thousands of years.
0:15:28 And Ryan Stoa again.
0:15:32 There are some people that believe cannabis may have been one of the original crops that
0:15:37 brought about the Neolithic Revolution when humans transitioned from being hunter-gatherers
0:15:44 to being a more fixed agricultural species. The plant is so versatile and can be used for food,
0:15:48 it can be used for fiber, it can be used for religious or spiritual or just recreational
0:15:57 purposes. Did it tend to be more popular among elites or no? It was probably consumed by all
0:16:02 classes of people. But when we saw prohibition measures take place around the world, it was
0:16:08 generally aimed at the lower classes. Drug prohibition historically has been used as a tool
0:16:15 of oppression. So that’s not necessarily the drug itself that the ruling classes are concerned about,
0:16:20 but rather using drug prohibition as a tool to make sure that there isn’t a religious or
0:16:25 economic changing of the guard, so to speak. The Catholic Church hasn’t been terribly fond
0:16:32 of cannabis over the years. Pope Innocent VIII issued a Papal ban on cannabis in the first
0:16:39 year of his papacy. This was in 1484. So clearly a huge priority for him, really wanted to promote
0:16:45 this idea that fulfillment comes in the afterlife and we want to reject these momentary pleasures
0:16:51 that we feel in this body that we have now. What is the typical prohibitionist’s playbook?
0:16:57 Associate the plant with violence. Associate cannabis with depravity. Associate with other
0:17:04 dangerous drugs. Portrait cannabis users as religious extremists or dangerous minorities
0:17:09 and help turn the tide against that population and towards prohibition.
0:17:12 Those are all tried and true strategies that we’ve seen over the years.
0:17:18 Okay, and how about a brief history of cannabis in the U.S.?
0:17:22 John Adams writes this two-page to-do list on his way to the Continental Congress.
0:17:29 On page one of the to-do list is “hemp to be encouraged.” On page two was the Declaration
0:17:35 of Independence. So higher up on his priority list, perhaps. I mean, American farmers were
0:17:40 growing hemp for quite a long time, even into the 20th century and were a dominant force.
0:17:45 It’s absolutely true that in say the 19th century Americans were growing the cannabis plant, but
0:17:53 they were growing it to make rope and shirts and so on. The use of cannabis as an intoxicant
0:18:00 really did not become a major issue until the 20th century. And honestly, even in the first half
0:18:07 of the 20th century, it was pretty darn uncommon. Early 20th century, we saw psychoactive marijuana
0:18:14 strains coming up from Mexico or Latin America popularized in the U.S. South and of course,
0:18:20 went northward, embraced by proponents and fans and musicians of the jazz era.
0:18:26 And so as jazz spread around the United States, so too did marijuana use.
0:18:33 Our original federal law, the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914, was passed primarily because
0:18:40 do-gooder Americans wanted to push back against the British opium trade in China
0:18:48 and didn’t want to be over there without a U.S. law saying that the opioids are problematic.
0:18:53 But the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914 didn’t say anything about cannabis, which was still
0:18:56 technically legal. That was about to change.
0:19:03 So it was first prohibited by states, the federal government came to the party late?
0:19:07 In 1915, California became the first state to criminalize cannabis.
0:19:12 By 1931, a majority of states had done the same and in 1937,
0:19:18 Congress completed the ban by passing the Marijuana Tax Act, marijuana being the term used
0:19:24 in Mexico. The regulators were hoping to give the drug a dangerous south of the border vibe.
0:19:31 Throughout the 20th century, the United States passed a variety of drug-specific federal laws
0:19:38 in 1970 that somewhat incoherent assemblage of laws were brought together into an integrated
0:19:44 framework called the Controlled Substances Act. It’s a myth that that was the beginning of the
0:19:50 quote-unquote war on drugs. The laws had been passed long before. It was just a reorganization.
0:19:58 It was President Nixon who signed the Controlled Substances Act. He called drug use public enemy
0:20:01 number one. And what did Nixon think about cannabis?
0:20:07 Here’s what he told some White House aides as captured by his own secret tape recording system.
0:20:12 I know that it’s not particularly dangerous.
0:20:17 I know most of the kids are for legalizing it.
0:20:25 But on the other hand, it’s the wrong signal at this time.
0:20:31 Over the next few decades, the signals began to change. Many millions of people were using
0:20:37 cannabis, which propped up a massive black market. Millions of people were arrested for
0:20:42 selling and using cannabis. And that struck many people as absurd, especially for a drug that
0:20:49 even Nixon didn’t think was particularly dangerous. Public sentiment shifted. And in 1996, California
0:20:56 approved cannabis for medicinal use. Physicians prescribed it for chronic pain, multiple sclerosis,
0:21:01 bowel disease, glaucoma, epilepsy, and other conditions. Several states followed California’s
0:21:09 lead. And then in 2012, Colorado and Washington became the first states to fully legalize cannabis
0:21:16 for recreational use. Back in the Nixon era, only 15% of Americans said they supported legalization
0:21:24 for everybody over 21. Today, that number is 70%. Cannabis is fully legal in 24 states as well as
0:21:30 Washington, D.C. And it’s approved for medical use in another 14 states. And as we’ve been hearing,
0:21:35 consumption is way up. So who’s doing the consuming?
0:21:42 If we do a pie chart of who’s using cannabis, it’s absolutely dominated by daily, near daily
0:21:46 users. The people who only use once or twice a week are an unimportant footnote from the
0:21:52 perspective of industry. At one time, people thought marijuana was a young person’s drug.
0:22:01 It is not that 1960s association cannabis and college that stopped being true long ago.
0:22:09 The median age of the user of the median day of use is 35. It’s not a young person’s substance
0:22:16 anymore. Of those daily and near daily users, about half report some evidence of having a
0:22:25 substance use disorder. So an important segment of the market is consumption by people who are
0:22:29 providing evidence that they don’t have full control over their substance and it’s harming them.
0:22:35 But are they going to commit violent acts? No. Are they going to dive in overdose? No.
0:22:42 It’s just a very different and far less scary profile of problems.
0:22:52 Cannabis advocates insist that it is not addictive. John Colkins’ data suggests that at the very
0:22:58 least it is habit forming. So I wanted to hear from someone who knows more about addiction.
0:23:03 I’m Yasmin Herd. I’m the director of the Addiction Institute at the Icon School of Medicine at
0:23:09 Mount Sinai in New York. I am a neuroscientist who studies the neurobiology of substance use
0:23:14 disorders. Herd is one of the few researchers who studies the addictive potential of cannabis.
0:23:18 People are like, Yasmin, why are you studying cannabis? This is not an addictive drug. You
0:23:25 should be studying cocaine. However, the number of investigators has increased as the problem of
0:23:33 cannabis has risen and as the legalization has risen. She thinks the US has rushed into legalization.
0:23:38 There was this dramatic switch where cannabis was considered the evil devil and then it was
0:23:44 switched like, okay, let’s start making money. Let’s put a dispensary on every block. I asked
0:23:50 Herd how she got started as an addiction researcher. When I told my really close friends that I was
0:23:56 going to focus on studying addiction, they all laughed or didn’t believe me because
0:24:00 they were like, Yasmin, you don’t use drugs. How can you go into a field that you actually
0:24:07 have not done anything? They were like, Yasmin, you’re from Jamaica and you still don’t use cannabis.
0:24:11 But with all the stress that occurs in my life, I may actually start using CBD though.
0:24:21 No, I have not imbibed in terms of smoking cannabis. I think I’m just a chicken because I would need to
0:24:29 know every single component of the product. But really my path down to this science of addiction
0:24:36 really came with looking at neurodegenerative disorders like Parkinson’s disease. Parkinson’s
0:24:42 disease is the lesion of these dopamine cells in the brain. But these dopamine cells are also
0:24:50 critical for reward, motivation, gold-directed behavior. When you study these Parkinson’s
0:24:56 animal models, you can pharmacologically tease that system with dopamine drugs like cocaine and
0:25:02 amphetamine. I was fascinated by how these drugs completely changed behavior. That was how I got
0:25:09 started. How much variance is there among the human species in the way that they will process a given
0:25:13 drug or the way that the dopamine response will happen? If you were to take 100 people
0:25:18 observationally equivalent in terms of weight and makeup and so on and give them the same amount of
0:25:22 drug, let’s say it’s cannabis just for the sake of this conversation, how much variance is there
0:25:28 in both the short and long-term effects? There’s a lot of variance when individuals take drugs,
0:25:32 even if you give them, like you said, the same amount and their same body weight and so on.
