Dramatic drop in marijuana use among U.S. youth over a decade | Hacker News Reader

Dramatic drop in marijuana use among U.S. youth over a decade

fau.edu

115 pointsgeox290 comments

>“In the U.S. the current landscape of marijuana legalization in adults adds a complex layer to the issues of adolescent marijuana use. As more states continue to legalize recreational marijuana, the accessibility and perceived normalcy of the drug may increase, particularly for adolescents who may view its legal status as an indication of safety or acceptability,” said Charles H. Hennekens, M.D.

Interesting to read this in an article about how marijuana use has gone down in the time since legalization efforts have started to see success. It almost seems comically out of touch.

So you think that the research is wrong?

I see it as very plausible. Kids like to break rules and long for forbidden fruits. When weed is no longer forbidden, they have no interest in it just as they see little interest in getting drunk.

Add the fact that, if legal marijuana is priced low enough to make black market dealers less common, the people selling the marijuana will now be forced to only sell to people 21+.

I’m not saying that this is the case as legal recreational marijuana sale prices in many legal states are high enough (due to taxes or artificial supply dampening due to restricting who can grow it and how much) to justify the existence of a black market, but if that was the case, I’d expect a drop off in youth usage.

I think this overstates the interest in drugs among Zillenials and Gen Z.

Most people in our cohort tend to follow a "you do you" philosophy that cuts both ways - if you choose to or choose not to partake in marijuana or alcohol, that's your choice.

Stuff like "marijuana" or "alcohol" isn't viewed as cool or uncool, it's just viewed as a yet another consumable like coffee or sugar.

Same way some people choose to cut down on coffee and others are coffee fiends, it's similar with booze and weed.

Personally, I find that older generations have an unhealthily polarized view on weed and alcohol consumption - they are split between the "weed cures everything" and "weed is the devil's lettuce" camps.

Heck, even this thread has tinges of judgement about how younger generations just don't care one way or the other about weed as if weed consumption is a core part of being young.

I guess I'm a zillenial, born 1998. I distinctly remember a time in highschool where I saw vaping (the flavoured cartridge kind) shift from cool, to just some meaningless detail about someone. I totally think this shift has stuck. You're 100% right in comparing weed in this context to coffee, that exact same pattern happened to vaping too.

It's not like there WASN'T drinking, vaping, and weed. Just no one is pushing it on you. The pushing is a lot more focused on social (and online) things now. But that's a different topic.

I'm on board for it being a good thing. The kids are alright eh?

> It's not like there WASN'T drinking, vaping, and weed. Just no one is pushing it on you. The pushing is a lot more focused on social (and online) things now. But that's a different topic.

Exactly!

> I'm on board for it being a good thing. The kids are alright eh?

That's my opinion as well, but I'm part of the Zillenial cohort as well so I'm biased.

>if legal marijuana is priced low enough to make black market dealers less common,

It never is. The overhead from running a lawful business is way higher even before you start accounting for all the weed specific cost of compliance stuff.

It varies from state to state, but legal prices are comparable to black market prices in a lot of places. And the selection available in legal markets is beyond compare.

Oh, it can be.

I live in MI and weed is really, really cheap here. I don't smoke, but I partake in edibles (I have MS and nerve pain that meds can't do much about). I can get 2000mg of edibles for 40 bucks. And that's without price comparing: That's just going to the closest dispensary near my house. And lots of places do penny/free joints with a very low/no minimum purchase.

That's not the case here in Washington state: legal weed is significantly cheaper than the black-market ever was, unless you want some high-end specialty bud you most likely couldn't have gotten at all back then.

We've had legal marijuana since 2018 up here in Canada, and from the statistics it looks like the market has almost caught up. The closest comparison I can think of is piracy and beginning of streaming wars (like Spotify and Netflix). Sure piracy is free, but a significant chunk of people started subbing for the services because of the convenience. If you'll only save about $5 per purchase, but have to get cash, arrange everything and etc., that might be just enough friction for you to just go to one of the billion stores nearby.

A conspicuous absence of black market for other herbal products such as tea and cilantro indicates that the edge of the black market over the lawful businesses isn't that great, if extant at all.

Or, to take an even nearer example: consider alcohol. It's heavily regulated and taxed in the US, but what little bootlegging exists does so mostly as a curiosity, not as a way of getting cheaper booze.

I think those are just not great examples. There are plenty of examples of black markets for legal things, including food stuff.

Example: instead of buying meat at a formal (as in, legal business that pays taxes, has the proper sanitary reviews, etc) butcher shop, its buying from a small producer who kills their own animals, or from some shady figure who kills other producer’s animals.

Another example is alcohol and cigarettes that are bought at duty free shops by mules and then sold tax free in street markets.

The edge of the black market over lawful business ranges from small to huge depending mostly on how regulated the lawful business is and the costs of a physical location (think street sales of snacks right across from a shop that also sells snacks but also has to pay rent, utilities, taxes, etc).

"its buying from a small producer who kills their own animals, or from some shady figure who kills other producer’s animals"

That is a very marginal case. The vast majority of revenue in the meat business goes through the big corporations.

"Another example is alcohol and cigarettes that are bought at duty free shops by mules and then sold tax free in street markets."

Oh yeah, if you burden the legal producers with extraordinary, punitive taxes, the black market unburdened with them can flourish.

>Oh yeah, if you burden the legal producers with extraordinary, punitive taxes, the black market unburdened with them can flourish.

That's exactly what most states, though apparently not Washington, do with weed.

>So you think that the research is wrong?

I think a poorly designed study can confirm pre-existing biases instead of actually test for anything.

Stating that "research suggests" something doesn't actually mean much to me anymore.

I'd love to know what research suggests that “marijuana legalization in adults can influence adolescent behavior through their perceptions of less risk as well as increased availability, both of which may impede efforts to reduce adolescent use.” The numbers this article is reporting seem to suggest the opposite.

I think the other person just mistook your point and thought that you were implying that marijuana use _hasn’t_ actually gone down.

I suspect the research is reasonably accurate, but you will always have someone voicing the position of safyism, caution, and whataboutism.

I think there's a bit more at play. Let's contrast with buying hard drugs like meth. If you want to buy meth, you have to figure out how to get in contact with the sorts of people who'll be holding it. That means hanging out where they hang out and blending in to the point they trust you. By the time you've done all that, you've got some sunk costs invested in making connections with drug dealers. You're kind of bought into the whole ecosystem.

In places where weed is legal, you can go into a store, buy some, try it, and if you decide it's not for you, just don't do it again. I don't use weed, but yesterday I walked into a liquor store to buy a stout beer I like. I didn't have to hang out and party with the clerk to get her to trust me enough to sell me my beer. I gave her some money, she handed me a shopping bag, and that's the end of it. That's what it's like buying weed from a dispensary now.

TL;DR if you don't have to hang out with drug dealers to buy drugs, you might be less inclined to buy more stuff from drug dealers.

To add, dealers aren't referred to as "pushers" for no reason, either.

Good point. No one at a beer store has ever tried to talk me into buying more than I wanted, except maybe boredly pointing to some display and saying "we have X on sale if you want some."

> By the time you've done all that, you've got some sunk costs invested in making connections with drug dealers. You're kind of bought into the whole ecosystem.

Shortcut: go the biggest hospital near you and find the fast food joint nearest the ER entrance. The drug users discharged after OD treatment will gather there and the dealers find then.

You know, that's the kind of thing that seems perfectly obvious once you've pointed it out, but it wouldn't have occurred to me.

Yeah, I only know because I was the emergency contact for a close friend who overdosed. When picking him up I asked the nurse about a cheap place to eat afterwards and she warned me to stay away from the closest fast food joints lest he find a way to relapse immediately.

Well people don't go out looking for a Meth dealer because they suddenly got the idea of using Meth. It doesn't go like that. You go to parties with friends and they use Meth and they introduce you to it and eventually connect you to a dealer.

> When weed is no longer forbidden, they have no interest in it just as they see little interest in getting drunk.

I believe drugs (incl. alcohool) are a considerably more complex habits.

Getting intoxicated have socially desirable outcomes (if one ignores the downsides), unrelated to unavailability. Some drugs like weed can also be part of rituals (e.g. "meeting and getting stoned").

I think it’s because there are less illegal weed dealers. Which means there are less people willing to sell to kids. Basically making it legal has made it harder for kids to get.

Vapes are edge and easy enough to get.

Weed is popular among millennials, which are now the “cringe” generation so there’s that as well.

Weed just isn’t as cool as it was before.

Yup. Hasn't been cool in Canada since legalization, but a lot of milennials still cling to it

weird implication that millennials only did it originally out of a desire to be cool, and are still doing it "to be cool"

some people just like it more than alcohol, wtf

I like it more than alcohol, but as a teenager it was definitely just to be cool.

It is not hard at all to find a 21 year old to buy some legally and pass it on for a small tip.

