Liberalised marijuana laws have left Michigan a haven for corporate vice, undermining social cohesion, and hindering the recognition of necessary limits for a flourishing, defensible social market economy. It offers a cautionary tale for the UK, JAKE ALTMAN reports from the US.
My small town has two marijuana dispensaries, and the smaller town next door has one. The nearby university town has more than a dozen. Despite attempts to make their various brands distinctive with bold colors, neon signs, these buildings are aesthetically unpleasing, with obscured or absent windows. They look antisocial. The behavior of some users is worse. On several occasions, my toddler and I have been greeted at a stoplight by the noxious, all-too-familiar smell of marijuana smoke emanating from the car next to us. “Yuck, Daddy,” he told me after the last such experience, a block or so down the street from our public library. This antisocial behavior may be about to get worse in the United States, and what remains of our tattered national solidarity could become a casualty. Britain should take notice.
The Trump Administration is currently discussing the reclassification of marijuana from a Schedule I drug (like LSD and heroin) to a Schedule III drug (like steroids and Tylenol with codeine). At the same time, marijuana advocates in the U.K. hope to pursue the same liberalization that has wrecked part of the United States. As the Trump administration weighs the implications of this decision and seeks to broaden and maintain its emerging electoral coalition and the fight heats up to stop liberalization in the U.K., traditionalist social democrats should oppose the continued commercialization of vice.
Liberalizing laws, reclassificating marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III, represents, I argue, a dangerous and ill-conceived step that fundamentally contradicts core social democratic principles. Far from a benign regulatory adjustment, this move would reward corporate vice, exacerbate societal harms, and further erode the communal well-being essential for a flourishing social market economy – the idea that the market does not exist for its own purposes, or as some free floating and inviolable object, but rather must be and is reliant on the broader society. The two flourish not in opposition to one another but together, in symbiosis. Traditionalist social democrats must unequivocally oppose policies that prioritize the profitability of destructive industries over public health and national solidarity.
Vice peddlers stand to gain two financial opportunities for business expansion from rescheduling: tax write-offs and access to financial capital. The change would allow the marijuana industry to write off business expenses, diverting $2billion dollars from the public purse. This is currently prohibited for Schedule I though not Schedule III substances under the current tax code. This prohibition is appropriate. Rescheduling is also likely to set the industry on a path that improves banking access.
Marijuana remains illegal under federal law, even as states have opened the door to commercialization, which means banks remain reluctant to take on liability. While rescheduling might not fully resolve big vice’s banking issues, at least not immediately, it could improve their access to financial services, including new investments, as banks and investors become more willing to work with cannabis businesses that have a new mark of federal legitimacy. The goal, of course, will be expansion and more profit at society’s expense.
An important distinction exists between allowing seriously ill individuals to use marijuana as an alternative to medications with severe side effects. This trade-off has legitimacy and restricts the drug’s use to those with a genuine medical claim. Reclassifying marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III, however, opens the door to large corporations, who have a business interest in attracting and retaining as many customers as possible. This may explain the dramatic increase in the drug’s THC-levels over the last three decades, quadrupling since the mid-1990s.
Beyond the tax breaks and access to new sources of capital – as banking becomes less concerned with vice-generated liability – expanded marijuana marketing and use will create new social costs. ER visits related to drug use will go up. Treatment programs will need expansion. Lost productivity at work will mount. Enforcement costs will grow as more and more people drive under the influence of marijuana and as it becomes easier to consume. All of this money could be better spent addressing the housing crisis, creating jobs that benefit rather than harm.
Marijuana use presents inherent risks for both individuals and society, and its increasing legalization is linked to a concerning surge in emergency department visits. A study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society reveals a dramatic rise in marijuana-related ER visits. UC San Diego Health further highlighted this trend in a press release, noting, “The significant increase is particularly troublesome to geriatricians, given that older adults are at a higher risk for adverse health effects associated with psychoactive substances, including cannabis.”
A similar pattern has been observed in another vulnerable group: children. On August 10, 2025, The New York Times published an article sounding the alarm on the predictable, yet astonishing, consequences of big vice’s “innovations” into edibles, including candy. The Times reported, “the number of cannabis-related incidents reported to poison control centers has sharply increased: from about 930 cases in 2009 to more than 22,000 last year, data from America’s Poison Centers shows.”
More troubling is the rising number of very serious cases. According to The Times, “a growing number of poisonings have led to breathing problems or other life-threatening consequences. In 2009, just 10 such cases were reported to poison centers; last year, there were more than 620 — a vast majority of them children or teens. More than 100 required ventilators.” The impact on affected families is clear, as are the consequences of increased visits on one of the most burdened services in our struggling healthcare system. Our money would be better spent easing this burden, rather than adding to it.