0:25:40 Part of that is driven by genetics, environment. Early life events, for example, can modulate
0:25:47 the amount of particular transmitters that you have, and even your stress response can then
0:25:53 cause downstream effects in terms of how the drug may have a bigger effect than it would in another
0:26:01 person. The variability between individuals is enormous. What’s the difference between how cannabis
0:26:05 and alcohol act on the brain? When we talk about cannabis, we’re talking about
0:26:12 THC, the main psychoactive component of cannabis. That binds to cannabinoid receptors in our
0:26:18 brain and body, and these cannabinoid receptors are on cells that indirectly regulate dopamine.
0:26:22 Alcohol is a little bit more complex. I thought you were going to say sloppy.
0:26:27 Actually, yes, that’s a good word. It’s a little bit more sloppy.
0:26:34 Tell me what you can about the addictive qualities or magnitude of using cannabis. Just give me a
0:26:38 kind of overview, and then we’ll figure out how to drill down into that.
0:26:40 Okay. That may take a couple of hours.
0:26:42 That’s fine. I’ve got time.
0:26:51 So THC, that’s associated with reward, the reinforcement. THC binds to the cannabinoid
0:26:58 receptors in the brain. The cannabinoid receptors are there not for THC. They’re there for our
0:27:04 endogenous cannabinoid ligands. Okay. Did you say that we have endogenous cannabinoid ligands?
0:27:06 Correct. We have endogenous cannabinoid ligands.
0:27:09 Okay. I don’t know what really any of those words mean.
0:27:14 So if you would, tell me more about that.
0:27:22 These endogenous cannabinoid ligands are there mediating the actions of multiple biological
0:27:27 processes. In fact, cannabinoid receptors are expressed throughout practically every organ
0:27:36 in the body, and they modulate aspects of cell development, homeostasis in the brain. They are
0:27:43 important for regulating every single aspect from mood, motor function, every single thing.
0:27:47 It sounds like there’s nothing they’re not potentially connected to.
0:27:53 Exactly. Exactly. They’re there from very early in utero because our endogenous cannabinoid systems
0:28:00 are critical for hard wiring of the brain in the sense of laying down the blueprint on which
0:28:08 the cells are formed and the pathways that they make. So when people consume cannabis, THC will
0:28:16 bind to the receptor, the endogenous cannabinoid receptors. It’s binding at a much higher concentration
0:28:25 than the endogenous ligands. So you already have THC binding at supra physiological levels.
0:28:32 The original plant on the planet that was like two to four percent THC. Today, you have concentrations
0:28:41 of THC depending on the product that can go from 10 to 90 percent THC. So that becomes a huge issue.
0:28:47 We know that for every addictive substance, the higher the concentration of that particular
0:28:53 chemical, the greater the addiction risk. I’ve seen you and others argue that the legalization
0:28:59 of cannabis in the US has really outpaced the research and the science. If I had to guess,
0:29:04 I would say that it’s simply not known how cannabis at that potency will react
0:29:08 or will affect people short-term and especially long-term. Is that about right?
0:29:13 That’s completely correct. No one has studied the majority of products that are out there today.
0:29:20 You have hundreds of products. So scientists were still studying these low concentrations of THC
0:29:25 on so many different biological processes because it is complex. There’s so many things
0:29:32 that we need to know about cannabis effects on health. What’s cannabis effects on cognition?
0:29:38 What’s cannabis effects on reward addiction? What’s cannabis effects on motor function?
0:29:45 So you’re talking about needing a whole army to study the effects of cannabis from a scientific
0:29:50 perspective on these new products that we still do not know anything about.
0:29:57 Cannabis was considered a schedule one drug by the DEA, meaning that it was highly addictive
0:30:05 with no medicinal purpose. And that drove a lot of challenges for researchers because I don’t
0:30:09 think people realize in order to do this research with a schedule one drug, there are a lot of
0:30:15 regulatory hurdles that you have to jump through. Even being able to give a small dose of THC to
0:30:23 our rat, it’s a thousand page things. So millions of people are using a drug whose risks, according
0:30:29 to Yasmin Heard, are not fully understood. We will hear more later in this series about how
0:30:35 cannabis may soon be removed from that schedule one drug listing. Coming up after the break,
0:30:41 how do the risks of cannabis compare to the risks of alcohol? I’m Steven Dubner. This is
0:30:55 Freakinomics Radio. We’ll be right back. In the past, we have made not one but two series about
0:31:02 the ongoing opioid crisis in the US. That crisis had its roots in legal drugs that were prescribed
0:31:08 by physicians. As we move ahead with widespread cannabis legalization, some people like Mount
0:31:15 Sinai addiction researcher Yasmin Heard may see the opioid crisis as a warning. Be careful when
0:31:21 you introduce new drugs into the national blood stream. But there is another public health crisis
0:31:28 that is so widespread, so baked into our culture that we rarely think about it. Here again is Michael
0:31:34 Siegel, the public health researcher at Tufts we heard from earlier. The effects of alcohol in our
0:31:40 society are overwhelming. At least 100,000 deaths a year are attributable to alcohol. Tremendous
0:31:47 amount of violence is related to alcohol, sexual abuse, sexual assault. Have there been studies
0:31:54 between populations that drink and don’t drink for non-health reasons, certain religious groups
0:31:58 that just don’t consume alcohol? I would think that’s a pretty nice study cohort. There’s no
0:32:04 question that when you look at populations that don’t drink alcohol, that there’s a massive
0:32:11 decline in morbidity and mortality. The classic studies were done with a group called Seventh
0:32:17 Day Adventists who for religious reasons do not drink. One could say there are different
0:32:22 characteristics among that population that may not relate to alcohol consumption at all that may
0:32:27 be accounting for the different outcomes, yes? Yeah, absolutely. But if you look at these studies
0:32:33 they’ve done a lot of work to control for those variables. They’re really well done studies and
0:32:39 even controlling for some of those other lifestyle factors, they’re still finding an effect. I want
0:32:45 to make it clear that in no way am I arguing that we should be prohibiting alcohol use. We tried that,
0:32:52 didn’t work. How pervasive would you say has been the problem of the alcohol industry influencing
0:32:59 academic research into alcohol? It’s been a huge problem. It continues to be a huge problem.
0:33:06 The biggest problem is not necessarily that there is research being done that is funded
0:33:13 by alcohol companies. The real problem is that researchers who are conflicted because of accepting
0:33:20 that funding have either accepted or put themselves into positions where they are making policy
0:33:26 recommendations. There are some very specific things that trouble me about what we’re not doing
0:33:34 about alcohol that I think need to be changed. One is the whole issue of regulation of advertising.
0:33:39 I think that we are just completely letting the alcohol companies get away with murder essentially.
0:33:45 They can do anything they want. They can target youth. They can have very attractive images of
0:33:50 alcohol use that appeal to youth. We don’t allow that with tobacco. I don’t see any reason why we
0:33:55 should allow it with alcohol. There are very few organizations that are talking about alcohol as a
0:34:01 carcinogen. It is a carcinogen and everyone should know that. When we were talking earlier about
0:34:08 industry funding of research for alcohol or tobacco or sugar, etc., I’m curious what you
0:34:15 can tell us about cannabis. Is that an issue yet? I think cannabis is a little bit different in that
0:34:23 the health effects are very different. The issue with cannabis is much more behaviors, for example,
0:34:29 driving under the influence of cannabis than long-term effects of cannabis use on chronic disease.
0:34:36 There is some evidence that cannabis, when smoked, does have long irritants,
0:34:44 but for the most part we’re not dealing with the same magnitude of chronic disease as when we’re
0:34:51 talking about something like tobacco or alcohol. What if I say, well, that may be the case now,
0:34:56 based on the known science about alcohol versus cannabis, but there’s less known science about
0:35:03 cannabis. Until quite recently, there’s been much, much, much less use of cannabis than alcohol.
0:35:08 Maybe we just don’t know yet. Alcohol is the devil you know, at least. What would you say to
0:35:14 that argument? I think that there’s enough that we do know about cannabis that we can definitively
0:35:19 say that it’s not going to create the kind of health effects that we see with alcohol. What we
0:35:26 don’t know is really if there are long-term risks of long-term use of cannabis. The concerns are more
0:35:33 in terms of the way that cannabis use might interfere with someone’s life, especially youth,
0:35:38 than necessarily that we’re going to see hundreds of thousands of people dying from it.