Weed and alcohol remain forbidden due to age restrictions. But anecdotally, I grew up in the 90's and 00's. When weed was outright illegal and alcohol was as it currently is. There was plenty of desire to get drunk among minors. Weed had some but very little presence in my area. Today the weed presence is much more on par with alcohol among highschoolers (or so I'm told) where I'm from.

My parents actually used this as a strategy when my sister and I were teens 20+ years ago.

They casually offered that, as children of the '70s, there really weren't any drugs they hadn't tried, so if I was interested in any, I could just let them know and they'd get them and we could do them together.

Made it seem as uncool as humanly possible, so I never tried.

By the time our youngest brother was a teen, they'd gotten overconfident in their success and never made the offer to him. He eventually quit using, but it took 12 steps and a lot of time and effort my sister and I were spared!

lol, same thing happened to a friend with cigarettes when they were a kid.

Slightly different though - parents offered a cigarette during the time when they would say "Bleeeeech! this is horrible!"

I think it headed off the time later when they wouldn't be able to react in front of their peers.

Or it's legitimately harder to get. In high school we used to smoke weed because it was easy to get (friendly local neighborhood dealer didn't check ID) and very rarely drank alcohol because it was tricky to find.

I kind of think teenagers aren't into all the different boutique wines, and legal marijuana is sort of giving off the same "older people" vibe.

This is not a new trend: https://usafacts.org/articles/is-teen-drug-and-alcohol-use-d...

Alcohol and other drug use, teen pregnancy, and sex in general have been declining in teens in the West for more than a decade.

> Alcohol and other drug use

Seems like a small thing but it's really not: I appreciate your use of "alcohol and other drugs"; the phrase you'll hear 99% of the time is "drugs and alcohol", where alcohol tries to avoid being lotted in with people using drugs they don't like.

Do you know many people prone to beating their wives after smoking a joint? Yeah, nevermind any of that I guess. Meanwhile, Singapore will gladly imprison or execute you for possession of cannabis[0], but as usual alcohol gets a free pass. Absolute lunacy, complete lack of logical thinking capacity.

From my German point of view, our nation has plenty of energy to protest what's going on in Haiti or Syria etc, and while I'm not saying those issues aren't important, I want to draw attention to how Singapore in particular somehow gets a pass for literal state-sponsored murder for smoking a joint instead of drinking a beer. It's absolutely no mystery why this exception exists: Singapore is rich.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx251p55le8o

One can have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of alcohol independent of its grouping with other drugs.

Alcohol doesn't get a pass because is it separated. Seems like you are placing excessive meaning on the distinction.

The phrase "drugs and alcohol" (used 100-eps% of the time) in common speech implies a separation of alcohol from "drugs", the latter being a worse category.

This "distinction" is like saying "meat and beef", i.e. no distinction at all. I'm mostly preaching to the formal system choir on HN, I just don't think I'm being out there saying the phrase "drugs and alcohol" is no accident in trying to distance alcohol from general drug use. The name Marijuana itself was deliberately made up to have negative connotations [0]:

> The use of "marihuana" in American English increased dramatically in the 1930s, when it was preferred as a "foreign-sounding name" to stigmatize it during debates on the drug's use.[12] [13] The word was codified into law and became part of common American English with the passing of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marijuana_(word)

> The phrase "drugs and alcohol" (used 100-eps% of the time) in common speech implies a separation of alcohol from "drugs", the latter being a worse category.

I appreciate you posting this (even if it is terminology nitpick). The social connotations associated w/ verbally separating alcohol from other drugs hadn't occurred to me. I'm going to try to use this phrasing in the future.

The issue with alcohol is that it's present in a lot of foods in concentrations suffient to cause an effect. Same goes for fermented fruit. Additionally even today it serves as a preservative and solvent. You cannot meaningfully eliminate it from use.

Meanwhile drugs were always understood as something produced for the specific purpose of getting high.

There's a distinction because these are in fact different things.

>The issue with alcohol is that it's present in a lot of foods in concentrations suffient to cause an effect

Which one ? The most common food I found are just soy sauce / vinegar and I hope people are not drinking a bottle of it per meal.

Like I said above, Im not arguing that alcohol isnt a drug, just that I think you are making way to big of a deal out of the phrasing.

Alcohol isnt viewed more favorable because it is held apart. It is held apart because it is viewed more favorably.

It is a distinction stemming from real world practice. You wont fail a drug test at work and be fired due to alcohol. You wont get shunned and kicked out thanksgiving for having a glass of wine.

One can argue that people should take alcohol more seriously, but coming at it from a semantic rationale seems silly.

>It is a distinction stemming from real world practice. You wont fail a drug test at work and be fired due to alcohol. You wont get shunned and kicked out thanksgiving for having a glass of wine.

it doesn't really work like that in practice though - there are plenty of 'drugs' that won't ruin your life or social-status, and they're not all listed separately like alcohol.

I'm a firm believer that the reason the linguistics that we now use came about was due to the legalities of the substances involved and the market action. Alcohol is big business, and legal -- so it deserves a distinction. That's about the singular distinction. The market was allowed to push phrases into the public purview, and luckily for them the phrases stuck.

During western prohibition it (alcohol) was called 'poison' or 'narcotic', or 'intoxicant' in the propaganda.

The google ngrams viewer verifies this suspicion; the phrase ' drugs and alcohol ' wasn't in (real) use until much later in American history.[0]

[0]: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=drugs+and+alco...

Alcohol is by far the most socially accepted drug.

You talk about legalities and that returns to the same point. legalities are different because it is more socially accepted.

What about caffeine?

> This "distinction" is like saying "meat and beef"

People do say that they don't eat meat but they do eat fish.

> Seems like a small thing but it's really not: I appreciate your use of "alcohol and other drugs"; the phrase you'll hear 99% of the time is "drugs and alcohol", where alcohol tries to avoid being lotted in with people using drugs they don't like.

"drugs" often means illegal drugs in colloquial use while alcohol is legal in most places, so the distinction has a use.

> I want to draw attention to how Singapore in particular somehow gets a pass for literal state-sponsored murder for smoking a joint instead of drinking a beer.

I wonder what's your motivation for such an extreme exaggeration. The article you linked quite clearly states that the "punishment" for consuming is a 6 months rehibilation which, while quite harsh, is very far from your claim of death penalty. You need to possess 500 grams of Marijuana to get the death penalty which is like a 1000 or more joints.

I think it's crazy to be sentenced to death for having 500 grams of cannabis. Nobody is going to overdose on it, almost nobody is going to make a business of it if it were actually legal, ... this isn't a heroin, meth or even moonshine operation we're talking about.

Is there really a way to overstate the insanity of state-sponsored killing people for this? Please let's not stray too far from the subject of, what justification for killing this drug user are you looking for?

> I think it's crazy to be sentenced to death for having 500 grams of cannabis.

I think it's a bad law, but surely not as bad as you originally tried to mislead people into believing.

> Is there really a way to overstate the insanity of state-sponsored killing people for this?

Apparently yes, by intentionally making a false claim that you get executed for smoking a joint.

> Please let's not stray too far from the subject of, what justification for killing this drug user are you looking for?

They won't get executed for being a drug user, but for trafficking drugs. Given that 500 grams is a huge amount, I think it's reasonable to consider the offenders to be drug traffickers (even if I don't agree with the punishment).

A single plant can easily produce 500 grams. In other words - you could be killed for growing one plant for your own personal consumption.

That's an extreme upper range for specific strains under ideal conditions which you aren't likely to achieve as a simple consumer.

It's certainly very easy to stay under this limit if you're growing at home. It's difficult to cross that threshold accidentally, for sure.

This is not true at all.

500 grams is roughly a pound. 2 pounds (or more) of trimmed flower per plant is very achievable growing outdoors with many strains (not autoflowers).

We're talking here about 500 grams of dried buds, the final product.

Yes, we are. 1-2 pound(s)+ (dried flower) is very easily achievable outdoors from a single plant with most strains. 4 or 5 pounds+ dried product from a single plant is not unheard of. Cannabis can get extremely large.

(this is actually inconsequential to the point of the article I just wanted to point it out).

This response reads to me as, at best, a bad faith intepretation of hyperbole.

It seems very obvious why someone could get worked up over demonizing a relatively benign psychedelic over literal poison that is responsible for myriad health issues and daily violence.

If you can't meet in the middle and actually discuss the substance of the topic rather than nitpicking their comment, why comment at all?

It is not bad interpretation, it is accurate interpretation. Hyperbole is valid thing if you are not trying to use to to sneak in false facts.

In this case, it was attempt to sneak in lies.

Who cares? You're missing the forest for the trees. Alcohol is still legal and kills thousands (millions?) times more people. If we can't discuss that, being correct has no value. If the only thing you want to contribute is to point out a lie, why have the conversation in the first place? It's just wasting everyone's time.

Not lying is a basic precondition to have a reasonable discussion. Pointing out lies serves to facilitate discussion. Why is that controversial?

> Not lying is a basic precondition to have a reasonable discussion.

No, it isn't. Secondly, you're assuming malice where it doesn't appear there is any. Third, you're perfectly capable of communicated despite this, and certainly more than pointing out a disagreement over facts. Why comment at all if you only want to point out disagreement and don't appear willing to discuss the bulk of the commentary?

