![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/533\/2016\/08\/foliage-1157792_960_720.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
First, some marijuana-use statistics, from a 2017 Marist poll<\/a>, as featured originally in a Washington Post article<\/a>:<\/p>\n When asked by phone about pot use, 52% of American adults reported having tried pot.\u00a0 22% report that they are \u201ccurrent\u201d users (within last year).\u00a0 14% describe themselves as \u201cregular\u201d users (within last month).<\/p>\n Of current and regular users, 52% are Millennials (defined here as 18 \u2013 34 years old). \u00a0 (Yes, the same prevalence is true of each category).\u00a0 Or, put another way,<\/p>\n 33% of Millennials are yearly users, and<\/p>\n 21% of Millennials are monthly users.<\/p>\n Are these statistics something to be concerned about?\u00a0 Is this no different than the fondness many young adults have for going out to bars and getting drunk, something they grow out of in time?\u00a0 Proponents of pot say that getting high is better than getting drunk; after all, there\u2019s no stereotype the equivalent to an \u201cangry drunk\u201d and someone who\u2019s high is less likely to take the wheel than someone who\u2019s drunk.\u00a0 There\u2019s also an active push for people who would otherwise be abusing (or just using, that is, medically, for pain treatment) opioids to switch to using pot (this was just approved in Illinois<\/a>, for example, though studies on its effectiveness are not conclusive).<\/p>\n But consider that, with respect to alcohol, however prevalent binge drinking may be in practice, there is general societal disapproval.\u00a0 Even alcohol manufacturers are obliged to add to their advertising the admonition to \u201cdrink responsibly\u201d and to state that, of course, they do not intend for their products to be used to the point of drunkenness, but rather simply for the purpose of enjoying the taste of the beverage.\u00a0 And, of course, as I write this in September 2018, Brett Kavanaugh is being criticized for his drinking habits as a teen and young adult, with significant numbers of those opposing him considering it a given that the alcohol-heavy parties of those years are enough to remove credibility from his denials of sexual assault.<\/p>\n What we\u2019re seeing with pot is quite the opposite.\u00a0 The drive towards decriminalizing pot was originally about \u201charm reduction\u201d and concerns that young black men were being incarcerated at high rates, and that this was doing a great deal of harm to them and their communities.\u00a0 What we\u2019re seeing now is something far beyond decriminalization and far beyond \u201charm reduction\u201d (as exists, for instance, in the Netherlands, where pot is decriminalized but receives strong societal disapproval) to active normalization and commercialization.\u00a0 It\u2019s being treated as the next big growth industry; according to a Forbes article<\/a>, North American sales are projected to increase from $9.2 billion in 2017 to $47.3 billion a decade later, and, separately, a marijuana trade group<\/a> forecasts sales of as much as $15 billion in recreational pot by 2022, a tripling of current numbers.\u00a0 That\u2019s massive.\u00a0 To be sure, their statistics don\u2019t attempt to determine to what extent forecast sales are based on existing users switching to legal sources but it\u2019s hard to believe that all we\u2019re seeing here is a matter of users coming out of the shadows, especially when the marketing of pot is the new hot career move<\/a> and when companies are working at branding their products, and recruiting celebrities<\/a>.\u00a0 One suspects that underlying their marketing studies are projections of growth in their user base that they don\u2019t want to broadcast to the rest of us.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s all based on a narrative that pot supporters are telling the rest of us:\u00a0 people who are predestined to misuse substances will do so one way or another; that\u2019s a fixed percentage of a population, absent some unusual situation such as the current opioid crisis.\u00a0 Everyone else can be relied on to add pot consumption to their spare-time recreational activities, enjoyed in moderation, in terms of frequency, even if the act of getting high isn\u2019t something that can be done moderately, and with no ill-effects in terms of their ability to manage their personal lives, employment, and so forth.\u00a0 If people can add some pot-smoking enjoyment to their lives as an occasional spare-time activity, you\u2019ve improved the overall quality of life of Americans, boosted the economy, and remedied high incarceration rates.<\/p>\n But there\u2019s a counter-example:\u00a0 qat.\u00a0 It\u2019s ubiquitous in places like Yemen.\u00a0 According to an Economist article<\/a> from earlier this year, it\u2019s a key contributor to the hunger crisis in that country:\u00a0 90% of men chew qat, and a third of women.\u00a0 And<\/p>\n Men spend far more feeding their addiction than their families: sometimes $800 a month. Rather than searching for weapons and other contraband, soldiers extort bribes at checkpoints to pay for their habit, jacking up transport costs. And while the country runs out of basics, such as wheat, its best farmland is devoted to producing the crop, which is more lucrative. Cultivation of qat is said to be increasing by 12% a year.<\/p>\n Officials refer to it as Yemen\u2019s Viagra and encourage its use. Taher Ali al-Auqaili, the army\u2019s chief of staff, says it is \u201cour whisky\u201d and claims it gives his men strength to fight (see article). Both sides feed it to their child soldiers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n What\u2019s more, in a country which is forecast to be on its way to using up its entire water supply (which comes from aquifers rather than from rivers or lakes), qat is a primary culprit.\u00a0 Here\u2019s Wikipedia<\/a>, distilling multiple sources:<\/p>\n Khat is so popular in Yemen that its cultivation consumes much of the country\u2019s agricultural resources. An estimated 40% of the country\u2019s water supply goes towards irrigating it, with production increasing by about 10% to 15% every year. One \u201cdaily bag\u201d of khat requires an estimated 500 litres (130 US gal) of water to produce. Water consumption is high and groundwater levels in the Sanaa basin are diminishing, so government officials have proposed relocating large portions of the population of Sana\u2019a to the coast of the Red Sea.<\/p>\n One reason for khat being cultivated in Yemen so widely is the high income it provides for farmers. Some studies done in 2001 estimated that the income from cultivating khat was about 2.5 million Yemeni rials per hectare, while fruits brought only 0.57 million rials per hectare. Between 1970 and 2000, the area on which khat was cultivated was estimated to have grown from 8,000 to 103,000 hectares. In 2000, according to a World Bank estimate, khat accounted for 30% of Yemen\u2019s economy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n