0:35:44 I think that’s unlikely. I think it’s really important for us to understand, for policymakers
0:35:52 especially, to understand that a regulated market where a product is legal is very often much safer
0:36:00 than an unregulated product. Potentially, if it’s not well-regulated, contaminants or toxins
0:36:06 getting into these products. We saw that with THC vaping products where we had this outbreak of
0:36:10 lung disease where I think at least 50 or 60 people died.
0:36:17 What’s known so far about the addictive nature of cannabis? I’ve read reports all over the map on
0:36:24 that. There’s no question that cannabis qualifies as an addictive drug, but the major concern with
0:36:33 cannabis use is not simply addiction to cannabis, but that cannabis use seems to be associated with
0:36:40 experimentation with other drugs as well. When somebody is using cannabis, it’s not just that
0:36:46 they’re using cannabis, it’s that there’s a risk that they may become addicted to other
0:36:52 products. That’s an argument I remember hearing when I was a teenager, the gateway drug argument.
0:36:56 How true does that argument turn out to be? Do we know that habitual users of cannabis
0:37:03 are more likely to “move on” to other harder drugs? That is where there is a lot of strong
0:37:08 evidence. A lot of people have been saying that vaping is a gateway to smoking and what they’re
0:37:14 doing is basically taking the cannabis model and applying it to vaping without there actually being
0:37:19 research. There really is not research showing that vaping is a gateway to smoking. In other
0:37:25 words, vaping may be a substitute for smoking instead of… Exactly. There’s a lot more evidence
0:37:32 that vaping is actually a substitute for smoking. With cannabis, there is evidence that cannabis
0:37:38 use can be a gateway to the use of other drugs. What are the other drugs and how likely is the
0:37:44 gateway effect? I think the biggest concern is alcohol use. The concern about cannabis use is
0:37:49 that it leads to more alcohol use. That’s the big concern. Yeah. I mean, there’s very strong
0:37:57 evidence that youth who use cannabis are also more likely to drink more alcohol. Now, what’s not
0:38:03 clear is this a direct causal relationship. In other words, is it the cannabis use that somehow
0:38:08 is having effects on the brain that make it more susceptible to addiction? Or is it simply that
0:38:13 people who are more risk-taking, if they’re experimenting with one substance, they’re also
0:38:18 more likely to experiment with another substance? If I were to ask you what seems like a simple
0:38:24 question, I’m curious to know how you’d answer it. Is cannabis a substitute or a compliment
0:38:32 for alcohol in general? All of the evidence that I’ve seen shows that cannabis is a compliment to
0:38:41 other drugs. It doesn’t appear that people are switching from one form of drug use and then
0:38:47 going to cannabis use as a form of harm reduction. It’s very different than vaping,
0:38:53 where there’s strong evidence that vaping is literally an alternative competing product with
0:39:01 tobacco. What about cannabis as a potential replacement for pharmaceutical drugs? Are there
0:39:06 examples you can point to where cannabis might be a much better option for some conditions,
0:39:11 some people, some situations? It’s interesting because there hasn’t been a tremendous amount
0:39:17 of research in this area by researchers, but there’s been a lot of research by the general public
0:39:24 in terms of just trying it. A lot of what we know about the usefulness of cannabis for
0:39:31 different diseases or ailments or pain comes from people trying it and reporting, hey, this
0:39:38 is really working for me and I can avoid taking opiates or worse things. There are medical uses
0:39:45 for cannabis and there are many situations in which you can reduce harm by allowing people
0:39:51 to use cannabis for medical reasons. Here’s my big question, Michael. Alcohol has been around
0:39:59 forever. It’s widely used in many cultures and many settings. It’s often used responsibly and
0:40:04 often gives a lot of people a lot of pleasure, a lot of benefit, but there are, as we’ve been
0:40:09 talking about today, really significant downsides as well, from physiological to the user, him or
0:40:16 herself to the downstream effects like drunk driving and violence too. At the moment, it seems
0:40:22 like there’s this gigantic experiment going on in America with many states legalizing cannabis
0:40:29 after many years of it being illegal. I could envision an argument that it might be a fantastic
0:40:34 thing if more people were to switch over to cannabis from alcohol and even maybe that if they were
0:40:40 going to start using something that it might be better to use cannabis than alcohol, what would
0:40:47 you make of that theory? Somebody came up to me today and said, “We will make a deal with you.
0:40:56 You can replace all alcohol use with cannabis use. Would you take it? I would take it in a moment.
0:41:03 I would immediately agree to that deal. I think that if everyone who was using alcohol was instead
0:41:09 using cannabis, it would be a much safer, healthier world.” Now, I’m not suggesting
0:41:13 that we should be encouraging everyone to go out and use cannabis.
0:41:15 It sounds kind of like you are, Michael.
0:41:22 I’m saying in this hypothetical situation where someone is offering me a deal, I would take that
0:41:27 immediately and then work on trying to reduce cannabis use because the effects of alcohol
0:41:33 in our society are overwhelming. I mean, it’s just it’s wreaking a havoc on our society.
0:41:41 So that’s one view of our cannabis replacement theory. We went back to the addiction researcher
0:41:47 Yasmin Herd to ask whether she would prefer that alcohol users were using cannabis instead.
0:41:52 That’s a really challenging question. I would say if we knew then what we know now,
0:41:58 neither alcohol or tobacco would be approved because they contribute to huge health impact
0:42:06 in our society. And alcohol leads to more deaths every year. But would I want to get rid of alcohol,
0:42:12 even though I like my sauvignon blanc? You know, perhaps, but the fact is that we know more about
0:42:19 alcohol. We still don’t know about cannabis. So it’s difficult for me to truly answer that question.
0:42:26 How long is it going to take to know what should be known about a substance that’s
0:42:31 widely legalized and available? That’s an excellent question. And I’m going to be honest
0:42:38 and say, I don’t know. Near daily and daily use of cannabis is much higher than it is for alcohol.
0:42:45 That’s where our society is gone. So does frequency matter? What we need to know right now
0:42:52 are the aspects of the high concentrated products, because that’s what is out there in the public.
0:42:59 Even these aspects of the pattern of cannabis use that relates to addiction and psychiatric risk,
0:43:07 we do not know much about. And Michael Siegel again. One of the philosophies of public health is the
0:43:15 theory of harm reduction. We’re not going to stop people from using substances completely. So why
0:43:22 don’t we focus on trying to find ways that will cause the least health harm? I think a combination
0:43:32 of legalizing recreational marijuana use combined with strict regulation and incentives to direct
0:43:39 people towards the lesser harm is really the best strategy to go with. So that’s what the public
0:43:45 health experts have to say, that we need to know more, that we need a well-regulated market with
0:43:51 incentives to direct people toward the lesser harm. But, and I certainly mean no offense to Michael
0:43:58 Siegel or Yasmin Heard, but it isn’t academic public health experts like them who make the markets.
0:44:04 In the case of cannabis, we are talking about freewheeling entrepreneurs, government regulators,
0:44:11 and professional loophole finders. So coming up next time in part two of our series,
0:44:17 how does this market work or not work? The entirety of the cannabis market
0:44:23 is filled with an amazing number of contradictions. Cannabis also has the added difficulty of having
0:44:31 a rich history that’s rooted in criminalization. Oh, it’s been a doozy. That’s next time. Until
0:44:36 then, take care of yourself. And if you can, someone else do. Freakonomics Radio is produced
0:44:41 by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. You can find our entire archive on any podcast app, also at
0:44:47 Freakonomics.com, where we publish transcripts and show notes. Also, big congratulations to the three
0:44:53 winners of this year’s Nobel Prize in Economics. Daron Asamoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson.
0:44:58 They have each appeared on Freakonomics Radio in the past. If you search their names on
0:45:04 Freakonomics.com, you will find their episodes. And you can hear a full interview with Asamoglu
0:45:09 on people I mostly admire. That’s one of the other podcasts we make, hosted by Steve Levin.
0:45:13 He interviewed Asamoglu not long ago, and we are republishing that episode soon.