Meanwhile, "good faith" actually is a precondition for decent conversation.

EDIT: Meanwhile, googling "marijuana death penalty singapore" turns up way, way too many results for this to be likely to be an entirely false claim. So from my perspective you basically killed the conversation while contributing nothing of value. Eg https://apnews.com/article/singapore-death-penalty-drugs-exe...

> Secondly, you're assuming malice where it doesn't appear there is any.

I take such an extreme case of misrepresentation / exaggeration as an attempt to mislead readers, which for me is malice.

> Why comment at all if you only want to point out disagreement

I didn't point out a disagreement, but a wrong fact.

> Meanwhile, googling "marijuana death penalty singapore" turns up way, way too many results for this to be likely to be an entirely false claim

Let me cite from the article you linked: "The man, ..., had been imprisoned for seven years and convicted in 2019 for trafficking around 1.5 kilograms (3.3 pounds) of cannabis" - how is that strengthening op's case that you get executed for smoking a joint?

> So from my perspective you basically killed the conversation while contributing nothing of value.

I'm happy to discuss things once facts are settled. You're killing the conversation by this weird insistence that setting facts straight is wrong?

Why are you getting bent out of shape defending a death penalty for owning about enough weed to get a frat house hyped on bob marley? How is that not horrible?

Why are you responding to imaginary comments? If you want to make that argument, make that argument in the first place.

Alcohol does not get a free pass in Singapore. Taxes for it are very high. For example the taxes for 700ml 40% liquor bottle is ~US$19

On one hand, jail time. On the other hand, 10 minutes of working to pay the taxes.

If the point of the policy is to make the society less dependent on drugs, this makes sense. It's difficult to outlaw what has been once legalized, so constraining the consumption by high taxes make sense while keeping the other drugs illegal.

> less dependent on drugs

There, you've done exactly the thing I was talking about! You're not actually talking about drugs in general, because that would include alcohol. You're talking about the drugs you don't like, and the use of language deliberately excludes alcohol from being a drug.

To me it's extremely obvious and deliberate, and I'm sick of alcohol trying to get a free pass among DRUGS.

Read again, my comment implies alcohol is a drug by saying "other drugs".

This is incredibly, even blatantly misleading. Singapore does not execute people for marijuana possession. It has executed a handful of heroin traffickers. Maybe worry about your own failed state before spreading lies about others.

A quick search for news articles will show you that Singapore does execute people for trafficking marijuana in rather modest amounts.

[1] https://apnews.com/article/singapore-death-penalty-drugs-exe...

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-65395390

You don't get the death penalty for smoking a joint in singapore. You get the penalty for being in possession of stuff like a pound of weed or an ounce of methamphetamine with the intention to traffic it.

Go read their laws. For the most part users just get forced into treatment. Not unlike in the Portuguese model of harm reduction.

You are wrong.

Just being near half kilo of cannabis can get you executed.

There's something called 'presumption of possession for drug trafficking'.

The law is pretty draconian, and if societies with strong rule of law and stringent requirements for prosecution can execute innocent people for murder accusations it's pretty undefendable to execute people for presuming that the 500g of weed found nearby them was theirs and destined for trafficking. Which, still if provable is a barbaric outcome anyway.

> You are wrong.

> Just being near half kilo of cannabis can get you executed.

> There's something called 'presumption of possession for drug trafficking'.

You are incorrect. Following is a link to the law—verbatim—from the Singapore Statutes Online: https://sso.agc.gov.sg/Act/MDA1973?ProvIds=Sc2-#Sc2-

Judges cannot sentence someone to the death penalty just 'being near half a kilo'. It has to be more than 500 grammes.

https://sso.agc.gov.sg/Act/MDA1973?ProvIds=P13-

Presumption of possession and knowledge of controlled drugs 18.—(1) Any person who is proved to have had in his or her possession or custody or under his or her control — (a) anything containing a controlled drug; (b) the keys of anything containing a controlled drug; (c) the keys of any place or premises or any part thereof in which a controlled drug is found; or (d) a document of title relating to a controlled drug or any other document intended for the delivery of a controlled drug, is presumed, until the contrary is proved, to have had that drug in his or her possession.

A friend leaves a key to a locker in your apartment. It has half kilo of cannabis. The cops find the key in your apartment? Toasted.

From your own quote, I emphasise:

> (1) Any person who is proved to have had in his or her possession or custody or under his or her control

So no, as much as you want to think of Hollywood-esque scenarios where a friend or some random plants a drug on you, which gets you the death penalty for being completely innocent, you actually get a lawyer and a trial in court where you can prove your innocence. Singapore does not do kangaroo courts. The prosecution needs to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that you conspired with said friend to hide the key in your locker. And needless to say they also have to prove you had the knowledge that said key controlled access to narcotics.

And chances are, this has never happened in reality because drug traffickers into South-East Asia are an extremely close-knit group who in general don't go around handing 'drug locker keys' to their friends and random people on the street. The law exists to prosecute conspirators, not randoms.

I'm confused by this is exchange. Half a kilogram = 500 grams = (approximately) one pound. What is it you're disagreeing about?

Alcohol and other drugs completely makes sense in world where alcohol is legal and common while other drugs are not.

"From my German point of view, our nation has plenty of energy to protest what's going on in Haiti or Syria etc"

That's because your politicians can't really be blamed for Haiti / Syria etc. And it's not directly their job to fix it. So they're happy to speak passionately about it all day, and hopefully direct the populations attention away from what they ARE responsible for, and might be held accountable for. (This is the case in many Western countries, of course - not just Germany).

> but as usual alcohol gets a free pass. Absolute lunacy, complete lack of logical thinking capacity.

Alcohol doesn't get a 'free pass' in Singapore. It's taxed to high heaven and back, and alcohol consumption is decreasing in Singapore, too.

> I want to draw attention to how Singapore in particular somehow gets a pass for literal state-sponsored murder for smoking a joint instead of drinking a beer. It's absolutely no mystery why this exception exists: Singapore is rich.

Singapore does not 'get a pass' either. Case in point: your own comment that dragged Singapore into a completely unrelated conversation. Or the article you linked. Or the comments on the /r/worldnews subreddit on every article posted about Singapore executing someone for possession of cannabis. Or the many accusations of human rights violations levelled against Singapore, despite it being by far the safest and most secure seven hundred square kilometres on the planet.

> From my German point of view

At the risk of a slippery slope, I'm going to say: your German point of view also includes very delightful companies like Bayer, Rheinmetall, Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, Heckler and Koch, etc etc, which all produce implements of various shapes and sizes expressly designed to do nothing but kill people. To me this seems a little bit hypocritical—it's not okay to kill drug traffickers because 'oh it's just drugs, think about their families', but it's alright to actually build and sell killing machines, because they're used to kill Russians or other brown people half a planet away. Your German point of view also includes allowing teenagers as young as 16 to partake in alcohol, which I find confusing, unless you clarify that you personally don't imbibe.

For the record, Singapore also has an arms industry, and in general Singapore has no qualms about its position on the world stage. Tiny city-state with very little strategic depth, it does what it needs for its survival. If it means putting drug traffickers and murderers to death, so be it.

And on a personal note, I neither drink alcohol nor consume recreational narcotics.

but why do you have to impose your German Values on Singapore ? As far as I can tell Singapore is a sovereign country, and its people have their own agency. I'm sure autocracy works well for them - just as democracy works well for Germany. they're free to choose their own "medicine" to maintain social order.

Although they aren’t free to choose that if it’s an autocracy.

In the US many cannabis legalizations have occurred from voter ballot issues where the legislature has no control over the issue. Citizens collected enough signatures and took the issue directly to the ballot for voters to vote on, and the state was bound to implement the change as the vote dictates (see: Ohio).

Sure, maybe the hypothetical idea of forcing more democracy on a society that doesn’t want it is bad or something but it seems to me that Germans (and Americans) objectively have more self-determination over this issue.

The idea that it’s an acceptable local cultural value for citizens to not have input on what crimes should receive the death penalty doesn’t seem like a local cultural issue, seems more like a universal human rights issue to me.

Is this sarcasm? The entire point is autocracy doesn't allow the people to choose for themselves. The autocrat does. The autocrat likes beer but not weed, so one is a good time and the other a death sentence.

Perhaps your nation should have more energy to protest what's going on in Germany.

Do you give your own government a pass for supporting Israel's state-sanctioned murder?

Most Singaporeans support the death penalty penalty for drug trafficking: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/death-penalty-majo...

>>>> Do you know many people prone to beating their wives after smoking a joint?

I actually do know a person who did exactly that. Just because it isn't as prevalent as with alcohol doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

>>>> Cannabis is a known risk factor for schizophrenia, although the exact neurobiological process through which the effects on psychosis occur is not well-understood.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3927252/

not just the West, really

in my very non-Western country, it's been years since I saw an adolescent with a cigarette. 20 years ago, non-smoking 13-year boys were a minority - I shit you not.

how many of them now vape though? in the US, if you look at vaping in adolescents, I would not be surprised to see an increase in nicotine users just in a different form.

