The New York Times just released an article about how younger Americans
have increased their marijuana and psychedelic uses usage.
In fact, there are more young people using these drugs today than ever before,
according to their piece.
And there's some fearmongering here, which is incredibly annoying will address that.
But first, let's give you the raw numbers.
So marijuana use in the past month was reported by 29% of young adults in 2021,
compared to 21% in 2016 and 17% in 2011.
Daily marijuana use also significantly increased during these time periods
reported by 11% of young adults in 2021 compared to 8% in 2016 and 6% in 2011.
So we're talking about young adults here, okay, adults.
So if we were having a discussion about teenagers using marijuana,
I gotta be honest, I would be a little bit concerned.
I know the teenagers use marijuana, your brain is still developing.
I'm a little bit concerned about marijuana use at that time, but
young adults really only 29% in 2021 reported using marijuana.
Like this is self reporting.
So I'm just here to tell you the numbers much higher, it just.
>> Yeah, and they will point to if the numbers do tick up or
continue to stay up a little bit for younger people.
They will say that that is an argument for making it illegal once again.
The fact that alcohol being legal means that some people below the age of
21 can use.
It has never been used as an argument by them for well and
I guess we got to get rid of it for everybody.
That's just not the way it works.
You can try to limit the access of a thing to people below a certain age if you
want to.
And if it turns out that the scientific given is actually very strong for
it having a deleterious effect.
I would say it seems to me that weed is less damaging than alcohol,
which is ubiquitous across America.
>> Totally.
>> And yeah, you said you're surprised it's only 21 and, and
maybe it'll go up and and honestly, who the hell cares.
If a 25 year old or a 35 year old or a 75 year old wants to smoke weed.
I don't care literally at all.
It doesn't matter.
It could not matter less.
>> Look, marijuana I think impacts people differently.
I know it impacts Jink differently than it impacts me.
But that's to tell you that you can be a functioning adult.
Who's to me, a drug is a problem when it starts to interfere with your life, when
you're unable to do the things you need to do, when you're unable to get done.
The things you need to get done for me, marijuana is an important part of my life,
considering the stress associated with the work we do, right.
So it's a lot of thinking about a lot of terrible things going on both in
the country and around the world and your mind races.
I mean not everyone experiences that but my mind like I couldn't sleep.
I was having issues with my mind racing.
And I just couldn't relax.
And so it actually ended up being very helpful for me.
And I know it's helpful for a lot of other people medicinal e for
other ailments that they may have.
But let's get to some of the other numbers because they talk about hallucinogens here
as well.
So in 2021 8% of young adults reported past year hallucinogen use
representing an all time high since the category was first surveyed in 1988.
By comparison in 2016 5% of young adults reported past year hallucinogen use.
And in 2011 only 3% reported use.
Remember again just want to reiterate this is based on self reporting.
So naturally some people are gonna lie and say that they're not using hallucinogens.
I think that's an important point to make, >> [INAUDIBLE]
>> Sure that they are and
in fact they're not because I mean sure maybe types of hallucinogens
reported by participants include LSD MDMA, mescaline.
Peyote, shrooms or psilocybin and PCP.
Some of that stuff I don't I don't know anything about PCP or mescaline or peyote.
But anyway I'm just gonna stop go ahead.
>> I have gathered just enough from popular culture to feel like I'm an expert
on all of those.
Because I've heard them mentioned in some movies or whatever and look,
they listed six or eight different types of substances.
I doubt they're evenly distributed across those 8% of younger people.
I assume mushrooms is probably 80% of it.
And then maybe there's some LSD or something, I don't know.
Yeah, and look, I think people may be reasonably would be
a little bit more concerned about that than about the weed.
Again, I mean people have been getting drunk for a long time and
that is so obviously deleterious.
I'm not an expert, I'm not in charge of public health crises and for good reason.
But I feel like it is so easy to get dangerously drunk dangerous to yourself
and others in comparison to these social drugs that I don't know.
I think that you should already have a lot of evidence that this is
a serious problem for you to be willing to make nationwide decisions.
About legalization for consenting adults
based on the already established lack of evidence about how dangerous it is.
>> Yeah, totally I mean marijuana should not be banned federally.
There are still people suffering from criminal charges for
possession of marijuana in some parts of the country.
It blows your mind.
It would be easy to take it off the list of schedule one drugs.
I think that's a huge problem.
But I just want to make a quick point about psychedelics as well.
So look I haven't tried most of those hallucinogens mentioned other than MDMA.
Which was awesome.
And mushrooms a few times which wasn't awesome actually the first time was okay.
But it's actually it's interesting because I don't see it as a fun drug.
It's a drug that forces you to confront a lot of trauma,
which is why it's actually being studied as we speak as a therapeutic drug.
That can be used in a safe setting.
And I actually think that there's that's good news.
I think that there's actually a really good potential medicinal
benefit to psilocybin because again it makes you confront things that
need to be confronted either subconsciously or very consciously.
And so that's why I didn't enjoy the experience.
But I do remember feeling a lot better about my life every time I did it.
Now that's to say that there might be risks associated with it.
I don't recommend it if you're not ready for it and
it's not in a super safe environment that you feel comfortable in.
I'm glad that they're doing research on it and I hope they continue to do that.
But the problem that I have is like kind of just lumping all those hallucinogens
together as if they're the same.
They're not and also kind of discounting the medicinal
benefits of some of the drugs.
>> Yeah, and and
that we would be being told that all of these things are obviously unacceptable.
Whether for legality or even for
scientific research from people who are popping hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin.
Throughout the pandemic as if it's the most normal thing in the world.
>> It' s a grea point.
>> But the way that you describe the mushrooms, specifically the idea
that this is something that specifically is designed to help you grow emotionally.
And perhaps even spiritually by digging deep within yourself and
confronting things that you've avoided confronting.
Is there any experience that would seem more obviously repugnant to a conservative
than that?
Like it's literally it's wokeness as a substance you can consume basically.
Well.
So I have a friend who recently did magic mushrooms and
it's it's interesting because the last time he did it he realized that he was
ready to forgive a family member who had wronged him in a pretty terrible way and
it helped him make amends with his family member and
that really like enriched his relationship with this family member.
And it was like a really interesting so to hear.
So again I don't want to discount the potential psychological benefits that
come along with some of the drugs listed.
But it's typical like corporate media jargon right like to
just kind of PCP magic mushrooms M.
D. M. A. It's all the same.
You know, we're not gonna tell you what percentage of the respondents said that
they used these particular drugs.
We're not going to give you the breakdown all the same.
All bad.
This is really bad news, it's being normalized.
We need to do something about it.
That was really the feel of this piece,
and I think that that's actually pretty damaging, especially when it comes
to just conventional wisdom about policy related to these drugs in the first place.