0:45:19 This episode of Freakonomics Radio was produced by Dalvin Abouwaji and Zach Lipinski, and we
0:45:25 had help this week from George Hicks. Our staff also includes Alina Kulman, Augusta Chapman, Eleanor
0:45:30 Osborne, Ellen Frankman, Elsa Hernandez, Gabriel Roth, Greg Rippen, Jasmine Klinger, Jeremy Johnston,
0:45:35 John Schnarr’s Lyric Bowditch, Morgan Levy, Neal Coruth, Rebecca Lee Douglas, Sarah Lilly,
0:45:41 and Theo Jacobs. Our theme song is Mr. Fortune by the Hitchhikers. Our composer is Louise Guerra.
0:45:47 As always, thank you for listening. I’m very grateful for you being here.
0:45:49 Thank you. Let’s see if you have the same opinion at the end of this.
0:45:59 The Freakonomics Radio Network. The hidden side of everything.
0:46:04 Stitcher.
0:46:06 you
0:46:08 you
0:00:08 On a recent Monday morning, we found ourselves up in the Berkshire Mountains in the town of Sheffield,
0:00:14 Massachusetts. There is a dark gray building with a big front porch right on Route 7.
0:00:21 It is home to a retail shop called The Pass. It was pretty busy, especially for Monday morning,
0:00:25 and the customers were happy to tell us why they were buying what they were buying.
0:00:31 It helps me with pretty much everything. Get through the day, wake up, eat, my anxiety.
0:00:37 This is pretty much the only way to get my brain to shut off, to actually fall asleep.
0:00:42 There’s so many different ways you can use it. This is my relaxation. It just takes the edge off.
0:00:47 For me, it just makes everything a little bit better. Everyone could benefit off of it in their
0:00:55 own way. It’s, you know, medicine without medicine. What is this alleged elixir? This medicine without
0:01:03 medicine? I got some weed. It’s all cannabis. I absolutely love it. It’s just nice to know that
0:01:13 it’s legal now. You may know it as weed or marijuana or hemp or pot or, if you’re old enough, maybe
0:01:22 know it as grass or reefer or herb. It has gone by many names in many places and many times.
0:01:30 Mary Jane, sticky icky, chronic, devil’s lettuce, gas, ganja, 420 dope, green goddess,
0:01:37 flower, zaza, bud, shape, skunk, greenery, kush. We are just going to call it cannabis. That’s
0:01:45 the name of the actual plant. The most famous component of the plant is THC or tetrahydrocannabinol.
0:01:51 That’s the one that gets you high. The second best known component is CBD or cannabidiol,
0:01:55 which is not intoxicating and tends to be used for things like pain relief.
0:02:01 But there are more than 140 cannabinoids found in different strains of the plant.
0:02:07 You probably already know that cannabis is now legal in many states, even though it remains
0:02:13 illegal federally. And you may know that it comes in many forms. Flower, which is just the dried
0:02:19 plant for people who smoke, but also edibles, tinctures, beverages, chewing gum, chocolate,
0:02:24 nasal spray, quite a few more. But here’s something I bet you don’t know. In the U.S.
0:02:31 today, there are more DND users of cannabis that stands for daily or near daily than there are
0:02:38 daily or near daily users of alcohol. Let that sink in for a minute. Here’s what we heard
0:02:44 up at the pass. It’s better if you’re going to use it every day, you know, you can drink every day
0:02:49 and be okay. If I’m in like a social situation, I’m not going to grab a drink. I’m going to
0:02:55 grab some weed. I was a teenage alcoholic, but now I’ve been smoking weed for 60 years and I’m
0:03:01 still alive. Alcohol is still overall much more popular in the U.S. But for a significant group
0:03:08 of people, cannabis has become the drug of choice. In a recent Gallup survey, 17% of Americans reported
0:03:16 using cannabis that’s up from 7% just 10 years earlier. How did this happen? And what does it mean?
0:03:22 That’s what we want to find out in this special four-part series on cannabis.
0:03:29 I think if everyone who was using alcohol was instead using cannabis, it would be a much safer,
0:03:35 healthier world. In today’s episode, part one, the harms of alcohol are well-established. How about
0:03:43 cannabis? You’re talking about needing a whole army to study the effects of cannabis from these
0:03:49 new products that we still do not know anything about. In part two, we will get into the bizarre
0:03:55 economics of this industry, which haven’t worked out the way anyone predicted. It’s hard to articulate
0:04:02 the regulatory complexity of every single thing you have to do. In part three, we will visit the farm.
0:04:11 Smells good, doesn’t it? And in part four, we will try to sort out a future. Americans, Democrat,
0:04:16 Republican, independent are all supportive of seeing major cannabis change. Along the way,
0:04:22 we will hear from cannabis industry insiders, medical doctors and legal scholars, regulators and
0:04:32 politicians, and a few happy customers. It tastes good. I’m really energized. I thought I would be
0:04:37 asleep. Oh, I’m enthralled. I’m so excited. I’m excited too. We’ll see you after the…
0:04:54 This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything with your
0:05:08 host, Stephen Dubner. So let me tell you how this series began. It did not begin as a series about
0:05:14 cannabis. We thought we were going to make a series about the economics of the alcohol industry.
0:05:19 Well, we say cheers and we raise our glasses. We’re doing something extremely ancient.
0:05:24 Our first interview was with Tom Standage. He’s an editor at The Economist in London.
0:05:29 And I’m also the author of a book called A History of the World in Six Glasses.
0:05:34 A History of the World in Six Glasses is a very good book. And the interview with Standage
0:05:40 was interesting for sure. He told us that beer is probably the oldest alcoholic beverage and
0:05:46 that it was discovered accidentally. People would have made a sort of barley or wheat rich soup,
0:05:50 and then they might have left it out and it would have naturally fermented with wild yeasts.
0:05:54 There are these pictures of people drinking beer in Mesopotamia from 5,000 years ago,
0:05:57 and they’re all drinking through straws from the same vessel.
0:06:00 Standage told us that beer was central to ancient economies.
0:06:05 We know that the workers who built the pyramids as long thought that they were enslaved.
0:06:09 Actually, they weren’t. They were paid. And they were paid partly in beer.
0:06:15 And he told us about the beer theory of civilization. That’s the idea that the human embrace of alcohol
0:06:21 predated the age of agriculture. The beer theory of civilization is that people settled down
0:06:26 close to wild stands of things like barley in order to be sure that they would have a reliable
0:06:32 supply and therefore a reliable supply of beer. But growing barley and wheat on purpose, cultivating
0:06:39 them as crops, that would produce even more raw material for more beer, as well as food for eating,
0:06:44 of course. Man does not live on booze alone, although I have known a few people who tried.
0:06:50 But the reality is that many people have really liked alcohol for a really long time.
0:06:56 You have to look at alcohol as a source of intellectual stimulation, as a source of joy,
0:06:58 a source of calories to keep people alive.
0:07:03 How important historically was alcohol just to plain human survival in terms of delivering
0:07:08 water that didn’t make people sick and delivering calories that were substantial and affordable
0:07:13 and portable? Yes, alcohol does both of those things. If you’re worried about safe water supply,
0:07:17 it does work as a purification technology. For example, the Greeks mixed water and wine.
0:07:22 They thought that this was to make the wine safe, that if you drank undiluted wine,
0:07:27 you’d go nuts. But actually, the wine was making the water safe because the tannins were antibacterial.
0:07:32 So alcohol has played a key role in human civilization since the early days,
0:07:38 and in many places, it still does. We drink to celebrate. We drink to sanctify. We drink to mourn.
0:07:43 We drink with old friends and with people we’re just getting to know. We drink when we want to
0:07:48 shift a mental gear. Tom Standage, for instance, plays drums in a band.
0:07:53 I play the drums better after a pint of Guinness. I’m more relaxed, but also I’m not
0:07:57 overthinking things too much. I’m probably prepared to take a few more risks and
0:08:01 try a few more creative things. I do think there is a sort of useful
0:08:05 blurriness that can come from drinking the right amount of alcohol.
0:08:11 The pursuit of that useful blurriness is, in some places, a national pastime.
0:08:17 In the US, more than 60% of us drink, at least sometimes, and that has been true for over 150
0:08:22 years, and COVID produced a 5.5% rise in per capita alcohol consumption.
0:08:28 But how much you drink has a lot to do with how old you are and not in the way you might expect.
0:08:32 The main thing that we’ve observed on both sides of the Atlantic is that younger people
0:08:37 are drinking less, or not at all, in many cases. And certainly my generation, so I’m in my 50s,
0:08:44 we seem to be drinking a lot more. Indeed, 85% of Americans aged 35 to 50 now drink a much
0:08:50 higher number than in the past. And binge drinking among this group, defined as four drinks within
0:08:56 two hours for a woman and five drinks for a man, that is now at 30%, the highest ever recorded.