Vaping was advertised as a healthier alternative to smoking, but it's actually a comeback of smoking.

Probably, but it is healthier.

I wouldn't jump to that conclusion too fast. We don't know yet what consequences years of vaping unregulated vape can do.

I will quote one of the nested comments which really hit the mark imo:

"""I think the definition of "ruin your life" is different now than it was in the 80s. Stakes are higher for kids now, and one little mistake can put you on the road to the have-nots instead of the haves.

Back when I was in high school, you could make mistakes and still end up successful. You could get a few B's in your grades, you could decide not to do so many sports and extracurriculars, you could get detention, you could even get in light trouble with the police for horsing around--and still make it into a good University and move on to a good career. I know because I made all of those mistakes. Plus, the consequences for being mediocre were not too severe. B students had community college, C and D students had decent jobs at the mill and the factory or could learn a trade, and so on.

Today, the bar for entry into a comfortable, middle class career is so high, that my kid needs to make zero mistakes. She has to get straight As, she has to stay out of any kind of trouble, she has to have the right polished "profile" for all the various career- and life-gatekeepers she will meet and need to pass. And if she doesn't pass the gatekeepers, where is she going to end up? There is no safety net and no real humane jobs left for lower-performers. Life is so much more bifurcated now, the kids know it, and they stress about not making a mis-step.

In the 80s I was competing with my small town. Now, kids are competing with the entire world."""

This nails it, the bar for "normal" life is really high, coupled with social media where every day you're bombarded with what you can achieve if you try really hard or pay enough money for it - traveling, having fun, luxury, having a perfect body and being envied by other people, etc. Being an overachiever try-hard is cool these days. Weed makes you a bit lazy and when you smoke you're not 100% super productive and you're not living your life to your "fullest potential".

The interesting thing about this - if we assume for a moment that it is true, which I think it mostly is - is that it implies one of three things should be true.

-----

CASE 1: This gatekeeping is wrong, and is actually excluding a lot of good people and imposing a lot of arbitrary if not outright stupid requirements. In that case, there ought to be a huge market inefficiency. You should be able to build an elite university by finding all the smart people who didn't do a bunch of dumb signaling extracurriculars, or build a great company by hiring all the smart people who don't have great resumes, etc.

CASE 2: This gatekeeping would be wrong in isolation, but the smartest people mostly "play the game", and so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we collectively agreed that smart people spend six months when they're 16 hopping on one foot in a purple clown suit, then everyone smart would do that, and it would actually become a good signal of e.g. conscientiousness and class.

CASE 3: This gatekeeping is right even in isolation, and we've gotten to a point where we can, with some reasonable reliability, tell who really won't amount to anything. And if that's the case...is it really a matter of hard work or virtue if we can tell ahead of time what you will or won't succeed at? And if it isn't, is it just to leave you to suffer because you happen not to be gifted in particular ways, whether in intelligence or in motivation or in class signals?

----

I'm not really sure which one of these is true, to be honest. I've got my chips on case 1 at the moment, but I have no idea whether I'm right. And I think it's a decent ethical test to ask yourself what you believe about "meritocracy" in each of those cases. Personally, I think:

- In case 1, we don't really run into a conflict, because the incentives run the right direction. The market is just being irrational right now, and you can make your fortune exploiting that irrationality. That would be great news! The problem in case 1 ought to solve itself, if perhaps only to create new variants of the same problem.

- In case 2, the problem is fundamentally one of class. Like a peacock's tail, we've effectively created a system that demands costly signals of ability, signals that are costly to everyone. If that's the case, we should figure out how to minimize the "peacock factor" as best we can, perhaps via some form of regulation, so that we're not wasting a bunch of resources on things that fundamentally don't matter.

- In case 3, the problem is fundamentally one of (somewhat indelible) inequality. Some people will be ahead, and others behind, and it's not a matter of their decisions, but of their personalities or natures or formative experiences or whatever. And in that case, I'm not sure the idea of competing for a place in the world has any ethical justification, because it effectively means we reward those whose lives will already be inherently better and punish those whose lives will already be worse. Case 3 would undermine the entire case for a competitive social system, really.

Personally, I believe in case 4: the gatekeeping is imagined. Maybe I just haven't perceived the changes and haven't noticed myself losing touch, but I was a B student who graduated from the local state university in the early 10's, and I've done fine. In fact, I've done far better than I could've imagined as a kid. My estimation is it's maybe people who are already in good careers that have created a bubble for themselves where they think their kids' only options are to go to Stanford or live in poverty.

I'm not seeing the issue with case 3 though. Our "competitive" social system isn't about being sporting or "fair" (in some cosmic sense where we consider counterfactual universes to try to distill some idealized metric for intrinsic "goodness" of each person). It's (ideally) about people's actual merit. What can they contribute? What do they contribute? The real world is full of people that have needs, and it makes sense to reward and appreciate people who help meet those needs.

If you had upper-class parents who had plenty of time and resources to raise you to be kind, thoughtful, wise, knowledgeable, strong, and driven, then congratulations! You're actually a great person. We should reward that because we want to see more of it.

It’s all luck and randomness - that’s why both of you fail to come up with any rational explanation.

You can be upper class and get all the best resources etc and still be a piece of shit human being that has a net negative impact.

You can be dirt poor and not have any education or even hope - and you can become one of the most influential people on the planet.

Yes, there is an element of randomness. I was addressing the idea that if someone is nominally a great person, then it "doesn't count" as much if they were lucky enough to have good genetics or mentorship or circumstances or whatever, which is nonsense. The only reason to care about circumstances is so that we know what to encourage more of to shift that probability distribution (evidently I don't think "money" is the critical factor here).

We should look at statistics, not your anecdotal case. I’m sure there are plenty of people like you who are pretty smart, but perhaps not a genius. Statistically that is an outlier and most people are doing worse than their parents.

Having the qualities you’ve listed does not automatically entitle you or earn you rewards. Frequently there is extra buffer with having generational wealth to help give leg up and extra chances to do better.

What does it mean to say statistically people are doing worse than their parents? By what metrics?

Educational attainment has been increasing for decades so it's hard to believe that it's become significantly more difficult to get in. The school I went to has an 86% acceptance rate, for example. It's also hard to believe that going to a state school is going to doom you. There just aren't enough ivy graduates for that to be practical. The BLS stats also indicate that getting a math/engineering/CS degree is a pretty solid choice and is more likely than not to bring you success (e.g. the median personal income with those degrees is a decent amount higher than the overall median household income. Want to have a single-income household? You can do that while living better than average).

If comparing to one's parents, obviously the bar is different if you come from lower vs. upper-middle classes, which is sort of my point. My B performance put me in a much better position than my parents. I could've done a decent amount worse and still met that bar. The child of an MIT-graduated engineer has a higher bar to meet, but that's not actually necessary to do okay in life.

I didn't imply that having these qualities will automatically reward you. I was addressing the idea that if we can tell ahead of time who will "amount to something", those people are somehow less deserving of their success, which is ridiculous. My teachers identified that I was likely to be successful starting in kindergarten, but I've still had to spend the rest of my life consistently showing up and doing the work. I'm sure I also could be more aggressive about chasing career success, but I'm happy not to. If others want to do that, good for them. Maybe they had engineer tiger parents that taught them not to be such slackers, and now they can be rewarded for that. If they're happy then that's great.

> This gatekeeping is wrong, and is actually excluding a lot of good people and imposing a lot of arbitrary if not outright stupid requirements. In that case, there ought to be a huge market inefficiency. You should be able to build an elite university by finding all the smart people who didn't do a bunch of dumb signaling extracurriculars

The University you went to matter and the smart people know that. It would be dumb of them to go to your no-name, untested university. Smart people will do what is good for them and practically, doing those dumb signaling extracurriculars is better for their future then skip on them and bet on your new establishment.

The issue with this is assuming all “smart people” value social status elements.

A lot of us “smart people” when we’re younger rebel against social status qualifiers and so on due to ideals and hopes that we can change the system. It’s only with vast experience that you realize that the system is so hopelessly fucked and you’ll never make a dent in anything. You can have incredible ambition and then watch it get drowned by a shit world.

I’m pretty sure everyone’s hopes for universal healthcare in the US died along with Bernie’s run for presidency. We haven’t talked about healthcare in politics for about eight years now. That should give you an idea of how optimistic people were and then saw the system completely fuck them over and realized there was never going to be a hope for change.

It’s also why most people are apathetic about most every societal issue right now. We all hoped we could change things but now we realize the capitalists own it all and we’ll never be able to do anything.

Being able to pay better healthcare, food and housing is not merely social status element. Having a choice in terms of which employer you will have is not merely social status element. The fact is, if you have a choice between no-name new university and elite school, you will have more control and agency over your own life if you pick the elite school.

Rebels are found on the whole spectrum of "smart" however you define smart and we are talking about statistics here.

Strawman.