The middle-aged, the productive engine of our society, are not immune to the detrimental effects of marijuana. According to The Yale School of Medicine, a study published in May 2025 supports “previous research that identified bidirectional causal relationships between cannabis use disorder and schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.” These are not trivial illnesses, and increased drug use will increase the prevalence of psychiatric disorders, placing further burdens on the public at large.
A 2022 study published in The American Journal of Psychiatry found serious midlife effects from long-term marijuana use, including effects that would limit the productive contributions of drug users. According to the study, “Long-term cannabis users showed IQ decline from childhood to midlife (mean=−5.5 IQ points), poorer learning and processing speed relative to their childhood IQ, and informant-reported memory and attention problems.” The study’s authors concluded, “Research is needed to ascertain whether long-term cannabis users show elevated rates of dementia in later life.” A 2025 study published by the American Medical Association found a link between dementia and marijuana hospitalizations.
The reality is that marijuana will affect both midlife productivity – how much individuals are capable of contributing to the common good – and the social care burden they impose later in life: how much it costs to take care of them when they are no longer capable of contributing.
Vice also presents social challenges, as evidenced by the open-air drug markets and public disorder prevalent in American cities. Social democracy flourishes when mutual trust exists and individuals feel responsible for the common good. However, disorder erodes this trust, causing people to withdraw from social democratic politics to safeguard themselves and their families. Instead of unity and collective action, we risk becoming isolated, fearful, and hesitant to engage with what appears to be a failing social system. Although the current administration strives to rebuild trust, many cities still grapple with self-inflicted disorder crises, undermining the very principles of social democratic politics.
Families at the periphery of the permissive enclave may question why they should engage with a world seemingly at odds with the values of self-control, hard work, and community responsibility they strive to instill in their children. While the inclination to withdraw and erect barriers rather than build bridges is understandable, it ultimately acts as a societal detriment, exacerbating the fragmentation of an already divided nation. This retreat will remove the most capable and essential voices from the political discourse. The most self-interested, the least concerned with national solidarity and the collective good, will fill the vacuum.
If social democrats desire a better society, we must foster virtuous conduct. Decriminalizing marijuana is no more in the national interest than permitting American cities to devolve into lawlessness under the guise of “harm reduction.” To revive the postwar consensus, we must emulate the generations who established and preserved it. This entails rejecting the self-indulgent impulses of a consumer culture that promises happiness but demonstrably fails to deliver. You will not find what you are looking for at the end of marijuana cigarette or at the bottom of a THC-infused drink.
In 2010, the late historian Tony Judt wrote, “Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today. For thirty years we have made a virtue out of the pursuit of material self-interest: indeed, this very pursuit now constitutes whatever remains of our sense of collective purpose.” While we are on the verge of reclaiming our sense of collective purpose, we must continue to resist the seductions of material self-interest and its twin consumerism. These are idols that never satisfy and are never satisfied.
If socialists and social democrats are serious about rebalancing our economy and our society, personal responsibility and encouraging citizens to help lower burdens and keep costs to a minimum must be part of the programme. Rescheduling fuels a narcissistic culture oppressed with ephemeral high-chasing. It is at odds, as the historian Christopher Lasch argued, with the ingredients of a society oriented toward and sustaining a common good. Any efforts to pursue a more humane healthcare system will be troubled by this problem, particularly if we choose to continue to add exacerbating factors by turning on a cash spigot for big vice.
Perhaps no one better symbolized the entirety of the postwar experience than James Callaghan, a man who held all of the great offices of state, was elected to parliament in 1945, and witnessed the collapse of communitarian spirit that had sustained the postwar consensus as part of his 1979 defeat at the hands of Margaret Thatcher.
While resisting cannabis liberalization of 1970, then British Home Secretary James Callaghan told Parliament, “there are evil men who see a profit in exploiting misuse, and have greater resources and greater opportunities for doing so, whether by manufacturing new drugs for this market or by smuggling and trafficking.” He also lamented “the speed of change in fashion for drugs, which is so depressing; and fashions can be spread by such a handful of irresponsible medical practitioners.” Today, such “evil men” still exist, and the proliferation of cannabis-infused products, from ice cream to colorful beverages and cake pops, clearly demonstrates manufactured trends. As a result, cannabis poisonings are on the rise, with children frequently being the victims.
As our society sleepwalks, numbed into the next crisis, social democrats have an obligation to say, “no, not again.” Social democrats in the U.K. would do well to learn from the American example and resist drug liberalization at all costs.