0:09:03 So yeah, we’re talking to Tom Standage about alcohol, and it’s super interesting. I’m thinking
0:09:09 about that Mesopotamian history. I’m thinking about alcohol as a social lubricant. I’m thinking
0:09:16 about its antibacterial benefits. But then I start digging into the data about the harms of alcohol,
0:09:24 and I am just blown away. According to the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, roughly 180,000
0:09:29 Americans die every year from excessive alcohol use. And that number has been rising lately,
0:09:36 driven by an increase in women dying from alcohol use. Around 15,000 of these alcohol-related
0:09:41 deaths come in motor vehicle crashes. And NHTSA, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration,
0:09:48 reports that alcohol use is up in their data too. But let’s put aside death. The CDC estimates that
0:09:55 alcohol use costs the US about a quarter of a trillion dollars annually. Most of that in lost
0:10:03 workplace productivity, but there’s $28 billion in healthcare costs, $25 billion in criminal justice
0:10:10 costs, on and on. And so I got to thinking. I know that alcohol has been around for a long time,
0:10:17 and I know it serves many purposes for many people, and I personally like it. But if you take all the
0:10:23 advantages of alcohol and weigh them against the harms, alcohol does not come out looking very good.
0:10:29 Now, you may be thinking, what about the health benefits of alcohol? You’ve seen all those TV news
0:10:35 pieces about red wine, preventing cancer, that kind of thing. I started wondering about that too,
0:10:40 so I called up Michael Siegel, a public health researcher at Tufts. He said you have to follow
0:10:47 the funding. Most of the research which has been funded by alcohol companies has reported
0:10:53 that there is a benefit to drinking moderate amounts of alcohol. On the other hand, most of
0:10:59 the research that has not been funded by the industry has found that there actually is not
0:11:07 a benefit and that overall mortality is higher. Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised by this news.
0:11:13 The same thing happened with cigarettes and sugar. An industry will commission researchers
0:11:18 from a top university to produce a study that winds up miraculously highlighting only the
0:11:24 benefits of their product. Some public health experts still say that moderate alcohol use
0:11:30 isn’t a big deal, but others say that alcohol is essentially toxic. We are not going to be able
0:11:35 to settle that argument today. We are making a different argument. Here’s what we were saying.
0:11:42 Given that the societal costs of alcohol are so large and that any health benefits are probably
0:11:51 overhyped and given that cannabis use is soaring, is it possible that we have entered the era of
0:11:58 cannabis replacement? And if so, what will be the effects of that? Those seem like interesting
0:12:03 questions to me. I hope they seem interesting to you too, because that’s the series we wound up
0:12:09 making. Next step, now we need a little cannabis history. That’s coming up after the break.
0:12:12 I’m Stephen Dubner and this is Freakonomics Radio.
0:12:28 Okay, for some history on cannabis, we are going to rely on two people. The first is Ryan Stoa.
0:12:33 I’m an associate professor of law at the Louisiana State University Law Center.
0:12:39 Stoa has written a book called “Craft Weed – Family Farming and the Future of the Marijuana
0:12:44 Industry.” He also published a fascinating article in the MIT Press Reader called “A Brief Global
0:12:50 History of the War on Cannabis.” So you can see where he’s coming from. We’ve had a lot of attention
0:12:56 in the last several decades on the legalization question, should we legalize? And that feels
0:13:01 like it’s been answered. The next question is, how should we regulate it? And maybe the bigger
0:13:07 picture question is, what do we want the cannabis industry to be? The second person we’ll hear from
0:13:13 is John Culkins. I’m a professor of operations research and public policy at Carnegie Mellon
0:13:19 University’s Heinz College. And what does operations research mean? Operations research these days may
0:13:25 be better known as analytics. The name comes from World War II when it was analyzing military
0:13:30 operations. The best way to think about it is engineering and applied mathematics applied
0:13:36 to solving practical decision problems. And what does that have to do with cannabis or other drugs?
0:13:41 When I was in grad school, I wanted to study something that would help make the world a better
0:13:48 place. I assumed that was going to be energy, environment, telecommunications. But I recognized
0:13:53 that at that time, if you surveyed the American public, they said the number one problem facing
0:14:00 the nation was illegal drugs. And so I decided I would focus on that. Can I just ask, what’s your
0:14:08 personal view of drugs? And let’s use drugs to include, you know, nicotine, caffeine, marijuana,
0:14:15 etc. etc. etc. What do you like and not like? You can ask, I won’t answer. I’m highly committed
0:14:21 to the idea that science should be observer independent, dispassionate and objective.
0:14:29 Okay, let’s go with dispassionate and objective. By the way, Culkins is the researcher who put
0:14:36 together the data I cited earlier about the massive rise in daily or near daily use of cannabis
0:14:42 and how it has eclipsed alcohol. He pulled that data from the U.S. National Survey on Drug Use and
0:14:48 Health. For 15 years, I’ve been drawing this graph and every single year I’ve watched it
0:14:55 increase. Back in 1992, there were 10 times as many Americans who self-reported daily or
0:15:02 near daily drinking as self-reported daily or near daily cannabis use. But cannabis use has
0:15:12 grown enormously since that nadir in 1992. And finally, after the 2022 survey data became available,
0:15:17 that was the first year in which the cannabis line crossed the alcohol line.
0:15:22 Okay, so how did we get here? Let’s start the cannabis story at the beginning.
0:15:26 Cannabis has a long, long history going back thousands of years.
0:15:28 And Ryan Stoa again.
0:15:32 There are some people that believe cannabis may have been one of the original crops that
0:15:37 brought about the Neolithic Revolution when humans transitioned from being hunter-gatherers
0:15:44 to being a more fixed agricultural species. The plant is so versatile and can be used for food,
0:15:48 it can be used for fiber, it can be used for religious or spiritual or just recreational
0:15:57 purposes. Did it tend to be more popular among elites or no? It was probably consumed by all
0:16:02 classes of people. But when we saw prohibition measures take place around the world, it was
0:16:08 generally aimed at the lower classes. Drug prohibition historically has been used as a tool
0:16:15 of oppression. So that’s not necessarily the drug itself that the ruling classes are concerned about,
0:16:20 but rather using drug prohibition as a tool to make sure that there isn’t a religious or
0:16:25 economic changing of the guard, so to speak. The Catholic Church hasn’t been terribly fond
0:16:32 of cannabis over the years. Pope Innocent VIII issued a Papal ban on cannabis in the first
0:16:39 year of his papacy. This was in 1484. So clearly a huge priority for him, really wanted to promote
0:16:45 this idea that fulfillment comes in the afterlife and we want to reject these momentary pleasures
0:16:51 that we feel in this body that we have now. What is the typical prohibitionist’s playbook?
0:16:57 Associate the plant with violence. Associate cannabis with depravity. Associate with other
0:17:04 dangerous drugs. Portrait cannabis users as religious extremists or dangerous minorities
0:17:09 and help turn the tide against that population and towards prohibition.
0:17:12 Those are all tried and true strategies that we’ve seen over the years.
0:17:18 Okay, and how about a brief history of cannabis in the U.S.?
0:17:22 John Adams writes this two-page to-do list on his way to the Continental Congress.
0:17:29 On page one of the to-do list is “hemp to be encouraged.” On page two was the Declaration
0:17:35 of Independence. So higher up on his priority list, perhaps. I mean, American farmers were
0:17:40 growing hemp for quite a long time, even into the 20th century and were a dominant force.
0:17:45 It’s absolutely true that in say the 19th century Americans were growing the cannabis plant, but
0:17:53 they were growing it to make rope and shirts and so on. The use of cannabis as an intoxicant
0:18:00 really did not become a major issue until the 20th century. And honestly, even in the first half
0:18:07 of the 20th century, it was pretty darn uncommon. Early 20th century, we saw psychoactive marijuana
0:18:14 strains coming up from Mexico or Latin America popularized in the U.S. South and of course,
0:18:20 went northward, embraced by proponents and fans and musicians of the jazz era.
0:18:26 And so as jazz spread around the United States, so too did marijuana use.
0:18:33 Our original federal law, the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914, was passed primarily because
0:18:40 do-gooder Americans wanted to push back against the British opium trade in China
0:18:48 and didn’t want to be over there without a U.S. law saying that the opioids are problematic.