There is no reason to believe someone who is rebelling will do all the socially accepted status seeking norms to get into an elite college. They will not seek an elite college to begin with because they do not believe in the status of it.

> They will not seek an elite college to begin with because they do not believe in the status of it.

My claim is that smart will believe in advantages it gives them, because well it gives them better position in life.

Rebels can be both smart and dumb. But neither group has any reason to go to no-name university that was just created.

Being smart doesn't mean you value optimizing for economic advantage in life. If you can coast through a stress-free life and have fun with friends while still being decently successful, you might opt to do that rather than grind at a status competition. And that's just when being analytical about it; people may also make irrational decisions due to things like depression where they just stop caring altogether.

The choices aren't elite or no-name. There are large institutions called state schools where tons of normal people go. They're not very picky (the one I went to has an 86% acceptance rate and a student body in the 10s of thousands), and if you're shooting for middle or upper-middle class they're probably fine.

The median engineering graduate for example makes $100k[0], and almost tautologically did not go to an elite school. They can afford food, housing, and healthcare just fine.

[0] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/field-of-degree/engineering/engineer...

It also doesn’t mean that you need to sell your soul during your teenage years so you can “have your options open” later.

I went to a state school and still had a 7 fig income before I was 30. It’s by no means a requirement and I think most “smart” people would agree.

There is massive difference between going to state school and going to new no-name university OP just created. The claim was about the latter.

State schools are mostly good schools and standard start, sure. Statistically you are beyter off going to top schools, but that is about that.

OP proposed to create new university that will attract smart students. And there, chances are it will be as successful as Trump university and attract only that not exactly smart crowd.

I don’t think any of this is true, although enough people expect it to be they exclude themselves. I think all of the anxiety from the perceived (but untrue) high stakes makes a lot of people that would otherwise succeed never bother to try.

In the USA anyone can fail high school and still go to community college for next to nothing in tuition. In many states if they pass with Cs- allowing for infinite retaking of classes- they will be guaranteed a spot in the public university of their choice. Ultimately they can graduate sooner, with less debt then if accepted directly from high school!

Or, they can skip the community college and just go to any university as an extension student, and only actually apply once they have a proven track record of success at that very school, and letters of recommendation from their own faculty.

Basically, you absolutely do get unlimited chances to retry in the USA academic system, even if you don’t take it seriously as a teen.

As a parent, I’m not going to put any of the pressure on my kid that modern parents in the USA do- the things they are afraid of simply aren’t so.

I don’t know if it is true in an academic sense, but I think it probably is in a more general social sense. The widespread use of video-taking cell phones means there’s an underlying assumption that anything you do could go viral and be seen by millions. This makes doing “socially unacceptable” things seem less appealing, if only on a subconscious level. 20-30 years ago I think it was more acceptable for kids to do dumb time-wasting things, partially because the world was a bigger less-connected place.

Yeah, that seems to be the premise of the recent book "The Anxious Generation" by Jonathan Haidt. I only read the first chapter or so, but seems to be pretty convincingly the case, and really harmful for kids mental health.

Personally, I don't post on social media, and I ask my friends and family not to post content with or about me. However, doing the same would be much harder and more socially isolating for teenagers.

Is there anything that today's youth are doing that isn't in decline? Allegedly, they're drinking less, doing less drugs, having less sex, watching fewer movies, driving less, owning fewer cars, watching sports less often, and so on. Maybe they're playing more games? Or are the youth seemingly doing less overall because the way we are polling them has changed?

Phones was already an argument.

At least from my observation in germany I would add that it is also maybe due to less opportunities.

Here the youth has also less money and less good job opportunities while the cost of living has dramatically increased. When you want to move to a new flat the rent is insane.

Weed isn’t exactly expensive though.

Is this really a thing or just repeating their laments? Gen Z are also a very whiny generation that don't seem to tolerate the 'suck it up we all went through the same shit' message.

I mean young engineers in my company get paid nicely in comparison to their older peers. Noone can really complain about not finding a flat and live correctly. Moreover they are definitely not into having kids, as they prefer to keep money for leisure, so I really don't buy their whining.

> I mean young engineers in my company get paid nicely in comparison to their older peers.

No, they don't, not after you adjust for inflation and housing prices.

And young engineers are a very privileged few, the vast majority of young American workers have had it much worse. Good luck getting a respectable job that will allow you to buy a house and raise a family while your wife stays at home without a STEM degree nowadays.

And the US education system is uniquely terrible at STEM education before college, meaning many American kids who could have gotten onto the STEM gravy train instead get replaced by immigrants like me.

I know a few couples making an incredible amount of money (both engineers, or lawyers, or doctors, or some combination thereof) on a path to retire by 40 (50 at the latest) with no kids, and they don't seem to have any desire to have children to spend those post-retirement years with. Their lives are full of collections, but I just look at those trinkets and shrug.

I'd rather have my kids go hang out with their kids in the back yard and throw a ball around, scrape a knee, cry, grow, and then extend an invitation to hang out again next weekend. But I can't because they have their "reasons" to not have children which have always seemed superficial (barring the obvious serious health issues) and usually based on a fear mindset and a desire to enjoy a life of overconsumption, leisure, and gluttony.

That's a pretty wild interpretation of the child-free life. From the other side, that description of a weekend with kids sounds incredibly boring, but I know from my friends and family that do have children that they genuinely get a lot of depth from those experiences. And even I enjoy that occasionally.

It sounds like you project a lot onto what you think the other side experiences. And you also seem upset that there are people that don't make the same choices as you about how to live their lives.

I can assure you that, for many, it's not about fear, over-consumption, leisure and gluttony. And I encourage you to learn more about that, especially in the event that one of your own children decides to be child-free themselves.

One book that I found helpful is called The Baby Decision: How to Make the Most Important Choice of Your Life. Some of it is obvious, but it really goes over both sides really well. It helped me come to terms with my decision to not have kids, and also helped me really understand why some people do have that drive.

Now I have a healthy circle of friends that include both child-free and people with children. And for a lot of us, we don't dislike kids, we just don't want to raise them.

Before I had kids, I didn't have kids -- so I know both sides of the experience. You are only able to guess. Saying that I seem upset sure seems a lot like projection, which is a common technique for the offended. You weren't the target of my post, but you feel like you are -- ruminate on that.

>I'd rather have my kids go hang out with their kids in the back yard and throw a ball around

It sounds like you need a pet, not kids. You're not going to spend your post-retirement years with kids: your kids are going to go to college while you're still working, and then move on with their lives as they build their careers, date, make new families, etc. Hanging out with their retired parents isn't something kids do very much; they're too busy with their own lives.

That time where you hang out with your kids in the back yard and throw a ball around lasts about 18 years (subtracting the years where the kid is too small to do anything interesting), and you have to fit that time in around your own work schedule.

I've never understood this crazy mentality that some people have, thinking their kids are going to be around them for the rest of their lives. After all, are you still living with your parents, and do you plan to do so until they die?

Some people do care about their elderly parents and help them out.

Wow. I struck a nerve.

> usually based on a fear mindset and a desire to enjoy a life of overconsumption, leisure, and gluttony.

Not everybody can be a saint like you, your Holiness.

>"I mean young engineers in my company get paid nicely in comparison to their older peers."

Yeah, because they're 10% of Gen Z (and I'm part of that 10% Gen Z). Most of my peers, my former classmates, and friends are struggling to make ends meet in an increasingly antagonistic status quo to present-day starters, the likes of which are not comparable to any other contemporary time - both through anecdotes and data - excluding 1971-73, and that was quickly rectified (and you STILL have people who joined the workforce in those years complaining about it 50 years later). And as for kids, they can't afford them. Young engineers probably can, old news - but that's not the bulk of the generation. If you want a functioning society, you must account for options and outcomes for ALL sectors of the bell-curve. Not just people from the sectors you associate with.

This comment screams myopia and a lack of perspective, and an obvious lack of interest in trying to amend either.

I hope one day I have 500 upvotes on HN so I can downvote ignorant people like you.

A friend of mine is making 100k+ a year and couldn't buy a home in the city we were born in.

They aren't "whiny" they're complaining about people like you saying things like this while they increasingly slide into poverty.

> a very whiny generation that don't seem to tolerate the 'suck it up we all went through the same shit' message.

Why would they? God forbid we improve things for the next generation. What a shameful attitude.

Interestingly, all these examples (except maybe driving/cars) are activities associated with numbing oneself.

Maybe the youth just have better mental health than in yesteryear.

Perhaps tiktok is a cheaper, more convenient solution for numbing?

I don't think this is a very accurate interpretation. Maybe for some, but I'd reckon sex, drugs, and alcohol (and partying in general) are more often than not used for the opposite reason.

I think they can be associated with numbing oneself, but aren't necessarily. I would also associate most of those things with vivacity, exploration, spontaneity, and risk taking.

Perhaps there is also a shift in the dominant narrative of associated with these activities.

Studies seem to show the youth mental health is at an all time low. I wont go as far as to claim that lack of drinking and fucking is the cause, but I do think they are related, perhaps as the result of a third factor.