0:18:53 But the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914 didn’t say anything about cannabis, which was still
0:18:56 technically legal. That was about to change.
0:19:03 So it was first prohibited by states, the federal government came to the party late?
0:19:07 In 1915, California became the first state to criminalize cannabis.
0:19:12 By 1931, a majority of states had done the same and in 1937,
0:19:18 Congress completed the ban by passing the Marijuana Tax Act, marijuana being the term used
0:19:24 in Mexico. The regulators were hoping to give the drug a dangerous south of the border vibe.
0:19:31 Throughout the 20th century, the United States passed a variety of drug-specific federal laws
0:19:38 in 1970 that somewhat incoherent assemblage of laws were brought together into an integrated
0:19:44 framework called the Controlled Substances Act. It’s a myth that that was the beginning of the
0:19:50 quote-unquote war on drugs. The laws had been passed long before. It was just a reorganization.
0:19:58 It was President Nixon who signed the Controlled Substances Act. He called drug use public enemy
0:20:01 number one. And what did Nixon think about cannabis?
0:20:07 Here’s what he told some White House aides as captured by his own secret tape recording system.
0:20:12 I know that it’s not particularly dangerous.
0:20:17 I know most of the kids are for legalizing it.
0:20:25 But on the other hand, it’s the wrong signal at this time.
0:20:31 Over the next few decades, the signals began to change. Many millions of people were using
0:20:37 cannabis, which propped up a massive black market. Millions of people were arrested for
0:20:42 selling and using cannabis. And that struck many people as absurd, especially for a drug that
0:20:49 even Nixon didn’t think was particularly dangerous. Public sentiment shifted. And in 1996, California
0:20:56 approved cannabis for medicinal use. Physicians prescribed it for chronic pain, multiple sclerosis,
0:21:01 bowel disease, glaucoma, epilepsy, and other conditions. Several states followed California’s
0:21:09 lead. And then in 2012, Colorado and Washington became the first states to fully legalize cannabis
0:21:16 for recreational use. Back in the Nixon era, only 15% of Americans said they supported legalization
0:21:24 for everybody over 21. Today, that number is 70%. Cannabis is fully legal in 24 states as well as
0:21:30 Washington, D.C. And it’s approved for medical use in another 14 states. And as we’ve been hearing,
0:21:35 consumption is way up. So who’s doing the consuming?
0:21:42 If we do a pie chart of who’s using cannabis, it’s absolutely dominated by daily, near daily
0:21:46 users. The people who only use once or twice a week are an unimportant footnote from the
0:21:52 perspective of industry. At one time, people thought marijuana was a young person’s drug.
0:22:01 It is not that 1960s association cannabis and college that stopped being true long ago.
0:22:09 The median age of the user of the median day of use is 35. It’s not a young person’s substance
0:22:16 anymore. Of those daily and near daily users, about half report some evidence of having a
0:22:25 substance use disorder. So an important segment of the market is consumption by people who are
0:22:29 providing evidence that they don’t have full control over their substance and it’s harming them.
0:22:35 But are they going to commit violent acts? No. Are they going to dive in overdose? No.
0:22:42 It’s just a very different and far less scary profile of problems.
0:22:52 Cannabis advocates insist that it is not addictive. John Colkins’ data suggests that at the very
0:22:58 least it is habit forming. So I wanted to hear from someone who knows more about addiction.
0:23:03 I’m Yasmin Herd. I’m the director of the Addiction Institute at the Icon School of Medicine at
0:23:09 Mount Sinai in New York. I am a neuroscientist who studies the neurobiology of substance use
0:23:14 disorders. Herd is one of the few researchers who studies the addictive potential of cannabis.
0:23:18 People are like, Yasmin, why are you studying cannabis? This is not an addictive drug. You
0:23:25 should be studying cocaine. However, the number of investigators has increased as the problem of
0:23:33 cannabis has risen and as the legalization has risen. She thinks the US has rushed into legalization.
0:23:38 There was this dramatic switch where cannabis was considered the evil devil and then it was
0:23:44 switched like, okay, let’s start making money. Let’s put a dispensary on every block. I asked
0:23:50 Herd how she got started as an addiction researcher. When I told my really close friends that I was
0:23:56 going to focus on studying addiction, they all laughed or didn’t believe me because
0:24:00 they were like, Yasmin, you don’t use drugs. How can you go into a field that you actually
0:24:07 have not done anything? They were like, Yasmin, you’re from Jamaica and you still don’t use cannabis.
0:24:11 But with all the stress that occurs in my life, I may actually start using CBD though.
0:24:21 No, I have not imbibed in terms of smoking cannabis. I think I’m just a chicken because I would need to
0:24:29 know every single component of the product. But really my path down to this science of addiction
0:24:36 really came with looking at neurodegenerative disorders like Parkinson’s disease. Parkinson’s
0:24:42 disease is the lesion of these dopamine cells in the brain. But these dopamine cells are also
0:24:50 critical for reward, motivation, gold-directed behavior. When you study these Parkinson’s
0:24:56 animal models, you can pharmacologically tease that system with dopamine drugs like cocaine and
0:25:02 amphetamine. I was fascinated by how these drugs completely changed behavior. That was how I got
0:25:09 started. How much variance is there among the human species in the way that they will process a given
0:25:13 drug or the way that the dopamine response will happen? If you were to take 100 people
0:25:18 observationally equivalent in terms of weight and makeup and so on and give them the same amount of
0:25:22 drug, let’s say it’s cannabis just for the sake of this conversation, how much variance is there
0:25:28 in both the short and long-term effects? There’s a lot of variance when individuals take drugs,
0:25:32 even if you give them, like you said, the same amount and their same body weight and so on.
0:25:40 Part of that is driven by genetics, environment. Early life events, for example, can modulate
0:25:47 the amount of particular transmitters that you have, and even your stress response can then
0:25:53 cause downstream effects in terms of how the drug may have a bigger effect than it would in another
0:26:01 person. The variability between individuals is enormous. What’s the difference between how cannabis
0:26:05 and alcohol act on the brain? When we talk about cannabis, we’re talking about
0:26:12 THC, the main psychoactive component of cannabis. That binds to cannabinoid receptors in our
0:26:18 brain and body, and these cannabinoid receptors are on cells that indirectly regulate dopamine.
0:26:22 Alcohol is a little bit more complex. I thought you were going to say sloppy.
0:26:27 Actually, yes, that’s a good word. It’s a little bit more sloppy.
0:26:34 Tell me what you can about the addictive qualities or magnitude of using cannabis. Just give me a
0:26:38 kind of overview, and then we’ll figure out how to drill down into that.
0:26:40 Okay. That may take a couple of hours.
0:26:42 That’s fine. I’ve got time.
0:26:51 So THC, that’s associated with reward, the reinforcement. THC binds to the cannabinoid
0:26:58 receptors in the brain. The cannabinoid receptors are there not for THC. They’re there for our
0:27:04 endogenous cannabinoid ligands. Okay. Did you say that we have endogenous cannabinoid ligands?
0:27:06 Correct. We have endogenous cannabinoid ligands.
0:27:09 Okay. I don’t know what really any of those words mean.
0:27:14 So if you would, tell me more about that.
0:27:22 These endogenous cannabinoid ligands are there mediating the actions of multiple biological
0:27:27 processes. In fact, cannabinoid receptors are expressed throughout practically every organ
0:27:36 in the body, and they modulate aspects of cell development, homeostasis in the brain. They are
0:27:43 important for regulating every single aspect from mood, motor function, every single thing.
0:27:47 It sounds like there’s nothing they’re not potentially connected to.
0:27:53 Exactly. Exactly. They’re there from very early in utero because our endogenous cannabinoid systems
0:28:00 are critical for hard wiring of the brain in the sense of laying down the blueprint on which
0:28:08 the cells are formed and the pathways that they make. So when people consume cannabis, THC will
0:28:16 bind to the receptor, the endogenous cannabinoid receptors. It’s binding at a much higher concentration
0:28:25 than the endogenous ligands. So you already have THC binding at supra physiological levels.
0:28:32 The original plant on the planet that was like two to four percent THC. Today, you have concentrations
0:28:41 of THC depending on the product that can go from 10 to 90 percent THC. So that becomes a huge issue.
0:28:47 We know that for every addictive substance, the higher the concentration of that particular
0:28:53 chemical, the greater the addiction risk. I’ve seen you and others argue that the legalization
0:28:59 of cannabis in the US has really outpaced the research and the science. If I had to guess,
0:29:04 I would say that it’s simply not known how cannabis at that potency will react
0:29:08 or will affect people short-term and especially long-term. Is that about right?
0:29:13 That’s completely correct. No one has studied the majority of products that are out there today.
0:29:20 You have hundreds of products. So scientists were still studying these low concentrations of THC
0:29:25 on so many different biological processes because it is complex. There’s so many things
0:29:32 that we need to know about cannabis effects on health. What’s cannabis effects on cognition?
0:29:38 What’s cannabis effects on reward addiction? What’s cannabis effects on motor function?
0:29:45 So you’re talking about needing a whole army to study the effects of cannabis from a scientific
0:29:50 perspective on these new products that we still do not know anything about.
0:29:57 Cannabis was considered a schedule one drug by the DEA, meaning that it was highly addictive
0:30:05 with no medicinal purpose. And that drove a lot of challenges for researchers because I don’t
0:30:09 think people realize in order to do this research with a schedule one drug, there are a lot of
0:30:15 regulatory hurdles that you have to jump through. Even being able to give a small dose of THC to
0:30:23 our rat, it’s a thousand page things. So millions of people are using a drug whose risks, according
0:30:29 to Yasmin Heard, are not fully understood. We will hear more later in this series about how
0:30:35 cannabis may soon be removed from that schedule one drug listing. Coming up after the break,
0:30:41 how do the risks of cannabis compare to the risks of alcohol? I’m Steven Dubner. This is
0:30:55 Freakinomics Radio. We’ll be right back. In the past, we have made not one but two series about
0:31:02 the ongoing opioid crisis in the US. That crisis had its roots in legal drugs that were prescribed
0:31:08 by physicians. As we move ahead with widespread cannabis legalization, some people like Mount
0:31:15 Sinai addiction researcher Yasmin Heard may see the opioid crisis as a warning. Be careful when
0:31:21 you introduce new drugs into the national blood stream. But there is another public health crisis
0:31:28 that is so widespread, so baked into our culture that we rarely think about it. Here again is Michael
0:31:34 Siegel, the public health researcher at Tufts we heard from earlier. The effects of alcohol in our
0:31:40 society are overwhelming. At least 100,000 deaths a year are attributable to alcohol. Tremendous
0:31:47 amount of violence is related to alcohol, sexual abuse, sexual assault. Have there been studies
0:31:54 between populations that drink and don’t drink for non-health reasons, certain religious groups
0:31:58 that just don’t consume alcohol? I would think that’s a pretty nice study cohort. There’s no
0:32:04 question that when you look at populations that don’t drink alcohol, that there’s a massive
0:32:11 decline in morbidity and mortality. The classic studies were done with a group called Seventh
0:32:17 Day Adventists who for religious reasons do not drink. One could say there are different
0:32:22 characteristics among that population that may not relate to alcohol consumption at all that may
0:32:27 be accounting for the different outcomes, yes? Yeah, absolutely. But if you look at these studies
0:32:33 they’ve done a lot of work to control for those variables. They’re really well done studies and
0:32:39 even controlling for some of those other lifestyle factors, they’re still finding an effect. I want
0:32:45 to make it clear that in no way am I arguing that we should be prohibiting alcohol use. We tried that,
0:32:52 didn’t work. How pervasive would you say has been the problem of the alcohol industry influencing
0:32:59 academic research into alcohol? It’s been a huge problem. It continues to be a huge problem.
0:33:06 The biggest problem is not necessarily that there is research being done that is funded
0:33:13 by alcohol companies. The real problem is that researchers who are conflicted because of accepting
0:33:20 that funding have either accepted or put themselves into positions where they are making policy
0:33:26 recommendations. There are some very specific things that trouble me about what we’re not doing
0:33:34 about alcohol that I think need to be changed. One is the whole issue of regulation of advertising.
0:33:39 I think that we are just completely letting the alcohol companies get away with murder essentially.
0:33:45 They can do anything they want. They can target youth. They can have very attractive images of
0:33:50 alcohol use that appeal to youth. We don’t allow that with tobacco. I don’t see any reason why we
0:33:55 should allow it with alcohol. There are very few organizations that are talking about alcohol as a
0:34:01 carcinogen. It is a carcinogen and everyone should know that. When we were talking earlier about
0:34:08 industry funding of research for alcohol or tobacco or sugar, etc., I’m curious what you
0:34:15 can tell us about cannabis. Is that an issue yet? I think cannabis is a little bit different in that
0:34:23 the health effects are very different. The issue with cannabis is much more behaviors, for example,
0:34:29 driving under the influence of cannabis than long-term effects of cannabis use on chronic disease.
0:34:36 There is some evidence that cannabis, when smoked, does have long irritants,
0:34:44 but for the most part we’re not dealing with the same magnitude of chronic disease as when we’re
0:34:51 talking about something like tobacco or alcohol. What if I say, well, that may be the case now,
0:34:56 based on the known science about alcohol versus cannabis, but there’s less known science about
0:35:03 cannabis. Until quite recently, there’s been much, much, much less use of cannabis than alcohol.
0:35:08 Maybe we just don’t know yet. Alcohol is the devil you know, at least. What would you say to
0:35:14 that argument? I think that there’s enough that we do know about cannabis that we can definitively
0:35:19 say that it’s not going to create the kind of health effects that we see with alcohol. What we
0:35:26 don’t know is really if there are long-term risks of long-term use of cannabis. The concerns are more
0:35:33 in terms of the way that cannabis use might interfere with someone’s life, especially youth,
0:35:38 than necessarily that we’re going to see hundreds of thousands of people dying from it.
0:35:44 I think that’s unlikely. I think it’s really important for us to understand, for policymakers
0:35:52 especially, to understand that a regulated market where a product is legal is very often much safer
0:36:00 than an unregulated product. Potentially, if it’s not well-regulated, contaminants or toxins
0:36:06 getting into these products. We saw that with THC vaping products where we had this outbreak of
0:36:10 lung disease where I think at least 50 or 60 people died.
0:36:17 What’s known so far about the addictive nature of cannabis? I’ve read reports all over the map on
0:36:24 that. There’s no question that cannabis qualifies as an addictive drug, but the major concern with
0:36:33 cannabis use is not simply addiction to cannabis, but that cannabis use seems to be associated with
0:36:40 experimentation with other drugs as well. When somebody is using cannabis, it’s not just that
0:36:46 they’re using cannabis, it’s that there’s a risk that they may become addicted to other
0:36:52 products. That’s an argument I remember hearing when I was a teenager, the gateway drug argument.
0:36:56 How true does that argument turn out to be? Do we know that habitual users of cannabis
0:37:03 are more likely to “move on” to other harder drugs? That is where there is a lot of strong
0:37:08 evidence. A lot of people have been saying that vaping is a gateway to smoking and what they’re
0:37:14 doing is basically taking the cannabis model and applying it to vaping without there actually being
0:37:19 research. There really is not research showing that vaping is a gateway to smoking. In other
0:37:25 words, vaping may be a substitute for smoking instead of… Exactly. There’s a lot more evidence
0:37:32 that vaping is actually a substitute for smoking. With cannabis, there is evidence that cannabis
0:37:38 use can be a gateway to the use of other drugs. What are the other drugs and how likely is the
0:37:44 gateway effect? I think the biggest concern is alcohol use. The concern about cannabis use is
0:37:49 that it leads to more alcohol use. That’s the big concern. Yeah. I mean, there’s very strong
0:37:57 evidence that youth who use cannabis are also more likely to drink more alcohol. Now, what’s not
0:38:03 clear is this a direct causal relationship. In other words, is it the cannabis use that somehow
0:38:08 is having effects on the brain that make it more susceptible to addiction? Or is it simply that
0:38:13 people who are more risk-taking, if they’re experimenting with one substance, they’re also
0:38:18 more likely to experiment with another substance? If I were to ask you what seems like a simple
0:38:24 question, I’m curious to know how you’d answer it. Is cannabis a substitute or a compliment
0:38:32 for alcohol in general? All of the evidence that I’ve seen shows that cannabis is a compliment to
0:38:41 other drugs. It doesn’t appear that people are switching from one form of drug use and then
0:38:47 going to cannabis use as a form of harm reduction. It’s very different than vaping,
0:38:53 where there’s strong evidence that vaping is literally an alternative competing product with
0:39:01 tobacco. What about cannabis as a potential replacement for pharmaceutical drugs? Are there
0:39:06 examples you can point to where cannabis might be a much better option for some conditions,
0:39:11 some people, some situations? It’s interesting because there hasn’t been a tremendous amount
0:39:17 of research in this area by researchers, but there’s been a lot of research by the general public
0:39:24 in terms of just trying it. A lot of what we know about the usefulness of cannabis for
0:39:31 different diseases or ailments or pain comes from people trying it and reporting, hey, this
0:39:38 is really working for me and I can avoid taking opiates or worse things. There are medical uses
0:39:45 for cannabis and there are many situations in which you can reduce harm by allowing people
0:39:51 to use cannabis for medical reasons. Here’s my big question, Michael. Alcohol has been around
0:39:59 forever. It’s widely used in many cultures and many settings. It’s often used responsibly and
0:40:04 often gives a lot of people a lot of pleasure, a lot of benefit, but there are, as we’ve been
0:40:09 talking about today, really significant downsides as well, from physiological to the user, him or
0:40:16 herself to the downstream effects like drunk driving and violence too. At the moment, it seems
0:40:22 like there’s this gigantic experiment going on in America with many states legalizing cannabis
0:40:29 after many years of it being illegal. I could envision an argument that it might be a fantastic
0:40:34 thing if more people were to switch over to cannabis from alcohol and even maybe that if they were
0:40:40 going to start using something that it might be better to use cannabis than alcohol, what would
0:40:47 you make of that theory? Somebody came up to me today and said, “We will make a deal with you.