I don't have data to support this, but my gut tells me the root may be more reserved and cautious approach to life in general.

> Maybe the youth just have better mental health than in yesteryear.

Hiiiiiighly doubt this.

smut, obviously

Suicide is pretty much the only thing bucking the downward trend. As kids stop having sex, doing drugs, smoking, etc. they are killing themselves.

My bet is that this all stems from higher housing prices / cost of living.

Previously you moved out at 18 or so and moved into a dorm/apartment with folks you age and this dynamic introduced a space where you could experiment with "vices" (alcohol, drugs, sex, parties, etc).

Now with cost of living being so insane, kids are instead choosing to live with parents and thus never get a space to experiment like this. And by the time they do have enough money to move out on their own, the "experimentation" phase is largely over.

On the flip side, the number of kids I see smoking/having sex at their parents houses now blows me away. My generation (millenials) it was a lot more rare to find tolerating/"non-narc" parents. Most of my friends with kids figure they'll do it anyways so might as well let them be safe about it.

If I was a parent of a teen I would just be glad they are socializing and fucking instead of being depressed in their room alone and doom scrolling.

Tbh, they’re probably doing both to some extent.

Doomscrolling while fucking? I certainly hope not

Well, if you do that, you will also end up alone in room pretty soo too. So, all in one.

Young people today drink less alcohol, smoke less, start sexual life later and get pregnant as teenagers less often then previous generation.

So these parents may be up to something.

It's due to the decline of in-person socializing by young people.

Young people don't get introduced to it as much. Less in-person peer pressure. Fewer parties. Young people do things in groups that they won't bother doing alone because it's not as fun.

I wonder how much of this is attributable to legalization or other factors.

Teen Alcohol use has gone down ~50% over the last 30 years, and but there has been no legalization effort there. Similarly, teen sex rate has also gone down ~50% over the same time period.

Overall, abstention from behaviors seems to be a major trend. I would be curious to know if this is due to a cultural aversion to perceived risky behaviors, lack of autonomy, or some other factor like rate of behavior modification medicine.

Some ideas:

Parents are being cautious with their (statistically fewer) children.

Prevalence of CCTV and panopticon theory making risky behavior seem impossible.

Disappearance of third spaces.

Crazy homeless druggies everywhere. Consequences of abuse are far more obvious.

Proliferation of scheduled stuff beyond the school day leaving less free time to engage in activities that can't be done on a screen.

I think your comment about homeless is too specific to certain regions.

Or, the "always there" nature of screen activities makes it very easy to never do anything else.

When I was a kid we had no mobile phones, nor did we have computers or internet. if you wanted to talk with your friends you had to go meet up with them in person. So hanging out at the mall or at a park or an arcade was pretty common. So were after-school activities, sports, band, clubs, etc. A lot of this stuff, being away from home, was marginally or totally unsupervised, so there was a lot more opportunity to try "illegal" things.

I think I've seen the sex thing attributed to the "loneliness epidemic" and internet use that comes up alot.

If that is true, makes sense for the same cause to apply to smoking and drinking. Drinking beers by yourself as a teen is weird, you generally at least start that stuff with friends.

I'm a Zillenial and my sibling is Gen Z.

Most people our age in general are much more cautious about decisions because a bad mistake like an unplanned pregnancy can ruin your life.

Also, in general, abstinence and non-abstinence doesn't have any moral baggage for us. We aren't judging you if you choose to do drugs or have sex, but we also aren't judging people who choose not to do that stuff.

Why do you think the caution is higher? do you have any thoughts on what changed?

It's more accessible what the negative consequences are. For example, I doubt many people 50 years ago knew what a lung looks like after a lifetime of smoking, or exactly how much it increases your cancer rates. Now everyone's seen the photos even if they aren't a smoker.

When I was growing up in the 1980s in the US, anti-smoking campaigns were everywhere all the time every day: on TV, in magazines, posters, etc. A lung damaged by lifetime smoking was a common visual.

So I don't think that information is much more accessible, broadly speaking, though Internet access has certainly increased the amount of information on the topic that's readily accessible.

The shift in attitude could be owing to other factors, or maybe it just took time for the warnings to sink in, i.e. generationally.

And people in the 80's knew that pregnancy was a risk of fucking.

I wonder if it is change in the way risks are processed and considered overall.

I think the definition of "ruin your life" is different now than it was in the 80s. Stakes are higher for kids now, and one little mistake can put you on the road to the have-nots instead of the haves.

In the 80s I was competing with my small town. Now, kids are competing with the entire world.

Eh, growing up around the same time as you, I think that's just how it's always looked to certain parents.

I think you absolutely on to something, but I wonder how much of this a shift in perception vs reality.

I agree the linear progression of school>College>good job seems a lot more cutthroat and inflexible. That said, it seems like there are still lots of alternative paths out there for smart motivated people- they just arent clearly paved.

I have a long time to think about it, but I'm not even sure if I will encourage my kids to go to college, for the reasons you outlined. They may be better off doing work that isnt readily outsourced. Much of this will depend on what the economy looks like in 15 years.

As it stands today, I'd be tempted to give my kid 150k to start a plumbing business instead of paying for college.

It's absolutely a shift in reality. In the past, flunking out of school and working at your local McDonalds wasn't a great life, but you could afford a tiny shithole apartment and buy your weekly beer and hang out with the other people who didn't finish high school and live a meager life and shoot the shit.

Now, housing is way more expensive. Basic things are more expensive. McDonalds hires less and pays less relatively to what they used to.

I just went up state and visited a couple friends who failed to go to college or do anything with their lives. Nearly everyone is gone from the home town, because all the jobs are in cities. Small rural towns are basically empty of younger people. The few jobs that do exist are AWFUL, give you less agency than in the past, have zero upwards mobility because every single company is either a tiny business where the owner is the manager or a giant megacorp that pushes management down from Corporate, and STILL pay less than that burger flipping job did. They are soulless. They have almost no friends, almost no options, almost no money, and the place they live is literally dying around them, because it has been for 40 years.

More women go to college, so more of the people left in tiny rural hometowns are lonely men, who cannot find a partner, because there literally aren't many available.

They look at the next 40 years of their lives and see nothing. There's nothing to hope for. There's nothing to attempt to improve for. There's no chance that someone will offer them a good job, because everything is owned by like six companies.

>As it stands today, I'd be tempted to give my kid 150k to start a plumbing business instead of paying for college.

Guess what, being in the position to give your kid $150k period means they are already near the top of the food chain. The vast majority of Americans growing up can't even come close to that. Having a parent or parents that have that kind of expendable income is already chart topping levels of "Has a support structure they can rely on". None of the kids suffering from "no options" syndrome had that.

> Why do you think the caution is higher? do you have any thoughts on what changed?

In the US, Roe v Wade obviously. In Germany, more and more doctors willing to perform abortions are retiring and less new doctors enter the force [1], leaving pregnant women (or women who think they might get pregnant) pretty much down on their luck.

[1] https://www.mdr.de/nachrichten/deutschland/gesellschaft/unge...

Seems like sex has been trending down since the 80's or 90's. I dont think it was because teens had premonitions of the 2022 overturn of Roe.

Edit: It seems the correction actually goes the opposite direction. Teen sex is lowest in blue states that are most protective of abortion, and highest in red states. California take the cake with lowest teen sex rate [1]. Correlation obviously isnt causation, but it is interesting to see the clear cultural differences in teen sex.

https://www.guttmacher.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/yo...

> do you have any thoughts on what changed?

Caution was always a thing, but societal and peer pressure is much less now.

Look at older Millenial shows like Futurama and Archer. They are hilarious, but they absolutely perpetuate the idea that drinking alcohol is cool and a core part of being an adult.

On the other hand, a Zillenial or Gen Z targeted show like Bojack Horseman, Rick and Morty, or Solar Opposites doesn't show substance abuse in a similar manner - it still makes jokes about it, but also shows the dark side.

In high school getting a fake id to drink some beer, getting laid, or smoking weed or cigarettes with the stoners just isn't a cultural milestone anymore.

It's like what Chef said in South Park - "There's a time and a place for everything, and that's college"

All I got from growing up on Futurama and Archer was that alcohol was something grade a assholes loved.

I dont think it makes sense to draw a causal attribution from loneliness.

It seems like these would both be related symptoms of a shared cause.

Also, I dont know when the loneliness epidemic kicks in, but I usually hear about it in terms of adults. Are teens also increasingly lonely?

Yeah, younger generations are spending less and less time with friends in person [1] and feeling lonelier and lonelier as a result [2].

[1] https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/4037619-teens-a... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/teens-lon...

Weed is uniquely fun to do by yourself. It's the ultimate drug for zoning out on the computer and playing video games with. Weed is the perfect drugs for "incelish" lonely teenager who sit at home all day - an increasingly large percentage of the youth.

Alcohol is not like this at all.

Gen Z men have been becoming more and more conservative politically, maybe it also translates into more conservative views on drugs and alcohol.

> Gen Z men have been becoming more and more conservative politically, maybe it also translates into more conservative views on drugs and alcohol.

i'm not sure that's the right way to read that.

if you cut out the extremes (of the content Gaussian) you see that much content geared towards GenZ males is of self-care nature: go to the gym, take care of your own body, avoid alcohol and other drugs, take care of your mental health and go to therapy if you can, read philosophy.

it's a beautiful change since i was a teenager (~15 years ago), way much healthier than what i was exposed to as a teenager.

it's not problems-free of course, but still, i view it as positive change.

Unfortunately, rates of depression, misery, and loneliness are also significantly up, so I wouldn't be so fast to call the overall cultural change a healthy and beautiful win. I wonder how much these factors go hand in hand.

From what I've seen they go hand and hand a lot. All anecdotal of course, but much of the "self-improvement" content I've seen for young men is from the angle that they are failures, and they can "cure" their inadequacies through various channels.

Of course it's not really true, just a bit true. Going to the gym won't make you stop hating yourself, any bodybuilder will tell you that. Going to the gym, no-fap, etc are all chosen as channels because they provide an immediate sense of accomplishment while being relatively easy. But they don't materially improve the circumstances of your life.

It's simple to spend an hour at the gym and you will immediately feel better. But you didn't magically gain friends, a community, a sense of belonging or a reason to live. Those require being uncomfortable and pushing yourself mentally, emotionally, and socially. That's much more difficult than pushing weight.

Ultimately young men just want to believe and feel like they're doing something right.

> Unfortunately, rates of depression, misery, and loneliness are also significantly up, so I wouldn't be so fast to call the overall cultural change a healthy and beautiful win. I wonder how much these factors go hand in hand.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I do want to say that we're much more aware of mental health issue than we were 10 years ago. I was quite depressed myself as a teenager, yet it was just a common thing to "man up" and don't express that.

Current teenagers might be more open about what's going on in their head, and i think it's beautiful.

I think it's one of those issues that we used to ignore in the past, and now that we don't do that anymore, we're perceiving it as an new emergency. But it's not "new".

Note that the person you replied to did not say it was a negative change; they said they're adopting more conservative attitudes. I don't think what you said actually disagrees with them. While niches like straightedge exist, at least in the US today, the vibe I get is that things like temperance/abstinence and self-improvement (especially of one's body) are usually conservative-coded in the mainstream.

The modern american conservative movement is becoming decoupled from the practice of evangelical christianity (which is the origin of republican teetotaling) even as it becomes more closely aligned with its policy goals. So I'm not sure I'd expect to see this connection hold with young conservatives. It might though, but I can't find anything reputable looking at it directly.

The downvotes you experience from making a super obvious connection is indicative of why democrats have a real risk of losing this election.

The inability to sense the collapse in support for democrats among young men of all types (especially strong among black/latino young men) is why democrats seem to be structurally unable to win over any kind of non traditional voting groups en mass.

Left leaning folks have also been sticking their head in the sand about the rapid evangalization/anti-catholic reaction that is sweeping through American latino communities right now. I am witnessing this both among personal friends and again and again in the news/sociological articles. Democrats are reacting to this by trying to move to the right on immigration. It's not working, and we are doomed as a result.

I broadly agree with the assessment, but I don't think there's an obvious solution. There is only so far the left-leaning half of this country is willing to compromise with the increasingly less-educated, hyper-masculine right side. And while the right side may (barely) have the numbers to stay politically competitive, it's also the side rapidly losing out in terms of education, wealth and status. Backlashes can stall the broader trends, but they generally don't reverse them.

They could start by trying anything at all. For instance, addressing the issue of homeless veterans is far more important than prostrating themselves to trans special interest groups.

Could also be that alcohol is like 2x as expensive over the past 30 years.

Except it's not when adjusted for wages: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3631317/

a) your data is only till 2011 and misses some extreme inflation in the past 10 years.

b) we're talking youth - who are nowadays also less likely to be manning the fast food counters - I remember working at 14 years old and now in many states that's not permitted until 16. So even less disposable income.

Unemployment is lower today than it was 20 years ago: https://www.statista.com/statistics/217882/us-unemployment-r... (though it hasn't materially changed one way or the other).

If teens and young adults NEEDED to work but couldn't find jobs, the unemployment rate for that age group would show it.

We all know those numbers are intentionally skewed to make things look way better than they actually are.

Maybe, But still incredibly cheap for a teen looking to drunk. 1.75 Liters of vodka is $8.99 at the corner store. That will get 20 kids puking drunk for the price of a hamburger.

There are probably many/a combination of reasons. One thing I think that hasn't been brought up in this thread yet is a smaller amount of popular media portraying marijuana use in a tolerable light.

In terms of movies, how few and far between are big weed movies? Was the last one Pineapple Express, 15 years ago? Go back a few decades and there were a bunch of big movies, songs, etc. year after year about smoking weed.

The standard answer to this is teens are spending a significant amount of their time on social media which ends up replacing these other vices.

it kinda seems to me like teenagers are abstaining from behaviors altogether, not just risky ones. possible explanations that come to mind are widespread anhedonia (depression) and the the fact that suburban kids who are too young to drive can't leave their homes without their parents.

As someone who just quit doing high school senior photography last year I think it’s a lot more simple:

They don’t have time. I can’t tell you how incredibly hard it is to schedule (and especially reschedule) sessions with many of them. A lot of kids always have some sport or other after school activity going on. Those sports often have training before the school day, after the school day, with actual competitions or more training on weekends.

Oh, and summer is no exception.

Combine that with loads of homework and they’re being run ragged.

That rings true. I chalk that up into "lack of autonomy" category.

I feel like modern kids have their life path set out on steel rails. The whole system is set up to see who can grind away hardest so that someday they can be an obedient and hard working corporate cog.

In the 90's and early 00's, we didn't even have homework and could get into top tier colleges. The kids in my family are now doing 4 hours of busywork a day.

The incentives of education today care very little about talent and are one big struggle session.

I see a lot of influencers and the like pushing a lot of dumb stuff online - but they aren’t pushing drugs and alcohol.

Because it’s not legal…

> In 2011, 23.1% of adolescents indicated they were current users, but by 2021, this figure had dropped to 15.8%.

I suspect that these results are being confounded by the covid-19 pandemic. Clearly there has been a decline in use, but it’s not clear what’s behind it, especially when teens couldn’t go outside during that time and pass a joint around mouth-to-mouth.

It was declining before covid hit, and from what I've seen reported (sales etc.) use increased at the start of covid then trended back to normal (declining) rates.

I think I want to see this juxtaposed against all-type drug usage rates for youth before examining this as a cultural trend towards less drug usage. I have a feeling during this period of drop for marijuana and alcohol with the youth, we will see an increase in prescribed drug usage like SSRI and stimulants by youth, with prescription and lack of it.

As with all things, there are probably many interdependent reasons for this drop, but the one for my use is that weed is just too strong these days.

When I was 16 in the 90s, weed was mild, bags were filled with seeds, and worst case you'd get some dry mouth and maybe lightheaded after passing a couple joints around or hitting a gravity bong in your friend's parent's sink. Now you take a couple hits of some joint that turns out is 25%+ THC and dipped in kief and you're taking a cold shower wondering if you're a waste of life (you're not). It's just not fun, and the people I know that love weed are likely addicted and hiding from their feelings.

As an adult my favorite weed experiences have been hanging with locals in Jamaica smoking some regular outdoors sitting on the beach trying to understand the patois. The opposite of walking into an LED flooded store in Manhattan or whatever that store that thinks they're the Apple store is in LA that gives me migraines. I feel like the industry got into an arms race and forgot that weed is to relax amongst friends, not get blasted into oblivion.

Ye it is really bad.

It is like having a beer, but it might be vodka tasting like beer. You'll find out after the glass is half empty.

Cannabis was a 'safe' drug compared synthetic ones you could accept without worrying too much about its content.

Teens are basically doing less of everything because of the phones. Alcohol, sex, getting a drivers license, going to movies, basically any activity you could name has declined rapidly starting around 2012 when phones became ubiquitous.

Maybe they are just more informed with phones.

Memes about permanently stoned people are spreading fast. Propaganda about "cool" hippies does not work any more.

The same with myths around sex, real anti-conception effectiveness...

Except no one has been able to establish any kind of causation. The observation is real but the explanation is dubious.

If you consider sex, drugs, and alcohol to be forms of "stuff to do" then it sorta sounds plausible but why driver's licenses? Why not sports or extracurriculars? Why not video games? Why are tabletop rpg getting more popular?

You could just as easily blame ubiquitous access to porn for most of this as well and it would be just as plausible.

TikTok brain rot. Streamers. Influencers.

Teens are living their lives vicariously through other people. Capitalism has finally created the perfect consumption slave. They buy what they're told to buy via peer pressure feedback loops and stay at home contended with their entertainment bubble.

People complaining they don't have money for groceries with their collection of different colored $40 stainless steel mugs in the background.

> but why driver's licenses?

Anecdotally from my social circles: youth already hang out online, with any or all of their friends at the same time. Why go somewhere just to see fewer people? And once you're there, are you going to do something besides chat and play games, which works fine online?