0:40:56 You can replace all alcohol use with cannabis use. Would you take it? I would take it in a moment.
0:41:03 I would immediately agree to that deal. I think that if everyone who was using alcohol was instead
0:41:09 using cannabis, it would be a much safer, healthier world.” Now, I’m not suggesting
0:41:13 that we should be encouraging everyone to go out and use cannabis.
0:41:15 It sounds kind of like you are, Michael.
0:41:22 I’m saying in this hypothetical situation where someone is offering me a deal, I would take that
0:41:27 immediately and then work on trying to reduce cannabis use because the effects of alcohol
0:41:33 in our society are overwhelming. I mean, it’s just it’s wreaking a havoc on our society.
0:41:41 So that’s one view of our cannabis replacement theory. We went back to the addiction researcher
0:41:47 Yasmin Herd to ask whether she would prefer that alcohol users were using cannabis instead.
0:41:52 That’s a really challenging question. I would say if we knew then what we know now,
0:41:58 neither alcohol or tobacco would be approved because they contribute to huge health impact
0:42:06 in our society. And alcohol leads to more deaths every year. But would I want to get rid of alcohol,
0:42:12 even though I like my sauvignon blanc? You know, perhaps, but the fact is that we know more about
0:42:19 alcohol. We still don’t know about cannabis. So it’s difficult for me to truly answer that question.
0:42:26 How long is it going to take to know what should be known about a substance that’s
0:42:31 widely legalized and available? That’s an excellent question. And I’m going to be honest
0:42:38 and say, I don’t know. Near daily and daily use of cannabis is much higher than it is for alcohol.
0:42:45 That’s where our society is gone. So does frequency matter? What we need to know right now
0:42:52 are the aspects of the high concentrated products, because that’s what is out there in the public.
0:42:59 Even these aspects of the pattern of cannabis use that relates to addiction and psychiatric risk,
0:43:07 we do not know much about. And Michael Siegel again. One of the philosophies of public health is the
0:43:15 theory of harm reduction. We’re not going to stop people from using substances completely. So why
0:43:22 don’t we focus on trying to find ways that will cause the least health harm? I think a combination
0:43:32 of legalizing recreational marijuana use combined with strict regulation and incentives to direct
0:43:39 people towards the lesser harm is really the best strategy to go with. So that’s what the public
0:43:45 health experts have to say, that we need to know more, that we need a well-regulated market with
0:43:51 incentives to direct people toward the lesser harm. But, and I certainly mean no offense to Michael
0:43:58 Siegel or Yasmin Heard, but it isn’t academic public health experts like them who make the markets.
0:44:04 In the case of cannabis, we are talking about freewheeling entrepreneurs, government regulators,
0:44:11 and professional loophole finders. So coming up next time in part two of our series,
0:44:17 how does this market work or not work? The entirety of the cannabis market
0:44:23 is filled with an amazing number of contradictions. Cannabis also has the added difficulty of having
0:44:31 a rich history that’s rooted in criminalization. Oh, it’s been a doozy. That’s next time. Until
0:44:36 then, take care of yourself. And if you can, someone else do. Freakonomics Radio is produced
0:44:41 by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. You can find our entire archive on any podcast app, also at
0:44:47 Freakonomics.com, where we publish transcripts and show notes. Also, big congratulations to the three
0:44:53 winners of this year’s Nobel Prize in Economics. Daron Asamoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson.
0:44:58 They have each appeared on Freakonomics Radio in the past. If you search their names on
0:45:04 Freakonomics.com, you will find their episodes. And you can hear a full interview with Asamoglu
0:45:09 on people I mostly admire. That’s one of the other podcasts we make, hosted by Steve Levin.
0:45:13 He interviewed Asamoglu not long ago, and we are republishing that episode soon.
0:45:19 This episode of Freakonomics Radio was produced by Dalvin Abouwaji and Zach Lipinski, and we
0:45:25 had help this week from George Hicks. Our staff also includes Alina Kulman, Augusta Chapman, Eleanor
0:45:30 Osborne, Ellen Frankman, Elsa Hernandez, Gabriel Roth, Greg Rippen, Jasmine Klinger, Jeremy Johnston,
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0:45:41 and Theo Jacobs. Our theme song is Mr. Fortune by the Hitchhikers. Our composer is Louise Guerra.
0:45:47 As always, thank you for listening. I’m very grateful for you being here.
0:45:49 Thank you. Let’s see if you have the same opinion at the end of this.
0:45:59 The Freakonomics Radio Network. The hidden side of everything.
0:46:04 Stitcher.
0:46:06 you
0:46:08 you
We have always been a nation of drinkers — but now there are more daily users of cannabis than alcohol. Considering alcohol’s harms, maybe that’s a good thing. But some people worry that the legalization of cannabis has outpaced the research. (Part one of a four-part series.)
- SOURCES:
- Jon Caulkins, professor of operations research and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University.
- Yasmin Hurd, director of the Addiction Institute at Mount Sinai.
- Michael Siegel, professor of public health and community medicine at Tufts University.
- Tom Standage, deputy editor of The Economist.
- Ryan Stoa, associate professor of law at Louisiana State University.
- RESOURCES:
- “Cannabis Tops Alcohol as Americans’ Daily Drug of Choice,” by Christina Caron (The New York Times, 2024).
- “Deaths from Excessive Alcohol Use — United States, 2016–2021,” by Marissa B. Esser, Adam Sherk, Yong Liu, and Timothy S. Naimi (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 2024).
- “Nixon Started the War on Drugs. Privately, He Said Pot Was ‘Not Particularly Dangerous,’” by Ernesto Londoño (The New York Times, 2024).
- “A Brief Global History of the War on Cannabis,” by Ryan Stoa (The MIT Press Reader, 2020).
- Craft Weed: Family Farming and the Future of the Marijuana Industry, by Ryan Stoa (2018).
- “How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat,” by Anahad O’Connor (The New York Times, 2016).
- “The Perils of Ignoring History: Big Tobacco Played Dirty and Millions Died. How Similar Is Big Food?” by Kelly D. Brownell and Kenneth E. Warner (The Milbank Quarterly, 2009).
- A History Of The World In Six Glasses, by Tom Standage (2005).
- “Cancer and Coronary Artery Disease Among Seventh-Day Adventists,” by E. L. Wynder, F. R. Lemon, and I. J. Bross (Cancer, 1959).
- EXTRAS:
- “Why Is the Opioid Epidemic Still Raging?” series by Freakonomics Radio (2024).
- “Daron Acemoglu on Economics, Politics, and Power,” by People I (Mostly) Admire (2024).
- “Let’s Be Blunt: Marijuana Is a Boon for Older Workers,” by Freakonomics Radio (2021).
- “What’s More Dangerous: Marijuana or Alcohol?” by Freakonomics Radio (2014).