Older generations saw a driver's license as freedom, but younger generations don't see as much appeal in what a licensed driver is free to do.

Well - in the case of porn, that’d be putting the cart before the horse.

I don't think phones are to blame for movies declining in the age of streaming. The more shocking part is that anyone is going to movies these days.

What hardware are teens most likely to stream on? I would guess teens are more likely to stream to phone/tablet than the general population.

Why blame phones when you can simply blame cost? Everything is crazy expensive nowadays - from cars&insurance to movies & alcohol.

Marijuana is dirt cheap in legal states. I am talking like an ounce for $80 in some places.

You can also still get the half-gallons of super cheap vodka, but getting that is more difficult because you need someone who is 21 to procure it for you.

Many high school dances have lower attendance or are canceled altogether. see https://www.today.com/parents/social-media-killing-school-da...

I'm going to repost a comment of mine from a while ago, because I still believe the main cause is simple: Weed just isn't cool anymore.

>[Marijuana] revenues have actually declined on a per-state level for three years now in some states despite inflation. General sales tax receipts are up by 27% since 2020 [0] and meanwhile California's weed sales are down. Even better, until recently they were rising at a rapid pace, having rose 2.82x from Q1 2018 to Q2 2020. [1]

>The reason why is obvious to anyone who's attended a party in the last few years: weed isn't cool anymore. Partly by being illegal, it used to be cool, but now it's accessible to anyone. A lot of people had that realization when they heard "oh, I'm into weed now" from their uncool middle-aged uncle whose previous hobbies had included LARPing and painting miniatures. It's not even just about the legality though: smoking a joint is a hell of a lot cooler than sucking on a USB stick that smells like candy grapes, and vapes, being far more convenient, have now been tied to weed's image. Something being cool is far better marketing than any ad ever designed.

[0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/QTAXT09QTAXCAT1USYES

[1] https://www.cdtfa.ca.gov/dataportal/charts.htm?url=CannabisT...

Legal weed sales being down doesn’t necessarily mean people are no longer using it. It just means people aren’t buying it legally and paying taxes.

So many people who want to have a say regarding policy don't understand this.

My country has a particularly high rate of sugar consumption. Are we a nation with a sweet tooth? Hardly, as it's inversely correlated with alcohol consumption as measured via sales figures and the process of moonshine production is greatly enhanced by the use of sugar as feedstock.

Meanwhile there's a whole movement that aims to limit alcohol availability in stores. A noble pursuit, but a misguided one, as the reported increases in alcohol sales over the past years are actually a sign of people preferring to buy instead of producing their liquor now that they can afford it.

Perhaps, but you can also gather data on usage, which suggests [1] the % of Americans using marijuana is close to flat after a brief bump in usage during COVID (which would make sense - people were home more, had less to do, and were pretty stressed out). It's also a lot lower than I'd have thought; after living in Berkeley for a few years 13% seems awfully low <.<

Note that marijuana has become legal in a LOT more jurisdictions during the timeframe of this chart: it was illegal in every state at the start of that graph, and is now legal for recreational use in 24 states, including many of the largest. So this is despite it becoming much more available and much less risky to use.

[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/284135/percentage-americans-smo...

It's mostly the large-volume users buying illegally when legal options are available; as a percentage of total users it is small. Weed is very cheap relative to other drugs and alcohol; nobody's seeking out a sketchy dealer to save a few bucks every few weeks, and now that prices have come down so much, dealers aren't interested in selling (to them) tiny amounts on an irregular basis.

Prices varied wildly by geography and how savvy you were, but years before legalization it wasn't uncommon to buy weed for $60/8th aka $17/gram for 3.54g. That was weed of far lower potency than what you buy today in the dispensary. Adjusted for inflation and potency, if you were to buy an eighth today for $60 you would be effectively paying a quarter of that price - but nobody's buying $60 eighths in 2024: you can now buy _legal_ $60 ounces in some places and $140 legal ounces in most states. Again, adjust for inflation and potency and we're comfortably under 1/10th the price of years ago - of what was already a cheap drug! There's just no motivation for illegal sales if you're an occasional user.

It could be that weed is now orders of magnitude stronger than it used to be. Its almost impossible to buy something that is not some sort of specialized ultra high THC strain. A lot of people myself included don't want to be that messed up, so they cant even function. Its like if you could no longer buy anything lower than 180 proof alcohol to drink. A lot of people don't want to be that drunk and would just stop or greatly limit their drinking.

Communication about health risks for marijuana use needs to be on-point, especially among young people. From what I've read, use during brain development (prior to ages 25-30) risks learning disabilities and other mental health disorders due to how it affects cortisol. Marijuana is also an immune system suppressor, which may explain some elevated cancer rates. The effects on the immune system may also explain some food allergies, but susceptibility for fungal and viral infections resulting from marijuana use is fairly well established.

Citing some relevant papers on the subject:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8229290/

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7258471/

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3930618/

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4586361/

A thing I dont see alot of people talking about here is the increase in strength over time. For first time users who experience a more 'modern' weed strain that will mess you up if you dont have a tolerance, I dont think they would try it again soon.

I wonder if there is a link to the increased use of Adderall and other ADHD treatments. Younger people may no longer be self-medicating because they have other, more effective alternatives available.

If you get wasted on anything, or do anything silly, or act weird, someone will pull out a phone and video you.

That would have stopped a lot of the testing my limits I did when I was young and even more dumb.

> If you get wasted on anything, or do anything silly, or act weird, someone will pull out a phone and video you.

Anecdotally this seems to be the key impact. With social media almost everyone now has a "brand" and that brand is typically not supported with a post of you out of it, sloppy, etc.

Along those lines, there also seems to be MUCH more emphasis on health - granted superficial health (looking good) but health nonetheless. Fortunately the standards for "ideal beauty" for women especially have shifted from the 90s/2000s no-such-thing-as-too-thin dangerous and extremely unhealthy to a physique that is well-muscled and actually healthy (while being inclusive of different body types).

When I'm at the gym and the high school/college kids show up I just can't believe their level of physical fitness and development. Self-selecting given it's the gym but when I was in high school (class of 2002) the most fit kid on the football, basketball, track, volleyball, etc teams would look out of shape next to what appears to be the "average" gym-goer of this generation. The numbers also seem to be quite a bit higher - there are A LOT of these kids hitting it really hard in the gym.

Needless to say this clearly obsessive-level focus and work is not supported by using drugs like marijuana and alcohol. If nothing else having a lot of followers is much more important and "cool".

If anything I'm more interested in usage statistics of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. Some of the physiques, performance, etc I see just don't seem possible to achieve naturally at 16-25.

'Cause they aren't doing it naturally.

Marijuana is now "the man", complete with licensing and lawsuits.

The hip young people are moving on to things that are still transgressive.

I was a teen a few years back who stopped doing marijuana/alcohol. Stopped like in never even seen them since I quit/no relapse. I stopped because my childhood friends started dissipating and they stopped and then I stopped. Doing weed/alcohol alone didn't appeal to me much.

How accurate can youth self reported drug usage statistics actually be? It seems like the type of thing that would sway heavily based on if the kids were in a serious mood or a playful mood, who was giving the survey, etc.

The good news is it doesn’t really matter. The absolute numbers might be inaccurate, but the skew is likely to stay the same over decades. So it probably is dropping.

> the skew is likely to stay the same over decades

This is a huge assumption.

Yeah, I don't agree with that at all. A simple change such as "More schools are giving the survey right before standardized tests instead of at the end of the school day" may skew numbers over years.

Edit: There's probably dozens of variables with how the survey is given that will skew the bias. They probably don't even ask the exact same question in the exact same way on the physical survey.

> A simple change ... may skew numbers over years

Is this your guess, or is there other conflicting data?

The point is that we don’t know, and this means the data may be wrong. For an experiment to prove something, you need to control for these variables.

You can’t do experiments on entire populations. That’s precisely why we have studies in the first place.

Am I the only one that questions the validity of self reported survey data? No, the concerns are extremely well documented, including documentation about psychological and situational factors that impact the results.

So it's possible that the numbers have changed even more than this study shows?

Sure, I'm not arguing in which direction the numbers reflect Truth. I'm simply saying I trust teenage self reported cannabis usage about as much as I trust self reported exercise habits. I'm very skeptical, and I don't think we can assume constant variance in self reporting across different time and institutions.

Does that mean all self reported studies are worthless, in your opinion?

Maybe marijuana getting a lot stronger plays a role here? I for one could smoke a joint while I was a teen, but nowadays the stuff makes me super sick every time, like the last two times I had to lie down and ended up barfing before getting better.

worried about the youth if this is true. are we alienating them from a relatively safe form of mischief and mind expansion by making it legal and socially accepted?

hoping that perhaps it's reporting error as kids get smart about surveillance etc. hoping for the kids.

Kids these days!

Why delete the comments?

Well yeah, legal things aren't cool. I'm sure they'll find something else that's still illegal to use/abuse/do instead

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